Japanese Internet suicide clubs targeted by police

Finding a soul mate is one of the great rewards of the Internet for many across the globe. Yet in Japan, cyberspace is also a convenient location for those trying to find someone to die with, as the country continues to grapple with its ever-increasing suicide rate.

On Wednesday Japan's national police agency announced guidelines requiring Internet providers and telecommunications groups to report any postings they find on the Internet about potential suicides. The police emphasized the need for quick action when the supposed date of the suicide is indicated or if the location or method of killing oneself is indicated.

The police pointed out that the number of suicidal people who go about either declaring on the World Wide Web that they are about to kill themselves or seek others to commit collective suicide continues to rise and argued that by cracking down on such sites they may be able to prevent a significant number of suicides from occurring.

As a rule, ISPs are obliged to preserve the individual's right to privacy in cyberspace, but if the postings they find appear to fit what the authorities designate as a so-called emergency under law, they are free to notify the police about the suicide dialogue, even though the definition of an emergency situation is largely open to individual interpretation. Nevertheless, such requests from the government are antagonizing critics who object to such bureaucratic intervention in freedom of speech and the right to privacy.

At the same time, there is no doubt that suicide -- and group suicide among strangers who find one another on the Internet -- is a serious concern for Japanese society at large. In fact, suicide is the single-biggest cause of death for those between the ages of 20 to 39, according to the health ministry. The number of suicides has exceeded 30,000 for the fourth year in a row, and the per capita rate of suicides is about twice that in the United States. In fact, Japan has the second-highest suicide rate in the world after Sri Lanka, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the interior ministry reported in August that four major Japanese telecommunications groups -- the Telecommunications Carriers Association, the Telecom Services Association, the Japan Internet Providers Association and the Japan Cable and Telecommunications Association -- must work closely with the government to identify and ultimately stop suicidal individuals from seeking each other out and killing themselves.

Some bloggers argued that talking about killing oneself anonymously on the Internet is an important way for many young people to think about their lives and living in general.

"Telling someone who's suicidal that killing yourself is wrong just doesn't work ... It's more important to listen to what they have to say, and try to empathize with their feelings in order to prevent them from committing suicide," one blogger wrote on a Web site dedicated to studying the psychology of those who are suicidal.

At the same time, stories like that of one man and two women killing themselves in a suburban Tokyo apartment continue to shock the nation. The three seemingly unrelated people found each other through a so-called suicide club Web site that called upon like-minded people to get together to muster up the courage to end their lives together. The 30-year-old man had recently lost his job, while one 22-year-old woman had just gone through a divorce and the other woman had been under pressure about her growing debts. They killed themselves by starting up a coal-burning stove and sealing windows and doors with duct tape to ensure they would all die of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

   

• atj - Apr 12, 2009
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  Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had an annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
  The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless very proactive and well funded local and nation wide suicide prevention programs and initiatives are immediately it is very difficult to foresee the governments previously stated intention to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.
  During these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal brickettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions.
  Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only to clearly if any journalist is prepared to learn Japanese or get a bilingual researcher to do the research to get to the real heart of the tragic story of the long term and unnecessarily high suicide rate problem in Japan.
  
  Useful telephone number for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal:
  Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)%uFF1A
  Japan: 0120-738-556
  Tokyo: 3264 4343
  
  Andrew Grimes
  Tokyo Counseling Services
  http://tokyocouns...english/
  http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
  
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