Japan's Suicide Epidemic

Reports from Japan’s capital, Tokyo reveal that suicide in that country has reached epidemic proportions. In a sharp rise in the suicide rate literally hundreds of people killed themselves this year in a way that has become ‘popular’ but also puts many other Japanese residents in peril. The method is combining ordinary household chemicals that billow into a deadly cloud of poison gas known as hydrogen sulfide. The gas seeps out from under doors, open windows, wherever there is an opening where the gas can escape. Such incidents have forced residents from their homes and caused several neighbor evacuations.

Hydrogen sulfide poisoning took the lives of over 500 Japanese this year and that’s only part of the story. According to police officials, last year almost 34,000 Japanese committed suicide. Japan is the ninth highest of countries that report suicides and this compares to the U.S. as more than double the number of suicides, the World Health Organization says.

Japan’s history is full of examples of many who willingly sacrificed their own lives for the good of the nation or to choose an honorable death. Sociologist Masahiro Yamada of Tokyo’s Chuo University states that Japan has long been a “nation of suicide”. She gives examples of the Samurai warriors who chose seppuku rather than surrender. This gruesome death, considered honorable, involved the warriors disemboweling themselves. In World War II, Japanese kamikaze pilots purposefully crashed their planes into enemy targets. "Suicide is not considered a sin," says Yamada. "We've made it a bit of a virtue."

In a changing world and amidst Japan’s decline of economic stimulus, the traditional work life has been eroded away leaving many Japanese feeling that there are no options available if the rest of the family is to survive. The result has been an alarmingly high suicide rate in some segments of Japan’s population. Consider the following facts:

For generations, Japanese men could rely on lifetime employment with a company. But in these times of economic upheaval and weak economic growth many middle-age and elderly men find themselves unemployed and in financially ruined. Japan’s statistics bear witness to the effects of these hard times on the suicide rate: nearly 71% are men, more than 73% are 40 or older, and of these more than 57% are were unemployed.
Yamada who uses the term former "salaryman," says suicide can be "a rational decision." In Japan, when the man dies, the beneficiaries still qualify to collect his life insurance. Moreover, insurance companies pay off home mortgages when a family's breadwinner dies no matter that the death was suicide. "If he dies, the rest of the family gets money," Yamada says. "If he continues to live without a job, they will lose the house."
The Internet has played its part in the rise in youth suicides in Japan. The internet allows them easy access to information once not so widely available about how to commit suicide. It also helps young people reach out to others on the net who give out suicide tips and offer death pacts, with one encouraging the other to act out the suicide.

Hydrogen sulfide is dangerous to anyone in close proximity to its use. As a person who tried to kill himself ten times before the age of 30, Tsukimo, himself a recovering alcoholic and drug user believes the recent suicide mania is worse than at any other time in the recent past.

The toxic gas that is being used as the method of choice lately is posing a huge threat to neighborhoods as the gas carries far. A recent example of this dark risk is in April, nearly 80 people suffered injuries and more than 120 others had to be evacuated after a 14-year-old girl committed suicide with hydrogen sulfide in a southern Japan prefecture called Kochi. The girl had posted a note on her family’ apartment doo that warned "Gas being emitted. Don't open," according to the Kyodo news service.

Internet service providers have been asked by police to ban websites that promote suicide. So far, this has been of little success and all the more reason for society to promote education and awareness of suicide and its signs and symptoms.