Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Yamato Tanooka survived for nearly a week after being left in the forest 
 
 A Japanese boy who was lost for six days in dense forests after his parents left him behind has been discharged from hospital. 
 
 Takayuki Tanooka, 44, and his wife briefly left Yamato Tanooka by the side of the road on the northern island of Hokkaido on 28 May as punishment. 
 
 When they came back he was gone. A huge search was launched and the boy was found at a military base on Friday. 
 
 Mr Tanooka said in an interview on Monday that Yamato forgave him. 
 
 The case sparked a debate in Japan about parenting. 
 
 Mr Tanooka told broadcaster TBS in an interview: "I said to him, 'Dad made you go though such a hard time. I am sorry'." 
 
 "And then, my son said, 'You are a good dad. I forgive you'." 
 
 Image copyright Associated Press Image caption Yamato said he slept between the two mattresses and saw no-one through his ordeal 
 
 The boy was found on Friday morning in a hut on a military drill field, some 5.5km (3.4 miles) from where he was left as a punishment for throwing stones at people and cars. 
 
 He said he had lost his sense of direction from crying and walked for about five hours before arriving at the building where he was found, according to The Mainichi newspaper. 
 
 He slept between two mattresses and "met no-one". 
 
 He said he drank water from a tap at the facility but ate nothing for six days, the newspaper said. 
 
 When found, Yamato was lightly dehydrated, malnourished and had scrapes on his arms and legs but was said to be otherwise in good health. 
 
 Police have said they will not be pressing charges against the parents, local media reported. ||||| The seven-year-old boy who survived for six nights in a forest in northern Japan has forgiven his father for putting him through the ordeal, describing him as a good dad. 
 
 Yamato Tanooka was found alive and well in a military hut on Friday morning, almost a week after his parents ordered him out of the car as punishment for throwing stones during a family trip to the forest in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. 
 
 He had spent six nights in the hut, and survived by drinking water from a tap outside and sleeping in between two mattresses to keep warm. Yamato, who was not seriously hurt, is expected to be discharged from hospital on Tuesday. 
 
 His parents, meanwhile, face possible legal action over suspected psychological abuse, Japanese media reported. His father, Takayuki Tanooka, said he had again apologised to his son for his actions, which attracted widespread criticism on social media. 
 
 “I said to him, ‘Dad made you go though such a hard time. I am sorry’,” Tanooka, 44, said in an interview with the TBS network that was broadcast on Monday. “And then, my son said, ‘You are a good dad. I forgive you’,” Tanooka added, struggling to hold back tears. 
 
 The Sankei Shimbun quoted Yamato as saying: “I was wrong, because I didn’t listen to what my dad was saying.” 
 
 Yamato tried to chase after his parents and sister immediately after being abandoned in the forest on the evening of 28 May, it has emerged. Upset, he lost his sense of direction and started walking away from his parents’ car, the Mainichi Shimbun said. 
 
 
 
 His ordeal ended when three soldiers, seeking shelter from the rain, opened the door to a military hut to find him curled up on a mattress. It has also emerged that police are considering legal action against Yamato’s parents for possible psychological abuse. 
 
 Police in Hokkaido have submitted written notification about possible abuse to a child welfare centre in the nearby city of Hakodate, the Asahi Shimbun said. 
 
 His parents faced an avalanche of online criticism for their actions, although some sympathised with their predicament. Tanooka said he had already grown angry with his son because he had been in trouble at school for hitting cars with a stick. 
 
 “So I tried to show him that I can be scary when I’m seriously angry,” he said, citing what he described as a “father’s dignity”. 
 
 The Kyodo news agency quoted sources familiar with the case as saying that Tanooka had cried so much after his parents left him at the side of the road in a bear-inhabited area of the forest that he lost his sense of direction. 
 
 
 
 The extraordinary survival of the boy left in a Japanese forest Read more 
 
 Dressed in a tracksuit, T-shirt and trainers, he set off in the opposite direction in which his parents’ car had been travelling, before coming across an unpaved road that eventually took him to the military hut about 6km away. 
 
 Yamato reportedly saw no one during the time he spent inside the unheated hut. By the time he was found, he was suffering from mild dehydration and had lost 2kg (4.5lbs), according to Japanese media. 
 
 He reportedly told his father that he couldn’t remember how he had got to the hut, but said he had managed to overcome his fear of being alone and get some sleep. 
 
 More details have emerged of the obstacles he would have encountered on his journey to the hut, which, he did not realise at the time, was just a mile away from a private house. 
 
 Walking along the narrow mountain roads would have extended the distance he covered to about six miles, the Mainichi Shimbun quoted a self-defence force (SDF) soldier as saying. “They are mountain roads that go up and down ... even a member of the SDF would take about two and half hours to get to the military exercise area.” 
 
 His route, in pitch darkness, would have taken him through a maze of interconnected and unpaved roads lined by thick bushes and tall trees, making it impossible for him to get his bearings. 
 
 “He probably avoided side roads and chose the wider roads, leading him to the facility where he was found,” the SDF member added. 
 
 Yamato Tanooka’s story has exposed the perils of parenting | Deborah Orr Read more 
 
 Yamato reportedly said he had tried to turn on the lights inside the hut, but found there was no power supply. Emergency services, meanwhile, defended the scope of their search, which after six days had uncovered no clues as to his whereabouts. 
 
 Police said they had expanded the search to include Mount Komagatake after Yamato’s sister said she had seen him walk off in that direction, but had not checked the nearby military training area. “We searched places where we thought a child would be likely to go,” Kyodo quoted a senior police officer as saying. 
 
 The search, involving up to 180 people, had initially covered a radius of two miles from the spot where Yamato was told to get out of the car, but was later expanded to a 10-mile radius. 
 
 
 
 “Considering the physical strength and mindset of a child, we didn’t think he would head to the mountaintops or off the main road,” a firefighter told Kyodo. 
 
 There is still no satisfactory explanation for why Yamato was not discovered when soldiers on a regular patrol checked the hut last Monday morning but found nothing out of the ordinary. ||||| A 7-year-old boy was found dehydrated and hungry but otherwise healthy early Friday morning, six days after he went missing on a mountain in Hokkaido. 
 
 Yamato Tanooka was discovered by Self-Defense Forces personnel at an exercise area in the town of Shikabe, Hokkaido, 5 kilometers from where he was last seen. 
 
 The boy was found squeezed into a pile of mattresses in a Quonset-type hut that troops on a training exercise entered because it was raining. 
 
 The SDF said the site was checked on Monday morning, but the boy was not found. 
 
 Yamato told police he reached the camp on Saturday after pushing through forest. 
 
 “I didn’t have food so I just drank water,” police quoted him saying. There was a tap outside the hut. 
 
 One of the troops offered him rice balls, which he ate hungrily. 
 
 He was taken to a hospital in Hakodate in an apparent state of exhaustion. He was placed on an intravenous drip as he had symptoms of mild dehydration and hypothermia, a doctor there said. He had minor scratches on his arms and legs but was otherwise unharmed. 
 
 It was at the hospital that he was reunited with his parents and sister. 
 
 His father later told reporters he regretted the incident. 
 
 “I feel very sorry for the boy as I came down on him hard,” Takayuki Tanooka said. 
 
 He said he had apologized to Yamato. He also extended an apology to the Japanese public, acknowledging that he had “gone too far” in leaving the boy alone. He added, he had meant the best for his son. 
 
 When told that the boy had been found alive, troops involved in the search burst into applause. At his elementary school in the town of Hokuto, Hokkaido, pupils shouted in joy when the news was announced to an assembly of all 900 students. 
 
 The school’s principal and Yamato’s class teacher headed to the hospital to visit Yamato. 
 
 “I want to tell him that he did a great job and was brave,” said Yoshitaka Sawada, the vice-principal. 
 
 Tanooka’s parents told police they told the boy to get out of their car on a remote mountain road to teach him a lesson after he had thrown stones at people and cars. They drove on and then returned, to find no sign of him. 
 
 A massive manhunt involving hundreds of police, firefighters and SDF personnel took place across rough, densely foliated terrain. Police deployed a helicopter on Monday, while firefighters rode horses along forest paths as they shouted the boy’s name. 
 
 The search had been scaled back by Friday because no trace of him was found. 
 
 Tanooka’s parents initially told police the boy had gone missing when they were walking in the Nanae area to pick wild vegetables. They later admitted that they had left him there and drove off “to scare him a little bit.” 
 
 The family searched for him for about half an hour before contacting police. 
 
 His father told reporters they did not admit the truth at first because they were ashamed at what they had done.
– Great news from Japan: After days where a grim outcome seemed increasingly likely, the boy abandoned in a forest by his parents has been found alive and physically unharmed. On Friday, soldiers found 7-year-old Yamato Tanooka in a hut at a military drill area a few miles away from where his parents had left him by the side of a forest road as punishment, the Japan Times reports. Soldiers say he was curled up on a mattress when they found him and they gave him rice balls and bread when he told them he was hungry and thirsty, the Guardian reports. He was taken to a hospital by military helicopter and was treated for dehydration and possible hypothermia. Doctors say the boy, who had been on his own since Saturday, was unharmed apart from scratches on his arms and legs. Yamato's parents told authorities that they returned five minutes after leaving the boy and found him gone. At least 180 rescuers joined the search, combing woods on the northern island of Hokkaido, which are home to a species of brown bear. It's not clear how long the boy had been in the unheated hut during a week when overnight temperatures dropped as low as 44 degrees Fahrenheit. Police say he told his rescuers he hadn't eaten but had found water to drink. Yamato's father, Takayuki Tanooka, visited his son and apologized, the AP reports. "I told him I was so sorry for causing him such pain," the father told reporters outside the hospital. He said the boy has been "raised with love," and while the punishment for throwing rocks was supposed to be for Yamato's own good, he realizes that he went too far.