opinion

On March 29 Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun carried an article entitled “Number of suicides totals 513 at primary, middle and high schools in 2023”. 

According to it, the number was the biggest after 2022 which recorded 514 suicides since statistics began to be collected in 1980. 

Among 513 suicides, schoolgirls numbered 254 to top the suicide rate and schoolboys 259. According to categories, high school students numbered 347, middle schoolers 153 and primary school pupils 13. 

Their suicide rate increased by 10 percent over the previous year. 

As evidenced by aforesaid figures, the number of self-murderers has rapidly increased every year among the Japanese young people. 

Their suicide is motivated by spiritual despair and agony caused by anxiety about their future, family trouble, exorbitant school expenses, hard living and others.

A high school student in Nara City in 2018 thrust himself into a tram car after putting the suicide note showing painful situation about school work into his mobile phone, while a girl student of high school in Kumamoto Prefecture left a note, saying that she felt really painful and did not want to live any longer.

A suicide note was found in Tokyo in September 2021 as a primary schoolgirl killed herself at the age of 12. She left the note which said that she had been “ill-treated”, she was “not a plaything” and she had been cursed and maltreated at school.

The Japanese authorities published a white paper for settling the suicide problem and schools are reportedly intensifying education for preventing self-murder, but suicide has become a steady trend in Japan.

The future of a country and nation depends on rising generations.

New generations, who should be pillars of their country to spur social development with ideal and ambition, give up everything and opt for suicide in Japan, which foretells what the future of the country will be.