Throughout the 1980s we were inundated with all things Japanese - their culture, their marketing methods, their business techniques. For a brief moment, the fear was, we would be conquered by the Japanese - the numbers of buildings and properties bought up, the work-style and work ethic, the strong sense of educational discipline (most of each day and most days of each week and most weeks of each month and most months of the year were spent in school) - theirs was the system to emulate.
Yet beneath the surface lay the real Japan, the reason we need not fear a system that is inadequate and unhealthy, nor should we seek to emulate a system that kills of its population through suicide. The whys are what need to be flushed out and the whys are in large part tied to the expectations of a society that settles for perfection and little else. Where children grow up as adults and where adults are required to conform to certain standards or face social sanctions.
From Times Online
June 19, 2008
Japan gripped by suicide epidemic
Japanese professionals in their thirties are killing themselves at unprecedented rates, as the nation struggles with a runaway suicide epidemic.
Newly published figures show that 30,093 people took their own lives in 2007 — a 2.9 per cent increase in a year — leaving the country as the most suicide-prone anywhere in the developed world and rendering government efforts to combat the problem a failure.
Suicide rates remained highest among men — at 71 per cent of the total — and very high among Japan’s rising population of over-60s. Geographically, most suicides took place in the prefecture of Yamanashi, where the forested foothills of Mount Fuji continue to attract the suicidal from around Japan.
Government analysis of the figures, for the tenth year consecutive in which suicides have remained above 30,000 mark, has exposed a series of new and troubling trends: people in their thirties are the most likely to kill themselves, and work-related depression is emerging as a prime motive.
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