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‘One Japanese Suicide Every 15 Minutes’

Posted by LaVrai in Thursday, May 22nd 2008

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I am trying to understand what could possibly be going on in Japan for suicide to be such a national epidemic there. I was tempted to question Japan’s religions, the biggest of which are Buddhism and Shinto, but I cannot point my finger at religion at alone. I was familiar with the concept of ’shame societies,’ but I was not aware that its effects were so far-reaching in Japan. Apparently, in Japan, if you do something to bring shame to yourself or your family (such as suffer great economic loss, born with a disability, etc.), you might as well be dead — because no matter what you do, you can almost never recover in society’s eyes. What a sense of hopelessness.

Japan’s grim reputation as one of the world’s suicide nations has been confirmed by statistics that show more than 30,000 people a year have taken their own lives since figures first began to rise in 1998. In 2006, there were 32,115 suicides - 25 per 100,000 people; nearly 100 people a day; one every 15 minutes. The most common hour of death is 5am for men and noon for women, after their families have left for work or school.

Japan has roughly half the population of the US, yet the same number of suicides. There were 5,554 suicides of people aged 15 and over in the UK in 2006; three quarters involved men.

Experts in Japan were puzzled when the suicide rate jumped in 1998 from 24,391 to 32,863 - a 35 per cent rise - and the annual figure has continued to stay above 30,000. Two theories have been put forward by the media: bullying at school and netto shinju - online suicide pacts.

The world’s first internet suicide pact involving strangers took place in Japan in 2003. The bodies of three young people were discovered in a van on a mountain road. The windows were sealed with black duct tape and a burnt-out charcoal stove was found inside.

Police across Japan began to make similar discoveries: three or four bodies, victims usually in their late teens to mid-twenties, and often a burnt-out charcoal stove.

Last year the National Police saved 72 potential suicides who had made postings on the net. But Yukio Saito, the director of a 24-hour suicide helpline, said that until recently Japan has done nothing to stop tens of thousands of others taking their lives. The helpline takes an estimated 720,000 calls a year at its 49 centres. (Guardian UK)

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“DO NOT open! Gas being created!” Written in red felt-tip pen and affixed to a door, they are among the last words of a 14-year-old Japanese schoolgirl, who took her life on April 23rd. The warning followed the advice of a website that also provided instructions for creating hydrogen-sulphide gas by mixing toilet-bowl cleaner with bath salts.

This simple method of suicide claimed some 60 lives in April-mainly of people in their teens or 20s-and around another 20 earlier this year. The colourless, pungent gas does not dissipate easily. So bystanders and would-be rescuers are put at risk. The girl’s mother was hospitalised and around 100 neighbours had to evacuate their homes.

Yet this is only the latest, macabre, technique in a country that suffers an epidemic of suicides. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates among rich countries. Cultural factors are partly at play. Japanese society rarely lets people bounce back from the perceived shame of failure or bankruptcy. Suicide is sometimes even met with approval-as facing one’s fate, not shirking it. The samurai tradition views suicide as noble (though perhaps out of self-interest, since captured warriors were treated gruesomely). Japan’s main religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, are neutral on suicide, unlike Abrahamic faiths that explicitly prohibit it.

Yet economic woes play an even bigger role. Suicide rates increased sharply in the mid-1990s as the economy soured, and have remained high since (even as the economy has improved slightly). Financial concerns are cited in one-fifth of suicide notes; almost half of all suicides are unemployed. Some take their lives so that surviving family members can collect insurance, which has led insurance firms to defer payments for two or three years as a deterrent. For the same reason, Japan Railway charges suicide victims’ families for the cost of the inconvenience and clean-up.

Last year the government instituted measures such as a counselling service and hotlines, with the aim of cutting the suicide rate by 20% in nine years. But these are palliatives. More important would be a change in social attitudes. Suicide might be less common if, rather than force people to endure lifelong shame, Japanese society began to allow its people second chances. (Economist)

If any of you are familiar with Haji societies or the situation in Japan, do you think it’s more than just shame, which surely must lead to depression/ hopelessness?