In the popular imagination, Japan may be synonymous with cherry blossoms and robots, but one of its less benign associations is with suicide. The ghosts of samurai warriors committing seppuku, or ritual suicide, by disembowelment, and Second World War kamikaze fighter pilots, linger beneath the headlines of Japan’s high suicide rate, among the worst for an industrialised country.
Nonetheless, suicides are gradually declining across the Japanese archipelago from a high in the late 1990s. At the time, the bursting of the Japanese asset bubble led to recession and unemployment, causing many to take their lives. The highest number of suicides was in 2003 when 34,427 people killed themselves . In contrast , suicides in 2016 fell to 21,897, the lowest in 22 years and a decline for the seventh consecutive year.
But despite this fall, on average 17.5 per 1,00,000 people still kill themselves in Japan. This is compared to 13 in the U.S., 11.3 in Canada, and 7.5 in Britain. Worryingly, the data show that although the suicide rate among the elderly is dipping, suicide is now the top cause of death among young people aged 15-39. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, those most at risk of taking their own lives were middle-aged and elderly men worried about being unable to take care of their families. Suicide was sometimes seen as the most loving thing to do, since insurance payouts to families were generous.
The Japanese government made strong efforts to reach out to this demographic and in 2006, the Basic Act for Suicide Prevention was passed by Parliament. This legislation required government and corporate employers to report annually on their suicide prevention policies and asked employers to work with public authorities to take better care of workers’ mental health. Consumer loan laws were revised to try to keep people from taking on too much debt, and awareness campaigns were launched.
Economic, cultural factors
But younger people seem to have fallen through the net. There are a complex of reasons for this. Japan was once known as the land of lifetime employment, but two decades of economic stagnation has made this unsustainable. Instead, a spike in “precarious employment”, or the practice of employing young people on short-term contracts, has brought financial anxiety and insecurity about the future. These worries are compounded by a culture where expressing negative or difficult emotions can be frowned upon. Young people in Japan often have huge social expectations placed on them by family and employers that they find difficult to meet.
Some experts believe technology is making this already volatile situation worse. Up to a million young Japanese, mostly male and between 15 to 30 years old, are afflicted by a condition the Japanese call hikikomori . Youngsters dubbed as hikikomori withdraw from social interaction by isolating themselves in a room, surrounded by electronic devices. Instead of talking, hikikomori play computer games or watch TV, retreating into a virtual, but seemingly safe, universe.
In the latest draft of its suicide prevention guidelines released in mid-June, the government called on corporations to reduce excessive working hours. Efforts to inform school students about how to seek help if they are depressed will also be boosted. The aim is to reduce the annual number of suicides by 30% to below 13 per 1,00,000 people over the next decade. It will be a tough ask but given current trends, it is possible that in the not-so-distant future, the Japan-suicide connection might be relegated to dusty history books.
Pallavi Aiyar is an author and journalist based in Tokyo
