Suicide in Japan

Suicide in Japan has become a significant national social issue. In 2014 on average 70 Japanese people committed suicide every day, and the vast majority were men.Japan has a relatively high suicide rate, but the number of suicides is declining and has been under 30,000 for three consecutive years. Seventy-one percent of suicides in Japan were male, and it is the leading cause of death in men aged 20–44.

Factors in suicide include unemployment (due to the economic recession in the 1990s and in the late 2000s/early 2010s), depression, and social pressures. In 2007, the National Police Agency (NPA) revised the categorization of motives for suicide into a division of 50 reasons with up to three reasons listed for each suicide. Suicides traced to losing jobs surged 65.3 percent, while those attributed to hardships in life increased 34.3 percent. Depression remained at the top of the list for the third year in a row, rising 7.1 percent from the previous year.

In Japanese culture, there is a long history of honorable suicide, such as ritual suicide by Samurai to avoid being captured, flying one's plane into the enemy during WWII, or charging into the enemy fearlessly to prevent bringing shame on one's family.

There has been a rapid increase in suicides since the 1990s. For example, 1998 saw a 34.7% increase over the previous year. This has prompted the Japanese government to react by increasing funding to treat the causes of suicide and those recovering from failed suicides.

Typically, most suicides are men; 71% of suicide victims in 2007 were male. In 2009, the number of suicides among men rose 641 to 23,472 (with those age 40–69 accounting for 40.8% of the total). Suicide was the leading cause of death among men age 20–44. Males are two times more likely to cause their own deaths after a divorce than females are. Nevertheless, suicide is still the leading cause of death for women age 15–34 in Japan.

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