Japan tries to preempt school suicide wave
By Yuko Ishida,WNS Japan Bureau Chief
TOKYO - Japan's education minister appealed Monday to prevent a wave of student suicides after at least two students killed themselves in response to bullying and more threatened to do likewise. Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki also reprimanded a school principal who hanged himself on Sunday for failing to stop bullying, saying he had not set the right example to students. Ibuki since last week has received nine anonymous letters from children threatening to commit suicide, sending authorities scrambling to identify the students who wrote them. Two students killed themselves over the weekend but it was unclear if they were among the letter-writers, according to police.
Ibuki said that students should feel guilty about suicide. "Your lives are not just your own," the minister told a news conference. "You are not alone. Suicide doesn't solve anything." "We are setting up committees at each school to catch the students and help them, but it's really hard to find the signs," said Ibuki, who has urged suicidal children to stop writing to him. On Sunday, a 12-year-old girl was found dead in western Osaka prefecture after jumping to her death from the eighth floor of her family's condominium building, police said. The girl left a farewell note on her desk in her room, saying: "I will kill myself. Goodbye," police said. The girl's mother told school board members that her daughter had been bullied by schoolmates who called her "shortie" due to her height, news reports said.
Separately, a 14-year-old boy was found dead after hanging himself in Saitama prefecture in Tokyo's suburbs, police said. His classmates had bullied him demanding money, Shuichi Nakano, the principal of the Saitama school, told a news conference Monday. Nakano quoted the boy as telling a counselor, "He demanded that I give them money and told me, 'Give me 500 yen or I'll add interest. Now give me 20,000 yen.'" Five-hundred yen is worth 4.25 dollars; 20,000 yen is about 170 dollars. Japan's schools have long been notorious for bullying, leading in worst-case scenarios to students killing themselves or others simply dropping out of school. Experts attribute the suicide phenomenon to the relative lack of cultural taboos about suicide and the intense pressure to blend in to society.
posted by wnsworld @ 8:27 PM
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