Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan 571
darkmonkeh writes "The number of Japanese who killed themselves in online suicide pacts rose sharply last year, according to the BBC. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the pacts may appeal to those scared to die alone. These Japanese internet 'suicide clubs' accounted for at least 26 deaths in the last 2 months."
Blown out of proportion... (Score:5, Informative)
1 in 340, or 0.3 percent of suicides are accounted for by this?
People like to be horrified by the idea, but resources would be far better focused in pretty much any other way than worrying about this.
Paranoia Agent... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Culture shouldn't be making "Hikikomori" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Suicide (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Suicide (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm [cdc.gov]
Bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of suicides in Japan are older men, peaking at 71.1 people per 100,000 for men in the 55-59 age range. This is not particularly surprising, considering the pressures on men of that age (higher chance of being made unemployed, older parents to look after, higher rate of divorce, lower chance of promotion, etc.).
Young girls don't even come close; the 15-19 year old female suicide rate is 5.6 per 100,000.
Further statistics available here [mhlw.go.jp].
It had time to become like this (Score:1, Informative)
The term Hari Kari is really Hara Kiri. That's when a samurai or warrior would be dishonored in his actions, and would rather kill himself than bow down to a new ruling party or to shame.
Then, in the 1800s, when Japan moved for industrialisation, objective sucess became key. Most Japanese never switch careers.Success became the new standard. Someone who had great wealth or power would commit suicide over an incident that would bring them down.
Combine all this with a new, semi-anonymous network, and you can have suicide parties. Just like in California about a decade or so ago, when they all died together.
Re:Your hunches are worthless (Score:3, Informative)
You do the math.
Very well. With a 2005 suicide rate of 91(!) per 100,000 (and the U.S's falling to just over 10, according the WHO), that means that the Japanese suicide rate alone is still over five times the U.S suicide and homicide rates combined. Surely that must be cause for some concern. (Whether one country is "better" than another is not relevant to this topic, just an irrelevant troll you brought up.)
Lots of Exercise (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, public support and encouragement for exercise here in Japan is quite common. It's a matter of culture. One of the first things I'm always asked during the "introductory conversation" (which varies little from person to person) is what kind of sports I like to do. Kids and adults are encouraged to exercise. Many communities have very well-appointed civic community centers with gyms and pools and martial arts classes (public funding for something like that isn't seen as something evil and socialist here). There's a holiday called "sports day" when local schools have athletic festivals and people go out to join in and watch, etc. Employees at many companies here do morning calesthenics every workday. Public parks are full of people playing team sports, even way out in the suburbs. The public TV station, NHK, has little 10-minute exercise bits throughout the day for housewives (yes, this is Japan), elderly folk, and other homebodies to do if they want to join in. And perhaps the biggest thing: Japanese people walk. ALL the time. I live in the distant outskirts of Tokyo and every time I have a friend or relative come from overseas, I need to warn them to get in shape because the first few days here are going to involve lots of walking up and down subway stairs, from station to location, etc. There's a reason people here are generally thin. Not to mention: oodles of bicycles everywhere, used as transportation by a sizable fraction of the public.
Exercise may be a generally good thing for mental well-being, but I don't think that's a factor that negatively distinguishes the Internet recluses in Japan from those anywhere else. Are the Internet recluses here still more likely to be out of shape? Sure. But I think the background level of fitness here is pretty good, so even those outliers are probably in better shape than, for example, geeks in the US.
Re:Your hunches are worthless (Score:3, Informative)
This all arose as a result of Japan's invasion of Manchuria and its eventual attack on China proper. This is where there are two terms involved as to when WWII actually started. For the U.S. , WWII started on December 7, 1941 with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The war lasted around four years, ending in 1945. However, from the Japanese viewpoint, the war was really fifteen years long and is referred to as "The Fifteen Years War" since some Japanese date the war as starting with the invasion of China, the fight against the U.S. not taking place for over a decade.
There was a lead-up in the public to the war as there is with virtually any war and the society waging it. According to the book The Imperial Screen: Japanese Flm Culture in the Fifteen Years' War 1931-1945, 2003:
"The prelude, lasting several months, featured a montage of 'Chinese-inspired incidents' reported by the newspapers in headlings that quivered with indignation. The pattern was to last throughout the thirties, each incident being presented as 'unprovoked' and therefore inexplicable in terms of rational, historical causes."
Censorship, both government inspired and individual-inspired, became important both in film and in newspaper reporting. Even books were used to fan the feelings in Japan. For example, in 1938 there were 38 books attacking the Jewish presence in Japan which was quite interesting since, for all practical purposes, there were no Jews in Japan.
Even the language became controlled which a reaction set in to the use of foreign words in the language and English was labeled "the enemy language." The people were being put into a mind-set of war by their government and by the media. This becomes important when considering why some people consider that the Japanese have not sufficiently apologized for the Nanking massacre and other actions. In effect, the population was being given the mind-set that it was the Japanese who were being attacked and provoked by the Chinese, not the other way around, and why apologize for something you didn't actually start?
"During the China incident, the Japanese popular imagination tended to conceive of the Chinese as hostile, faceless masses, as columns of refugees stolidly trudging roads to nowhere, or as clumps of lifeless flesh littering trenches and riverbeds."
If you dehumanize a group of people then it becomes easier to justify anything that you end up doing to them.
According to the book Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society (2005):
"It is widely accepted among scholars that after the sudden collapse of the Chinese defense of Nanjing in December, 1937, rampaging Japanese soldiers executed thousands of prisoners of war, civilians as well as men suspected of being soldiers, and burned the homes of Chinese. According to some, as many as 300,000 were killed in Nanjing; Japanese accounts vary from several thousand to 200,000 dead, while some Japanese politicians deny that the massacre ever took place. The Tokyo War Crimes tribunal concluded that more than 140,000 people were killed...making it one of the worst atrocities committed by Japanese forces before and during World War II."
There are some Japanese, like the paragraph above notes, that simply deny that the massacre ever took place, much as some people are denying that the Holocaust ever took place, despite all the spoken, written and photographic evidence to the contrary. Even though over sixty years have passed since the events the feelings are still quite strong in China over what happened. That hurts Chinese-Japanese political relationships. Another thing that is a sticking point is when Japanese politicians visit war memorials to Japanese dead.
This all stems from the original invasion of China by Japan whe
Re:Mail Me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Right to guns and beer (Score:2, Informative)
As someone who's been through the experience in Canada, no, it doesn't.
I spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward (until the doctors said I was no longer a threat to myself), but that was all.
91 out of 100,000? Not quite. (Score:3, Informative)
According to TFA, 91 is the number of suicide pact-related deaths in Japan in 2005. That is, 91 out of the entire population of Japan (around 130 million) died via suicide pacts (which encompass only a portion of total suicides). The 2003 data quote in the article gives a more realistic rate of ~27 per 100,000 and the WHO lists the 2002 average rate at 24 per 100,000.
Re:Japan and Suicide (Score:3, Informative)
In Japanese history, many people commited suicide for one reason or another, but mostly it was to escape shame and dishonor after having been disgraced. A general who had lost an important battle for his lord, a woman who had been raped, or a samurai who had disgraced his master would be expected to commit suicide if he/she could not handle the shame of other's judgements of them. A famous ghost story tells of a maidservant who killed herself by throwing herself down a well after she broke some of her master's favorite chinaware.
Basically, suicide still carries with it a connotation of 'having fucked up', or 'running away from judgement', so people might be ashamed to admit that one of their family members commited suicide. Of course, there are cases where it's seen as more noble to kill yourself than live - particularly when there is a precieved injustice against you, or you did not cause the bad event that led you to someone having to commit suicide. If you kill yourself to avoid capture in battle, that is seen as more honorable than being captured.
Now, the kamikaze are an exception, they're not seen as commting suicide, more like having gone on a suicide mission from which there was no turning back. I think they're still called 'special attack squadrons' over there.
But yeah, your first assertion is correct, the Japanese attitude on mental illness and homelessness is akin to America in the '50s.
I disagree. (Score:3, Informative)
So, yes, Japan has a notoriously high general suicide rate. You disagreed with GP by pointing out that Kazakhstan and a handfull of other countries have higher rates than Japan, but that hardly refutes GP's assertion that Japan has a notoriously high suicide rate.