Suicide in Japan

How come Japan has a high suicide rate?

It can be from many reasons.
To be able to get a good reputation in working at a Japanese company that is usually competitive, you need to work long hours, kiss your boss' and clients' a** which you often need to entertain them after work, and you are not supposed to have objections even when you can't really agree w/ what your boss says.

Japan has been always a big drinking country; the alcoholism, which has a strong relationship w/ suicidal behaviors, hasn't surfaced as an issue since mental health in Japan is not as progressed as it should be, but there are many alcoholics wheather they are hospitalized or not.

At school and home, children and young people don't get their voices heard while they are screaming for a help, and there is an influence from the website which lures kids to commit suicide(I heard it on NPR recently).

I am sure there are a lot more to think, but I am getting sad, so I will stop...

It does?? I don`t know about this ??

But well , I promised myself that I`d rather get run by a JR train than leave Japan . So perhaps that`s it ??

Personally I think it's beacause the pressure to success is really big in Japan, that combined with many young people not getting attention beacause their parents work so much (and we all know japanese people work hell of alot) gives a high suiciderate.


【一家心中】 [いっかしんじゅう] family suicide
【介錯】 [かいしゃく] suicide assistant
【狂言自殺】 [きょうげんじさつ] faked suicide
【決死隊】 [けっしたい] suicide corps
【後追い自殺】 [あとおいじさつ] (vs) following someone's example, and committing suicide
【合意情死】 [ごういじょうし] double suicide
【合意心中】 [ごういしんじゅう] double suicide
【死に装束】 [しにしょうぞく] burial clothes/clothes worn to commit suicide
【自害】 [じがい] (n,vs) suicide
【自決】 [じけつ] (n,vs) self-determination/suicide/resignation (from a post)/(P)
【自殺】 [じさつ] (n,vs) suicide/(P)
【自殺を図る】 [じさつをはかる] (exp) to attempt suicide
【自殺者】 [じさつしゃ] person who commits suicide
【自殺未遂】 [じさつみすい] attempted suicide
【自殺幇助】 [じさつほうじょ] (the crime of) aiding and abetting a suicide
【自刃】 [じじん] (n,vs) suicide by the sword
【自尽】 [じじん] (n,vs) suicide
【自爆】 [じばく] (n,vs) suicide bombing, e.g. crashing one's plane into a target/self-destruction
【自爆攻撃】 [じばくこうげき] suicide bomb attack
【自縛霊】 [じばくれい] ghost of a suicide victim
【殉死】 [じゅんし] (n,vs) dying a martyr/following someone in suicide
【焼身自殺】 [しょうしんじさつ] burning oneself to death/suicide by fire
【情死】 [じょうし] double love suicide
【心中】 [しんじゅう] (n,vs) double suicide/lovers suicide/(P)
【生害】 [しょうがい] commit suicide
【相対死】 [あいたいじに] double suicide
【体当たり】 [たいあたり] body blow/ramming (suicide) attack
【体当り】 [たいあたり] body blow/ramming (suicide) attack
【投身】 [とうしん] suicide by jumping into a river (base of a waterfall, from a high place)
【特攻隊】 [とっこうたい] suicide squad/(P)
【特別攻撃隊】 [とくべつこうげきたい] suicide squad/kamikaze group
【入水】 [じゅすい] suicide by drowning/drowning oneself
【入水】 [にゅうすい] suicide by drowning/drowning oneself
【飛び込み自殺】 [とびこみじさつ] committing suicide by throwing oneself in front of an onrushing train
【無理心中】 [むりしんじゅう] forced double suicide


But maybe they commit so much suicide cause they have so many words for it and they want to be able to use all of them? :?

(thx to http://poets.notredame.ac.jp/cgi-bin/jedi-inon(search for suicide) for help with the list ^^)

I think i heard something a long time ago about something called a suicide circle. Do any of you know anything about that?

It's a movie.

Suki-Yaki said:

It does?? I don`t know about this ??

But well , I promised myself that I`d rather get run by a JR train than leave Japan . So perhaps that`s it ??

Click to expand...

I believe the Japanese rate is close to that of Europe but significantly higher than the US (esp among women). The numbers have been debated in a few past postings -- everyone feel free to use the search function if you're seriously interested.

There's conditioning suicide, then there's mind programming suicide.

High suicide rates that are promoted by the mass media. If the mass media said 99%, does this mean that it's true?

But chances are, more and more people in big cities in Japan and around the world get quite stressed of living there and don't know on where else to go.

What caused them to be stressed?

Competition is one thing, people don't get productive when they're forced to compete, they do the opposite. Interesting, there's this strange ideology that said to progress you need to compete, does the promotion of this ideology mean that someone want people to commit suicide?



As for alcohol and suicide.

Hmmm... It's more likely that people who are stressed out and thinking of doing suicide will do it, with or without alcohol.

You can drink all the alcohol you want and you wouldn't kill yourself if you have no plan of killing yourself in the first place, unless you accidentally killed yourself of course.



What can be done to this situation.

Run! That's right. Run away! While some will call this move a cowardly move or running away from your problems, but running away from is a natural defensive move that one do if one faced with a situation that one couldn't handle.

Unfortunately, for some people, they repressed this instict. So when a school kid get stressed from school or something, he or she can't run (the instinct said to run, the brainwashing said to face the problem), this will build up, then the kid will either gunned down the whole school or jump from the school roof or both.


Of course, that's suicide due to stress. Suicide due to mind programming is a totally different thing. But chances are these suicides are only done to kill the person and make the people around them very confused, since even though kamikaze done by World War II Japanese pilots are often glorified as very destructive things, only 25% of the attempts managed to hit the target, and even those that get hit, the crashes are nothing more just little nuisances. Heck, the only way to sink those ships that are targeted is to place explosives around the ships and then detonated it, just like what happened three years ago.

Though... to be fair, kamikaze World War II pilots don't think themself as killing themself, they just think of aiming at the target, whether they are dead or not, it doesn't matter at all.

To be accurate, 無理心中 doesn't mean exactly indicate "double", since the instigator can actually kill more than one other person before offing himself. This sort of thing most commonly occurs in families.