Japan is struggling to halt a sudden wave of student suicides as the nation agonizes over the prevalence of bullying at schools, but some see a media frenzy as fueling the problem.
At least four children aged 12 to 14 have killed themselves and more have threatened to do likewise in the past 10 days since the education ministry announced it had received an anonymous letter from a student contemplating suicide.
Ironically, the government's commitment to address suicide may have triggered the deaths.
"We expected something like a chain reaction to follow our announcement," Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki acknowledged.
But the government decided to disclose the letter as it had been under fire for denying that suicides linked to bullying had taken place.
"We would have received criticism either way. Unless I showed my resolve that I would stand to be criticized, school principals and local education boards would not follow suit" and face the issue, Ibuki told reporters.
Ibuki has ordered schools to identify the students who threaten to commit suicide.
He also urged students to stop writing to him, saying they should instead find someone to talk to.
Japan's schools have long been notorious for bullying, a phenomenon experts attribute to the intense social pressure to blend in. Japan also has one of the world's highest rates of suicide.
Often school bullying becomes a vicious cycle as it is seen as a way out of victimization, said Yasuyuki Shimizu, who runs an anti-suicide group called Life Link.
He faulted Japanese educators for trying to make students feel guilty about contemplating suicide.
"The close-minded nature of the Japanese school system might be contributing to the problem. Rather than preach the importance of life to bullying victims, we must tell them there are ways to avoid the situation they face," he said.
The suicide wave comes at a delicate time for conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose top legislative priority is reforming education to teach "patriotism" -- a taboo since World War II.
Abe said his reforms would teach "moral values" missing in Japan's post-war prosperity.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS