A recent survey by the National Police Agency showed that 31,042 Japanese committed suicide in 2001, marking the fourth straight year the number of suicides topped 30,000. This grim figure bears unspoken testimony to the current social conditions in Japan.
Suicides averaged about 22,000 a year during the 10 years up to 1997, but the number suddenly increased in 1998 and has been steadily on the rise since. This is in contrast to a decrease in the number of deaths from traffic accidents in recent years. The number of annual traffic deaths, which had continued to increase for many years, has dropped below 10,000.
Though suicides now total 30,000 annually and outnumber traffic deaths by three times, few people bother to squarely discuss suicides as an urgent matter of social concern. Suicides are instead overlooked and dismissed as isolated individual problems. Yet, the increase in the number of suicides signifies a protest against contemporary Japanese society.
According to the survey 22,144 men killed themselves last year, accounting for 71 percent of all suicides in 2001. This ratio has remained unchanged since 1997, suggesting that suicide is predominantly a male problem.
When broken down by age groups, the statistics show the number of suicides suddenly increases at age 40 and that suicide has overtaken cancer as the leading cause of death of men aged 40 to 44.
The upsurge in the number of suicides to the 30,000 level a year is attributed to the fact that suicides among those aged 40 or older, particularly those in their 50s and those aged 60 or older, soared by several thousand.
Health problems used to be the leading cause or motive for suicide, but people taking their own lives due to problems connected to jobs and livelihood have been sharply increasing in recent years. Last year, a record 6,845 Japanese committed suicide because of economic problems.
Suicides among corporate managers and wage earners were 1.3 times and 1.2 times higher respectively, in 2001 compared to 1997. Suicides among the unemployed, particularly among those who had quit their jobs for various reasons, also increased conspicuously. These figures reveal a profile pattern of recent suicides. Those who take their own lives are often middle-aged men, particularly corporate managers in their 50s, who faced serious economic problems, notably mounting debts, or got involved in work problems and were forced to leave companies.
In Japan today, most people are more or less in the same boat. The sharp increase in suicides thus must be urgently dealt with by society, just as society dealt with increases in traffic accidents.
In 1998, the year when suicides topped 30,000 for the first time, the jobless rate jumped to 4.1 percent from the previous year's 3.4 percent. Corporate bankruptcies reached a record number that year following the burst of the bubble economy.
The number of suicides is closely related to social and economic trends.
Japan, now mired in a deflationary spiral, is in the process of structural reform of economy and society, the transformation of a system which drove the country for half a century.
Lifetime employment and the seniority-based corporate system, which underlay Japan's postwar economic success, is on the verge of collapse. Individual workers are now evaluated on the basis of their ability and work results, which subject them to increased stress. Men who lose jobs are unable to fill the void in their heart.
As the result-oriented system and restructuring pick up momentum, companies and society are uninterested in people's spiritual side.
Suicide surveys show that as many as 90 percent of people who kill themselves suffer from mental ailments during their lives.
Yoshitomo Takahashi, a former senior researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry, recently contributed an article to the monthly magazine "Chuo Koron" in which he said middle-aged men's suicides are closely related to depression but only 10 percent to 20 percent of them had received psychiatric treatment. Takashi regretted that those suffering from depression are left unattended despite the availability of effective treatment.
It is a sad reality that as many as 30,000 people take their own lives each year. Psychiatric specialists estimate that there are 10 attempted suicides for each suicide. Such a social problem can hardly be overlooked.
Masui is an editorial writer for The Yomiuri Shimbun.
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