Tokyo (AsiaNews) – "There are seven people in our car. We are going to commit suicide." This is the phone text message one of the young people who committed suicide yesterday sent to a friend just before dying, this according to the daily Asahi Shinbun.

Police reported that a 21-year-old man relayed a message to a friend living in Sapporo, hundreds of kilometres from where the tragedy took place, announcing his death. The dead man was also from that city. Speaking to Asahi, the man who received the message said that his "friend would check out a site on group suicides. As far as I know, he did not personally know any such groups. I think that he got in touch with Jisatsu Websaito (the suicide website)".

On Tuesday October 12, in the early morning, the police found the bodies of seven young people –three women and four men– inside a van parked in a mountainous area in Saitama prefecture. Windows were sealed with duct tape. Inside, four rentan charcoal stoves produced the carbon monoxide that killed the victims.

Some brief notes were found near the bodies. One that was found near a woman said: "Mum will die but I am happy to have given birth to you".

In a sombre press release the police said that it was a suspected "case of mass suicide planned via the internet, the worst case of the last few years".

On the same day, the bodies of two young women (respectively 21- and 27-year-old) were found in a car near the city of Yokosuka, not far from Yokohama. Both had committed suicide in the same way. In a note, the two women wrote in a note: "This is not murder. We planned this together. Do not suspect anyone else". Since the two women were from different cities, police suspect that they, too, met online before agreeing to die together.

The police report that so far this year there were 12 incidents of mass suicide planned online, a phenomenon that is on the rise.

Journalist Shibui Tetsuya, an expert in the field, explains that "those who want to commit suicide do not want to suffer the consequences of failure. If they really want to die, they try to find accomplices who can help in preparing the act and make sure of its success. This is why a suicide information website was set up. Moreover, some of those who join have little conviction but end up under the spell of those who are more decided and cannot back out".

Youth experts claim that for the past two decades young Japanese have been rebelling against the Japan Inc. model. Traditional choices such as hyper-commitment to work and educational prowess no longer satisfy the younger generations. Many young people opt for extreme choices such as joining violent sects or committing suicide.

"In the end, many young Japanese suffer consciously or unconsciously from an existential crisis in which they find little purpose in life," a missioner told AsiaNews. For this reason, he added that "the Churches in Japan, whether Catholic or Protestant, must not shy away from their mission. They must stop thinking in terms of "small flock" and must instead join the heart of Christ who, when he saw multitudes like these young people, was full of compassion for they were like sheep without shepherd."