Suicide increases as unemployment rate rises in Japan

In Japan, the unemployment rate reached a record 4.9 percent in June. One distinct problem in this connection is a sharp increase in the number of suicide related to problems experienced by workers such as the higher unemployment rate and increasing stress.

Akahata reported on August 17:

According to the National Police Agency, 31,157 people killed themselves in 2000, which was the third straight year with more than 30 thousand suicides.

The National Network on Karoshi (death from overwork) has received many emergency calls from families that lost their breadwinners. Many of them point out that their breadwinners' deaths were caused by corporate restructuring or pressure being brought on workers for early retirement

The network says it has found that the number of suicide per 100 thousand people is increasing in parallel with the rise in the unemployment rate.

In Japan, the unemployment rate was 2.0 percent in 1980. With the bubble economy bursting in the latter half of the 1990s, the rate jumped to 4.1 percent in 1998. The number of suicides also rose to 26 from 18 out of 100 thousand people.

Kawahito Hiroshi, a well-known attorney at law who has been tackling problems related to karoshi points out that people are killing themselves not just because of economic difficulties they suffer when they lose jobs. He said: "Increasing concern about possible dismissals as a result of corporate restructuring makes people work harder to avoid such consequences. When they lose their emotional balance in such a situation, they are likely to commit suicide."

In the parliament in June, Takenaka Heizo, state minister in charge of economic and fiscal policy, said: "Workers should not commit suicide when they lose jobs; all that is necessary is find the next job."

Kawahito warns that workers' suicides must not be reduced to a mere question of personal sentiment, and stresses the importance of taking social measures to prevent people from killing themselves.

"Specifically, it is important to impose regulations on corporate restructuring and dismissals, improve the unemployment benefit and job training systems, and pay greater attention to depressive psychoses," he added. (end)