Internet links kill 7
2004-10-15 20:12
Tokyo - When it became known that the seven young men and women who committed group suicide together on Tuesday connected through the Internet, alarm bells went off across Japan.
While previous religious-based group suicide cases have been widely reported around the world, it is a new phenomena for young people, mainly in their 20s and 30s, to meet over the Internet for one purpose - to die together.
The first known Internet-based case in Japan was discovered last February in Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo, where three people in their 20?s, two women and one man were found dead at one of their apartments.
They met through the Internet and used four charcoal stoves to kill themselves with carbon monoxide poisoning.
The latest cases to grab international headlines were the two that occurred on Tuesday. One was a group suicide of seven young men and women found dead in an eight-seat car, while the other involved two other women found dead in a car on the same day.
The group formed quickly, with one of the participants posting a notice on an Internet web site on October 6 recruiting others to join her in her suicide bid. Five days later the 34-year-old woman had six companions from all over Japan to get into a rented van and breathe in carbon monoxide from charcoal stoves. They were dead on October 12 along with the two other women apparently from the same group.
Thirty-four people committed Internet-related suicides last year in Japan, compared to 34 427 reported suicides, according to the National Police Agency.
Besides pulling people together with lines such as "Looking for suicide companions" and "For those who are tired of living", the many suicide sites in Japan also provide "how-to" methods and rate them based on pain and success rates.
Internet sites forum
The Internet sites are also providing a forum for the depressed and disenfranchised with one posting reading, "I have had no luck ever since I was born. So I want to die. It's hard to die on your own. Is there anyone out there who can die with me?"
Technologically advanced Japan is prevented from shutting down the suicide sites as they are protected under free-speech laws, leaving the "lost generation" vulnerable to calls of recruitment.
The disturbing messages are a reflection of a rapidly changing Japanese society that is leaving its traditional values behind, according to one expert.
Japanese youth, known as the "lost generation", are growing up under the influence of computer games, living with virtual reality and are being pulled further apart from other people, according to Masaaki Noda, professor for psychopathology at Kyoto Women's University.
Psychiatrist Harufusa Higano said unlike old days when several generations lived together under one roof, young people in a nuclear family society don't have the chance to face the loss of their kin, resulting in a vague image of death.
- SAPA