Japan's Suicide Rate

There are more than 30,000 people who commit suicide in Japan every year. 2,500 a month, 83 per day, 3 people per hour.

Japan’s attitude toward suicide is more complex than most. In Japan, there is the notion that suicide is a way to preserve a family’s honor.

Historically, the Japanese have had uncommon views on suicide. Dating back to 12th century Japan, Samurai warriors would perform seppuku, or stomach cutting, a ritual suicide that provided a way to escape the enemy. They saw it as an act of preserving their honor.

Today, suicide in Japan is most commonly influenced by depression, either due to poverty or the incredibly high demands of work. But many agree that Japan’s romanticized views of suicide do still play a role. For example, a large number of suicides are “responsibility-driven” meaning that those who kill themselves are hoping to clear their debts with a life insurance payout, taking the burden away from their family. Most Japanese would likely agree that taking care of your family as your final act is quite an honorable thing to do.

https://www.seeker.com/why-the-japanese-see-honor-in-suicide-1501524382.html

Aokigahara Forest 

This beautiful-looking green forest is not meant for your leisurely morning walks but rather holds an ill-fated reputation of being the world’s second most popular place to commit suicide. This is the utter truth behind this gorgeous yet eerie looking forest in Japan, which is less than 2 hours away from Tokyo. 

Japan has the third highest rate of annual suicide and has witnessed a staggering 30,000 deaths per year for the past decade related in part to the sustained economic recession. It has not been easy for these proud and tradition-based cultures to acknowledge the relationship between suicide and depression, but the enormous social and economic consequences of the deaths have fostered an unusual partnership between the government and psychiatry to confront this urgent bio-psycho-social issue. Whereas suicide was once “normalized” by many Japanese as an act of free will, the alarmingly high suicide rates have contributed to a new conceptualization of suicide as a genuine mental illness and a new category called “overwork” suicide to describe people who take their lives simply because of working too hard. Although overwork suicide represents only a small fraction of the total suicides in Japan, this new category has had a marked social and political impact in the country.