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Tokyo (pte030/19.07.2005/14:57) - Although virtuous in creating a network for worldwide bonding, the Internet also has its darker side. In Japan, where there exists a historical fascination with suicide, websites offering detailed instructions on how to kill oneself have inspired a new trend: group suicides.
Morbidly coloured with ominous imagery, these websites post specific dates and places for mass suicides, and things such as 'looking for a friend to kill myself with'.
During the first three months of this year 20 cases of mass suicide inspired by such websites resulted in 54 deaths. This compares with 19 such cases and 55 deaths in 2004.
"This is the first time that people are meeting strangers for the purpose of committing suicide together. It is truly a modern phenomenon," says Yukio Saito, one of the founders of a Tokyo suicide hotline and a Methodist minister. "People [posting on the sites] do not want to die alone," he added.
Those logging on to the websites are mainly young, lonely men from various backgrounds and social standing.
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), there were over 30,000 suicides in Japan, a figure that has been more or less stable for seven years in a row. Seventy per cent of suicides are committed by men, and suicide is the most common cause of death amongst those in their 20s and 30s. The figures, says the World Health Organization http://www.who.org , are more than twice those per capita in the United States, and the highest of all economically advanced nations.
There seems to be a distorted perception of death, says Shinji Shimizu a sociologist at Nara Women's University http://www.lib.nara-wu.ac.jp/index_eng.html . "[Japanese youth] do not often experience the death of immediate family or friends," she says, pointing out that young people are mostly familiar with death on violent computer or video games - but player's lives can then be reset once the player 'dies'.
Some experts say that the high suicide rate has to do with Japan's chronic recession, the termination of lifetime employment, and an unemployment rate that has doubled in ten years.
Taking one's own life is not illegal in Japan, in fact people are often praised for it, says journalist Michael Zielenziger, who writes about it in his forthcoming book 'Shutting Out the Sun'.
However there may be some sign of change. Japan's health budget now includes a 30 per cent increase in funds for suicide prevention, and recently the government launched a campaign to encourage Internet service providers (ISPs), schools and public bodies to install filtering software to block the sites.
But such software is not infallible, says Allen Kush, deputy executive director of WiredSafety, an Internet security and privacy organization. Phonetic equivalents of the Japanese characters could be used, for example, and software could be modified to allow access.
A policy is currently being drafted by the government, asking ISPs to surrender details about individuals who post dangerous, suicide-related information on the net.
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