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More than 30,000 suicides in Japan in 2007
Recently released police figures show that last year 33,093 people committed suicide in Japan. It was the tenth consecutive year in which the suicide rate topped the 30,000 mark. Increasingly people use pesticides to poison themselves.
Tokyo (AsiaNews) – Over 33,000 people took their lives in Japan last year, the tenth consecutive year in which the 30,000 mark was reached, this despite a government campaign to reduce what is one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
The information comes in a report issued by Japan’s National Police Agency on Thursday which showed that 33,093 people killed themselves in Japan in 2007—the second-largest number on record after 34,427 in 2003—mostly because of debt, family problems, depression and other health issues.
Police point the finger at the new methods of suicide that have appeared in the last three years.
In addition to hanging and ritual disembowelment, which are somewhat “accepted” in Japanese culture, more and more cases involve inhaling poisonous gases, prepared with ordinary household detergents, with the Internet providing how-to instructions to people who want to kill themselves.
“This extremely regrettable situation has been going on for a long time,” chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said of the data. “It’s a very hard problem, but we want to do as much as we can,” he added.
Japanese culture does not encourage suicide, but is also does not have any taboos against it.
If performed honourably, suicide offers people in difficulty a way to cleanse their conscience.
In many Internet forums young students do complain in fact about gas-induced suicide because it does not allow the body to remain in a dignified position for when it is found.
In the last few years the government has acknowledged that suicide (which is covered under national insurance schemes) is a “serious problem” and seems poised to do something.
Since January 2002 the Labour Ministry has been handing out a 38-page booklet to companies with what-to-do instructions to help company executives identify and assist workers with suicidal tendencies.
However, this step does not appear to have been made much of a difference since suicide remains one of the leading causes of death in Japan.