World

Japan PM says suicides point to social ills

By Harumi Ozawa (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-09 07:48

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan speaks to voters during the Upper House election campaign at Matsue city in western Japan on Wednesday. Jiji Press / Agence France-Presse

TOKYO - More than 100 people showed up and thousands more listened via the Internet to a recent suicide prevention workshop in Japan, a country where more than 30,000 people kill themselves every year.

"Please, wait before you hang yourself or start mixing chemicals and pills," Koji Tsukino pleaded with his audience. "Save just a tiny bit of energy to make that one click on the Internet or one phone call to seek help."

The Tokyo event was called "Stop Suicide! Starting from Rock Bottom" - and Tsukino has been there himself. The 45-year-old has overdosed on drugs, slashed his wrists, tried to hang himself and survived alcoholism.

"I have somehow survived," he said. "But many people I know have died from drug overdoses or leaping from buildings."

Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rates, according to the World Health Organization - a statistic that has become a matter for national political debate.

The annual suicide rate for men - who are more at risk than women - is 35.8 per 100,000, according to WHO figures. That is far higher than Britain's 10.1.

Japan's new prime minister, Naoto Kan, has repeatedly raised the issue of suicide as proof of what he believes is wrong with the country.

He has pointed at eroding family and community ties, youth staying overnight in Internet cafes and laid-off workers sleeping in parks, amid a sense of social isolation and an economic malaise that has lasted two decades.

"The Japanese economy has remained stagnant for nearly 20 years since the bubble economy burst at the beginning of the 1990s," Kan said in his first policy address after taking office a month ago.

"As a result, the people have lost their former self-confidence and are downcast in vague unease about the future."

Many observers have pointed at the changes in Japan since its heady boom days and a lingering sense of malaise and anxiety.

"So many Japanese are living on the edge," psychiatrist Rika Kayama said at the anti-suicide workshop. "Life itself is like hard labor in Japan."

Kan has pledged to pursue a "third way" - to restore growth, reduce a huge public deficit and safeguard social security.

Agence France -Presse

(China Daily 07/09/2010 page23)