What's new

Japan: Why do over 30,000 people kill themselves every year?

Davey

先輩
Contributor
5 Feb 2005
7,556
617
193
another post about suicide... ( this word should be forbitten... ) i found this today on http://www.politicalaffairs.net

it is amazing how do suicide, well just read it. and if you want give your opinion..

Why do over 30,000 people kill themselves every year?




6-18-05, 8:21am

In 2004, 32,325 people continued suicide in Japan, according to the National Police Agency. The figure began soaring as a result of the worst-ever unemployment situation and increased corporate bankruptcies. Despite the government announcement that "employment has improved" and "the number of business failures is decreasing," the number of suicides has not decreased.

More than 30,000 suicides per year have been recorded for seven straight years. The number for last year was 2,000 fewer than the 2003 peak. It is extraordinary that 89 people commit suicide a day. Those who killed themselves total 227,000 in the past seven years, equivalent to the vanishing of a medium-sized city.

High unemployment rate and economic hardships

The number of suicides has not decreased because the unemployment rate remains high and many people are experiencing business failures and hardships in their daily lives. Note that 7,947 people committed suicides in 2004 because of their economic and worsening living conditions.

In 1998, the number of suicides reached the 30,000 mark. The number of unemployed reached 3.08 million in 2004, an increase of 1.14 million from 1994. It is a disgrace that three million people are completely out of work.

Most of the newly employed are low-paid part timers, temporary workers, and contracted workers. Under unstable conditions of their employment contracts, they are regarded as "disposable."

At a time when major corporations continue to make record profits, their costs are increasingly shifted onto subcontractors, causing more business failures, heavier debt burdens, and suicides.


In a "competitive society that divides people into "winners" and "losers" and under the Koizumi Cabinet's "restructuring policy," many people are forced into the depths of despair. We must stop this cold-blooded policy.

One of the causes of workers' suicides is an increase in the cases of depression and other mental diseases. This tendency is evident at 70 percent of the major corporations with more than 3,000 workers (according to the 2004 white paper on the Mental Health of Industrial Workers).

Employees are suffering from excessive stress and fatigue caused by a fierce competition under the performance-based pay system and uncontrolled long working hours. It is a company's duty to ensure employees' good health.

It is particularly tragic that young people are forced to commit suicide. The number of group suicides is increasing via the Internet.

Suicide is the most common cause of death among those in their 20's and 30's. It is said that youth suicide is a "cry for help."

Young people are increasingly losing their zest for life, and this has become a symbol of a distorted Japanese society.

Under the competition-driven education system, children's self-esteem is deeply hurt. A survey shows that only 37.6 percent of high school students feel self-worth.

After graduating from school, they face difficulty in finding jobs and think, "I am a nobody." About 850,000 young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET).

Young people working as regular-workers are also suffering from such harsh working conditions that destroy both their mental and physical health. About 60 percent of insurance compensation payment for work-related health problems is for mental disorders, inducing suicides from excessive workloads among young workers in their 20's and 30's.

Overcoming the present situation that does not treat young people as human beings with dignity is an urgent task for the future of Japan.

Take comprehensive measures to prevent suicides!

In Japan, 25.3 out of every 100,000 people commit suicide. Japan's suicide rate is the third highest after Russia and Hungary. It is government responsibility to eliminate social factors leading Japan to become one of the world's worst "major suicide countries."

In addition, it is necessary to take comprehensive measures to prevent suicides by understanding the agonies of those hard-pressed people and establishing a safety net such as counseling programs. - Akahata, June 9, 2005
 
Wow. In the USA and the UK it is just about 8 per 100000, so Japan is 3 times higher. Scary.
 
Suicide should never be an option

I really feel that suicide is amongst the Big Issues in the world, not just in Japan. I don't believe in ending your life by suicide, no one gives you that right, and it should never be an option. This article is trying to pin suicide on social issues: unemployment and stress, but I think really the main issue is society, and how well one feels in the society, so I completely agree by:

"In addition, it is necessary to take comprehensive measures to prevent suicides by understanding the agonies of those hard-pressed people and establishing a safety net such as counseling programs."

I have a friend who attempted suicide, and having them share what they were going through not only made me understand them better, but I believe it helped them to realise their role in the world, and how their friends and family truly appreciate them. For them, taking their life in an instant moment is just an action to release themselves of the feelings they are feeling on attempting suicide; they are not in a rational position at the moment and long after. It is hard to put your life back together after attempting suicide, but knowing that others are supportive around you I believe makes all the difference for getting your life back.

Suicide is an escape, a selfish act; and those who consider suicide should first think of not how their lives are going to change, but how the lives of others will be affected.
 
mm it is your own life,, so you have your own right, more then somebody else kill you!!!

i believe only in suicide when you suffer that much pain that you can not life anymore, with that i think more of people who are in a coma, ( write in a document that when you are in a coma you dont want to be a plant for 5 years, so you want to die.. is this suicide? own choose of dying) or terrible sick..

people who are despirete should be able to go to a consult to get help...!!! familie and friends should help with this!! ..

mmm hard topic.. for a saturday evening hahaha
 
Yeah, I agree with you on the coma point, but many suicides happen because of one particular incident in a person's life, and that doesn't give you the right to take your own life.

And not you, or anyone else have the right to take your life. From your side its selfish, and if someone kills you, they are pretending to be in a superior position to everyone else, and no body is that!

and yeah....hehe....it is a tough topic for a saturday night.... but things like this should be discussed at all times because everyday someone takes their life...and you can do nothing more than recognise the issue
 
okay what about your for example.. ( if i can not say this on this forum.. please forgive me and tell me so i will remove my message... i know suicide is a difficult topic)

your whole familie is killed, your wife kids, mother,,, you lose your job, you become homeless... What the F**k are you going to do? suicide... is an option.. isn't then? i mean how do you want to get social help... when you dont have money??

we should recognise it yeah.. and we ? well in my country it is not that bad as in japan.. should do something about it... first off all, spread more information about there is Help... i dont know deeply about it, and excualy im not going to DIG UP all information about this topic, because then i would get pretty depressed myself.. although i am interrested ( wrong word choose, but ya know what i mean) about this topic.
 
Well I am not japanese either, and in my country suicide is not even an issue. And think about it this way, if all of a person's family dies, do you think they would want you to die too? I dont think so! and if you lose your job, would they want you to die then? i dont think so! your family would want to see you stand strong and fight. Killing yourself because your life is going bad at a moment is an excuse. People die once, and it is not of your life, it is just that one moment that they die. Dont you think its ignorant putting such an extreme example "your whole family is killed"?!
 
well we talk about extreme things, isnt... but you are right, many of this 30.000 people dont even have half of this problem, jus they dont know what to do with life...
 
exactly. oh and i posted another thread, on suicide actually being a "popular activity" like a sort of trend amongst teens in Japan, can you believe that? that is the worst possible case. and you are right, they just dont know what to do with their life
 
i see this is just your 7th post.. hope you dont just bring suicidal things do ya hihi... btw welcome to Jref!!!
 
thanx for the welcome. but the other bit, that was a bit rude...i just thought about this whole issue, and its something that really makes me mad u know. and i have heaps of interesting issues of topic...u just wait...
 
valeriaqt said:
Well I am not japanese either, and in my country suicide is not even an issue.
That's strange, because the suicide rate in Australia is not that low either: 20.1/5.3 (m/f, per 100,000, in 2001) in Australia vs. 35.2/13.4 (in 2000) in Japan. Many industrialised countries have a rate of around 20 for men.

if you lose your job, would they want you to die then? i dont think so!
That probably depends on the society you live in.

The suicide rates in Japan were comparable to other industrialised nations until the mid-90s. Then there was a sharp increase in male suicides. A similar increase can be seen in the mid-50s. For the same reasons? Has the Japanese society changed so little since then?

I don't think that Japanese culture can be changed by some well-meaning foreigners that much that suicide rates will go down. Neither is it as easy to shift the blame to the government, as the article seems to do. The reasons for the increase have to be researched properly, only then people will be able to come up with reasonable solutions.

BTW, about the quoted article: "Japan's suicide rate is the third highest after Russia and Hungary."
I don't know from which years their numbers are, but the last available from the WHO show a number of other countries also with higher suicide rates.
 

Attachments

  • suicide rates.jpg
    suicide rates.jpg
    49.1 KB · Views: 166
Indeed, Japan's suicide rate is not so exceptional. I found the data for 10 years ago on NationMaster. Regarding female suicide rate, Japan ranked 8th (12 per 100,000 people) after Sri Lanka, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Slovenia, and pretty close to Belgium, Finland and Croatia too. What is interesting is that the UK and the US have such low rates (4 and 3x lower than Japan). Italy, Spain and Portugal also have low rates.

But what is even more interesting is that Japan male suicide rate is only the 21st highest worldwide (25 per 100,000 people), after most Eastern European countries, France, Belgium, Austria, and just a bit higher than Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US. The UK, Italy, Spain and Portugal are still among the lowest rates found in developed countries.

It is amazing to see that Lithuania, Russia or Latvia at the top of the list have a male suicide rate 3x higher than Japan or the average Western countries. Belgium has the highest male/female suicide rate of any Western European country (respectively 37.3/11.9 per 100,000 people). Italy has the lowest (9.6/3.2 per 100,000 people), about 4x lower than Belgium's. Ironically, Italians are the single largest ethnic minority in Belgium.
 
bossel said:
That's strange, because the suicide rate in Australia is not that low either: 20.1/5.3 (m/f, per 100,000, in 2001) in Australia vs. 35.2/13.4 (in 2000) in Japan. Many industrialised countries have a rate of around 20 for men.
valeriaqt isn't from Australia!

:eek:
 
I think in Japan that the thing with much suicide is because psychology, such as counseling, is behind.
Consulting with others on a trouble has the feeling of being shameful.
The cause with many suicides of a Japanese male will be because they do not want to accept illness (mental disease).
 
FirstHousePooka said:
valeriaqt isn't from Australia!

:eek:
Ah well, yes. Thanks for the correction, but the flags are horribly similar (& I usually don't really care for flags). I see a certain lack of creativity.

But either way: NZ has a similar suicide rate to Australia. If she meant Switzerland or Russia by saying "my country" (she's a complicated case), they have even higher rates than Australia, Russia actually higher than Japan.
 
bossel said:
But either way: NZ has a similar suicide rate to Australia. If she meant Switzerland or Russia by saying "my country" (she's a complicated case), they have even higher rates than Australia, Russia actually higher than Japan.

And not a little. Russia has one of the highest suicide rate in the world, about 3x higher than Japan.
 
Ok first of all, you all disciminating people, I am very international, and my country is New Zealand, and I would never claim Australia, because even though I lived in Australia for 2 years, I never liked it. Second of all, since you seem to be so sure about Russia's suicide rate being higher...find me a good website with these figures...like bbc or something.... and when I said "its not even an issue in my country" i meant new zealand, and if you saw my flag you would realise that....
 
Mac showed it here:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_sui_rat_mal&int=-1&int=-1

Russia is second with 74.1 suicudes per 100,000, Japan is 25, Australia is 21.5 and NZ is 20.5. Not much behind Japan really.

What is interesting to me is the apparant demographic that does suicide. In Australia and NZ the most common risk group is young men, 15 - 30 that suicide. In Japan its the much older men in their 50's or 60's. So it seems to be totally diffierent social, economic and mental factors at work.

Sources: annual figures:WHO databank, National Bureaus of Statistics. Department of Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis Population Division (1995). World population prospects. The 1994 revision. New York: United Nations. Partly computations: Department of Clinical Psychology, Psychiatric Clinic, University of W?rzburg, Germany
 
valeriaqt said:
Ok first of all, you all disciminating people, I am very international, and my country is New Zealand, and I would never claim Australia, because even though I lived in Australia for 2 years, I never liked it.

Liking a country has nothing to do with one's nationality. Many people move to other countries because they don't like their home country. Anyway, in your case I understand that you are either Russia or New Zealander or both.

Second of all, since you seem to be so sure about Russia's suicide rate being higher...find me a good website with these figures...like bbc or something...

Here is some data from Encarta

Encarata said:
Countries with the highest suicide rates include Latvia (42.5 suicides per 100,000 people), Lithuania (42.1), Estonia (38.2), Russia (37.8), and Hungary (35.9). Countries with the lowest suicide rates include Guatemala (0.5), the Philippines (0.5), Albania (1.4), the Dominican Republic (2.1), and Armenia (2.3).

Here is more from the BBC:

BBC said:
In 2000, in Lithuania, an estimated 42 people in every 100,000 committed suicide. In Estonia the figure was 40 and in Russia 38.

All the sources I have found say that the Baltic countries, then Russia have the highest suicide rate in the world.
 
valeriaqt said:
Suicide is an escape, a selfish act; and those who consider suicide should first think of not how their lives are going to change, but how the lives of others will be affected.

I think that most people who attempt suicide are not in a position to think rationally about how their action will affect others. Maybe many suicides assume that their death will benefit others, as they feel themselves to be a burden on society. People attempt suicide for many different reasons, so we cannot generalise that it is a selfish act.
 
Myth Buster: Japan's suicide rate is not so exceptional

Japan's suicide rate is not so exceptional.

As Maciamo allready pointed out the suicide rate in Japan is not extremely high. I found a interesting radio programme about this issue. The conclusion is that you mainly find high suicide rates in countries with ageing populations - japan among this category. An other factor seems to be that countries with long dark winters are particularly suicidal - Japan is not among these!

Use this link (If you have tired eyes you can try listening to the programme by clicking the link at the bottom of the page):

asdfs
 
In my church a visitor said he went to Japan, and he sat at a cafe, and every day he would see the same people at the same time.

He said they were really stressed, and didn't have time to relax or something......... I think..... I like to day-dream at church. lol
 
Back
Top Bottom