Suicidal Acts in Japan
The National Police Agency of Japan has conducted surveys on causes of suicides of young people in their 10s or 20s since 2007.
The Agency found that the number of students and other young people who committed a suicide from pains in difficulty in finding jobs in 2011 was 150, 2.5 times more than in 2007. Males accounted for 80 to 90%. Nonetheless, the employment rate of university students was 91.0% in April 2011, which was however the lowest in these decades, partly because of influences of the 2008 global financial crisis and the 3/11 Great Tsunami Disaster of East Japan.
Some foreigners have taken notice of this tragic and ominous trend in the Japanese society.
Yet this is only the latest, macabre, technique in a country that suffers an epidemic of suicides. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates among rich countries. Cultural factors are partly at play. Japanese society rarely lets people bounce back from the perceived shame of failure or bankruptcy. Suicide is sometimes even met with approval—as facing one's fate, not shirking it. The samurai tradition views suicide as noble (though perhaps out of self-interest, since captured warriors were treated gruesomely). Japan's main religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, are neutral on suicide, unlike Abrahamic faiths that explicitly prohibit it.
http://www.economist.com/node/11294805
The number of Japanese suicides jumped up in 1998 when the Japanese Government raised the consumption tax rate from 3% to 5% while the Japanese economy started deflation.
(Green: total suicides of men and women; Blue: men suicides; Red: women suicides)
But today not only the ruling party DPJ but also the major opposition party LDP intend to increase the consumption tax rate from 5% to 10%.
If it is inevitable to increase the tax rate, the Japanese Government should not push such a financial policy presently or for the time being, it is still in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (which could happen once 100 years) and the 3/11 Tsunami Disaster (that could happen once 1000 years).
(to be continued...)
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Mar 6:11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.