Missing Japan boy was left in mountains as punishment: police

The parents of a seven-year-old Japanese boy missing in the mountains confessed on Sunday they had left him as a punishment and he did not get lost during a hike as first claimed, police said.

More than 150 rescuers and police officers were searching for a second day in mountains on the northern main island of Hokkaido after Yamato Tanooka went missing on Saturday, a police spokesman said.

His parents originally told police Yamato got lost while the family were out walking in the area, a habitat of bears, to pick wild vegetables.

View of Mount Usu, some 70 kilometers southwest of Hokkaido's capital, Sapporo

But the parents later admitted they had lied, he said.

"The parents left the boy in the mountains as a punishment," the spokesman said. "They said they went back to the site immediately but the boy was no longer there."