Suicides above 30,000 for 13th year
Joblessness, family troubles increasingly cited as causes
Kyodo News
Suicides eased to 31,690 last year but stayed above the 30,000 mark for the 13th year running, meaning an average of nearly 90 people took their lives each day, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
While the rate is down 3.5 percent from 2009, the number who killed themselves because they couldn't find a job jumped 19.8 percent to 424.
Suicides triggered by family troubles also surged, climbing 9.2 percent to 4,497 compared with 2009.
The NPA said it will step up efforts to offer counseling and other services because the persistently high suicide rate is apparently linked to a "deep freeze" in the job market, as well as to the weakening of interpersonal relationships in society.
The number of suicides caused by reasons that could be deduced from notes and other materials left behind totaled 23,572, with the bulk of the deaths (15,802) laid to mental and physical health problems, followed by economic reasons (7,438).
A total of 1,207 people killed themselves over strained relations with spouses, while 575 did so because of poor ties with parents or children. Another 157 committed suicide over worries about how to raise children and 317 due to exhaustion from caring for relatives or others requiring nursing care.
Suicides caused by economic reasons, however, fell 11.2 percent, indicating that debts, personal bankruptcies and other financial distress caused by the global financial crisis that erupted in autumn 2008 might have eased a bit as the economy began to recover, the agency said.
But it also said the enforcement of more stringent regulations on loan-sharking was another reason for the drop in finance-related suicides.
I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast woodland whose name, in part, translates as "Sea of Trees."
挿入写真Remnants: Shoes for a man, a woman and a child left in the Aokigahara Jukai forest on the flank of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture. The name in part translates as "Sea of Trees," though with good reason it is often referred to as "Suicide Forest." ROB GILHOOLY PHOTOS
挿入写真Rites of remembrance: At a point overlooking a section of the 30-sq.-km Aokigahara Jukai forest, Buddhist priest Showzen Yamashita offers prayers for the untold number of people who have entered that "Sea of Trees" wilderness but failed to make it out alive.
Inexplicably, I find myself moving toward the sound, searching for signs of life. Instead, I find death.
The source of that scream remains a mystery as, across a clearing, I see what looks like a pile of clothes. But as I approach, it becomes apparent it's more than just clothes I've spotted.
In a small hollow, just below a tree, and curled up like a baby on a thick bed of dead leaves, lies a man, his thinning gray hair matted across his balding cranium. His pasty upper torso is shirtless, while his legs are covered only by black long johns — with blue-striped boxers sticking out above the waistband — and a pair of woolly socks.
Under his bent legs a pair of slacks, a white shirt and a jacket have been spread out as a cushion at his final resting place. Scattered around are innumerable documents, a briefcase and other remnants of a former life. Nearer to him are items more closely related to his demise: empty packets of prescription pills, beer cans, and bottles of liquor.
Seemingly this man, who looks to be in his mid-50s, had drawn his last breath before I heard that unsourced, chilling cry.
That I came across a body in this forest was a shock, but not a surprise. For half a century, thousands of life-weary Japanese have made one-way trips to this sprawling, 30-sq.-km tract of woodland in Yamanashi Prefecture on the northwest flank of 3,776-meter Mount Fuji, the nation's highest peak. It's a dark place of stark beauty, long associated with demons in Japanese mythology — and one that has earned itself the unfortunate appellation of "Suicide Forest."
Evidence of such pilgrimages is strewn amid the dense undergrowth. Four pairs of moss-covered shoes are lined up on the gnarled roots of a tree — two adult-size pairs and two children's pairs.
挿入写真Signs of life and death : Tape left following sweeps of the forest.
Further on there's an envelope of photos, one showing a young man, another two small children dressed in colorful kimonos and elementary school uniform. Together with the photos there's a typed note "To Hide" (most likey the name of a man), including the final stanza of "Song of the Open Road," Walt Whitman's poem from 1900 that ends with the line: "Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"
1-2
Nobody can know exactly how that line was answered — there was no sign of life, no sign of human remains. Local police suggest wild animals often get to corpses before they do, so clouding the issue of exactly how many achieve their goal and end it all here.
Nonetheless, bodies are frequently discovered in monthly sweeps coordinated by the police and local volunteer firemen. As they move around the forest, these searchers leave color-coded plastic tapes strung between trees to mark where they have searched and where they have found items or bodies — or sometimes simply to mark their way back out of this sylvan maze.
Altogether, police records show that 247 people made suicide attempts in the forest in 2010 — 54 of them successfully.
Local officials and residents believe that number could be significantly higher.
"There are people who come here to end their lives in Aokigahara Jukai but, uncertain as to where exactly the forest is, kill themselves in neighboring woodland," said Masamichi Watanabe, chief of the Fujigoko Fire Department that covers this area. Even so, his officers still recover an annual average of 100 people from the forest in various states of consciousness — including an increasing number who tried to take their lives by inhaling toxic gas in their cars, either from the exhaust or charcoal-burners they bring with them.
"What is certain, though, is that the numbers continue to rise each year," Watanabe added.
挿入写真A necktie noose (hanging and drug overdoses are the most common means of suicide there)
This is also the case nationwide. In January, a National Police Agency (NPA) report indicated that 31,690 people committed suicide in 2010, the 13th consecutive year in which the figures topped 30,000. In fact, according to World Health Organization data, the suicide rate in Japan is 25.8 per 100,000 people — the highest among developed nations, and more than double that of the United States.
Experts are quick to point out the impact of the global financial crisis, especially since the world's third-largest economy suffered its most severe contraction in over 30 years in 2009.
It is also believed that next year will see a further rise in suicides due to the magnitude-9 megaquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan on March 11. "It is likely to have a huge influence," said Yoshinori Cho, director of the psychiatry department at Teikyo University in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, and author of a book titled "Hito wa naze Jisatsu Suru no ka" ("Why do People Commit Suicide?")
Already there have been several suicides by relatives of disaster victims, while the long-term effects of life in evacuation shelters may also lead to depression and thus, directly or indirectly, to further suicides, Cho added.
"It's not just regular depression, but also clinical depression due to the stress caused by the reality of their circumstances," he said. "Depression is a huge risk factor when it comes to suicide."
2-2
