9 Die in Japan Suicides Tied to Web
By JAMES BROOKE

TOKYO, Oct. 12 - Nine people were found dead on Tuesday in two rented cars with the windows sealed and charcoal burners at their feet in pacts that the police said were facilitated by Internet suicide sites.

The police said that in the first car, a minivan that had been rented for the day, they found seven bodies, including teenagers and a 33-year-old woman who had left a note for her children. Parked on a mountain road in a Tokyo suburb, the gray van had been wrapped in blue plastic sheets with the windows taped closed. Inside, the woman's body was in the driver's seat, and there were three bodies on each of the van bench seats. All were believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Mother is going to die, but I was happy that I could give birth to you," said a note found next to the driver, according to Kyodo News. An empty package of sleeping pills was found near the van.

The group may have come together through a suicide message board on the Internet, Japanese news media quoted the police as saying. Japan has a suicide rate about twice the rate of the United States, and there are Web sites where people discuss suicide and suicide techniques. Some Web sites even sell kits offering "painless" suicide.

Using a cellphone, one of the seven in the van e-mailed a friend in northern Japan on Monday evening, giving the approximate location of the van, a police spokesman for Saitama, a Tokyo suburb, told Agence France-Presse. All the van's occupants were dead by the time the police arrived, just after dawn.

At almost the same time Tuesday morning, outside a temple in Yokusuka, about 75 miles to the south, the police found a rented car containing the bodies of two women, ages 21 and 27. They apparently had also asphyxiated themselves by burning charcoal in two stoves in the car. The police told Kyodo News that the two lived about 25 miles apart and had also apparently met through the Internet.

"This is not murder,'' read a message found in the women's car, according to Agence France-Presse. "We planned this." The police have asked Internet service providers to report information about chat group participants who post suicide plans on the Web, but the directive is believed to be largely ignored.

Last year, Japan reported a record 34,427 cases of suicide, a slight increase over previous years. From January 2003 to June 2004, 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting through the Internet, according to the National Police Agency. In one case last month, four young people were found dead after burning charcoal in a car parked three miles from where the van was found Tuesday.


<Edit>
Bold emphasis added by me.

There is certainly something rotten in the state of Japan. I'm no expert but I've read more than one article about the societal pressures in Japan and the sometimes violent responses people have. Unfortunately Japan is not, as so many people think, simply the land of Playstations, anime, and so many wacky and wonderful inventions. There is a dirty underside that is all too often ignored, to the detriment of all Japanese. We saw it in 1995 with the sarin gas attack in Tokyo and we see it again now. This is horrible.

EDIT: Dammit! Write properly! *thwacks self repeatedly*

Edited by - CODENAME on 10/13/2004 8:55:00 AM

You know, I might sound like an @sshole for saying this, but if people want to kill themselves, let them. I honestly don't give a damn anymore. If you feel your life isn't worth living, by all means, end it. Make room for someone else who actually wants to live theirs.

I wish I could be as callous but as I see it most people who commit suicide have been failed by society. Generally (and again I'm not an expert, so take my writing with a pinch of salt) when someone takes their life it is indicative of a psychiatric problem that is not of the persons own making. Either he/she had the misfortune of inheriting bad genes or experienced some sort of trauma and was unable to cope with the after-effects; there may be other contributing factors as well I suppose, though I can't think of any right now.

Regardless of the causes suicide should be seen as a tragedy and a failure of the available social support networks.

I feel anyone depraved enough to kill themselves deserves to die.

Edited by - ~Corsair#01~ on 10/13/2004 10:06:50 AM

That is incredibly stupid.

If someone is sexually abused and kills himself because the emotional trauma is too great to bear it is hardly his fault.

there are suicide forums? what the hell do they discuss? favorite elite spaceships? this is really odd that there's forums full of people that say "hey lets meet up and do ourselves in" then go off and end it all. seems slightly surreal in a mad japanese sort of way. People meeting on the net thinking "hmm, what am i into? ahhh, suicide" then goto a forum and meet a bunch of other folks who go "yeah, we're all into suicide too, you should definately die with us" then exchange emails & phone numbers, meet up in a public place in case theyre a bit weird y'know, after a few hours talking they decide, wow, this guy's just like me and go and kill themselves together.

bizarre

you think the suicide board has an off topic section? or mods that chastise those who spam?

its rather comical in a way that something like killing yourself has reached the level of norm that there are internet groups dedicated to it, that people would plan to meet up like its a convention of something...wow.

let them die, the morons. anyone so unbalanced is a waste of skin anyway. as long as they don't take anyone not really willing or uninvolved along with them.

surely something like this is against the law? "aiding and abetting a suicide or potential suicide" is a criminal offence in Britain, and a serious one too. several years imprisonment.

mercy killing is of course a rather different matter.

I think i have a story for everything. Here goes another...

2 female firends of mine have attempted suicide. Both of whom went through trauma that you or i can't even begin to comprehend. Unless of course some of our members here have been close to "ending it all". Both of my friends had been beaten and abused by people who were supposed to love them. When a level of trust like this is broken, their view upon the world diminishes greatly. If a person suffers severe depression then i can understand the feeling of hopelessnes that could drive someone to taking severe action. Nobody has the right to stereotype everyone who has or has even considered suicide insane because you have no idea what the person in question has gone through. The only way i can put it is just imagine spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year in your own personal nightmare and imagine how you would feel.

In terms of these suicide pacts, i really can't understand this. There are people obsessed with strange things so this does not in anyway suprise me. Its a shame your article indy doesn't go into more detail about these people's emotions. If these people were suffering from no emotional problems at all, then this is a very strange and disturbing thing to do. If each of them had emotional difficulties, then i could understand.

It's not just Japan although Japan has more than its fair share of suicides. But there were those space hounds in California who offed themselves with poisoned cool-ade all dressed in the prescribed nike shoes and black sweats. For example. They all believe that they were advancing themselves to the next level or something.

I just am not able to understand why satisfactorily... for myself. Granted the trauma of psychological hell is brutal but I would suggest that there are ways to get help on that as well so, anyway, it is a form of mentality/behavior that I am unable to accept. I do not pretend to know what type of pain your friends may have had to endure all these years. I just think that this pain after a point is as much self inflicted as not. And to the degree that it is self inflicted, it can be stopped.

"The only way i can put it is just imagine spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year in your own personal nightmare and imagine how you would feel."

I have. i don't need to imagine. I know exactly what it feels like to be in that state of mind. but to encourage others, especially kids? how f***in irresponsible is that?

Killing yourself is the worst thing to do in any situation, doubly so as I'm an atheist. This life is all you've got, and to remove it yourself is idiotic. Unless I was in actual pain, as opposed to emotional pain, suicide wouldn't ever be considered, and even if I would consider it, it would only be in order to remind myself how much worse it is than the alternative.

Dude, don't be so quick to judge. I can't say with any degree of certainty but it seems that you've never really experienced emotional/psychological trauma to the extremes that some people are talking about. Until you have you are really not in any position to declare those people "idiotic". And even then, once you have you still really can't pass judgement simply becasue we are all different; we are affected by different things and our responses to stimuli vary. Some people need greater social supports than others when they are placed in a difficult position. When said supports are denied suicide is often the tragic consequence.

When one reaches a point, where there seems no answer, no one to turn to, things look different. You see yourself as all alone, no hope, no point in living. Get to the point, you don't want to wake up to another day, and where you start to decide how you are going to do it, that should scare you, but it doesn't. When you make up your mind, you will not be seeking out anyone to talk to. There is no cry for help, other than it to be over. You see no way out, except death, then yo do it, except........something goes wrong, someone intervenes, even as you try to drive them away. You are Helped even though you did not ask for it. Someone around you cares to not let you do it. It takes months to climb out of that depression hole.

I hope no one else ever gets to that point.