Japan gripped by suicide epidemic

[frigidmagi]

timeonline

[quote]Japanese professionals in their thirties are killing themselves at unprecedented rates, as the nation struggles with a runaway suicide epidemic.

Newly published figures show that 30,093 people took their own lives in 2007 — a 2.9 per cent increase in a year — leaving the country as the most suicide-prone anywhere in the developed world and rendering government efforts to combat the problem a failure.

Suicide rates remained highest among men — at 71 per cent of the total — and very high among Japan’s rising population of over-60s. Geographically, most suicides took place in the prefecture of Yamanashi, where the forested foothills of Mount Fuji continue to attract the suicidal from around Japan.

Government analysis of the figures, for the tenth year consecutive in which suicides have remained above 30,000 mark, has exposed a series of new and troubling trends: people in their thirties are the most likely to kill themselves, and work-related depression is emerging as a prime motive.

Psychologists, sociologists and other close observers of Japanese society believe that the country is in the grip of a full-blown crisis among its young working population. Experts say that high suicide rates and the recent spate of random stabbings in public places are symptoms of a malaise that the country has ignored for too long.

Mika Tsutsumi, an economist and social analyst, said that the recent stabbings in Akihabara were worryingly predictable: the killing spree for which Tomohiro Kato was allegedly responsible was, she says, driven by a sense of hopelessness in the workplace. Underneath Japanese society is concealed “an invisible reserve army of Katosâ€

[Derek Thunder]

Could the increased costs associated with animation production be hurting the tentacle industry, thus driving up suicides? If so, does the G8 need a new sort of "Marshall Plan" to restore the majestic tentacle monster to his natural habitat?

That is really freaky though.

[Hadrianvs]

I was thinking of saying that maybe 60 years of peace has been stifling for the Japanese people, that they need to engage in wars periodically to remain vibrant and healthy. Then I remembered that they got through the centuries long peace of the Edo Peridod just fine.

So much for that joke.

[Cynical Cat]

Let's see a prolonged period of economic problems, a troubled future, strict social conformity, and social acceptance of suicide as a honorable way out. It's sad, but not surprising.