“Last night I was up all night,” said Naoki, smiling again, “talking online to this woman who really - I mean really - wants to die. She asked me to do it with her today, but I said I couldn’t because I had this television crew coming to see me. So she said we can do it after they’ve gone.”
It is a growing, and morbidly frank underworld of chat rooms and websites with names like “Suicide Club,” where thousands of (mainly young) people meet and talk and plan their deaths.
At least 26 people have died in this manner in the past two months.
The message boards are littered with personal ads like: “I have pills and charcoal briquettes - I’m looking for someone to die with,” and “I’m 23 and want to die. I can travel anywhere.”
Japan already has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and so far the internet-related deaths are only a small proportion. But it’s a growing one.
“There’s nothing bad about suicide,” said Wataru Tsurumi, author of a graphic, and best-selling handbook on the subject. “We have no religion or laws here in Japan telling us otherwise. As for group suicides - before the internet people would write letters, or make phone calls… it’s always been part of our culture.”
I have been hearing this news long back, 5 died in a car where they burned charcoal, not far away from that place, two other bodies were found which was also another part of a group suicide.
well Japanese religion glorifies suicide, and there is no stigma attached to it tere.........its conisdered an honorable means of dying instead of being killed by yr enemy etc,............and that carries over into their peacetime thinking as well......or so i have hurd.
hey usually follow "shinto-ism" or buddhist teachings. its more a philosify than a religion. and every shinto temple has their own "rules". its just interesting to see "sucide" being a part of the culture and people taking it as a norm of the society.
