CNN report on Japanese suicide forest

“There were 2,645 suicides recorded in January 2009, a 15 percent increase from the 2,305 for January 2008, according to the Japanese government.” -CNN.com

A small increase in suicides is enough for CNN’s Kyung Lah to rush to the Aokigahara Forest, a popular suicide spot in Japan, and file a report about how the bad economy is driving Japanese people to suicide:

[via JapanSoc]
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9 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - March 20, 2009 at 4:47 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags:

ダビ

15% isn’t a small increase…

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Focusing on only January 2008 and January 2009 does not give us enough information to say anything about overall trends. There are over 30,000 suicides a year in this country, and it is hard to say anything about this year’s suicide rate until several other months of data come in.

ponta

“Culturally suicide is still seen in Japan as an honorable way out of joblessness and credit problem”?????
Wow new nihonjin-ron?
Rated-R

CNN lately has been putting all kinds of stories about how terrible it is in Japan lately. I think they are trying to make people feel better in the US by making Japan seem horrible.

William

oh yah! for some reason, you are kinda right. after you mentioning it, i realized it too. cnn makes a lot of stories about how bad the economy in japan is..

http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

Well, if you compare data from one month of one year to exactly the same month of the yar before, that gives a certain information. Of course, it would be much mor informative to have numbers from all the months of the last two years.

By the way, that Tarou guy who tried to slash his wrists was lucky that he was so stupid, because he would have succeeded with his plan if he’d slash them in the right direction. Now he’s got a second chance and can try to help other people and prevent them from trying to leave this world.
kai

Its sad that people feel thay have to resort to that. But reguardless to what CNN says about Japan, I still think that Japan is a wonderful place to live.
http://www.hormel.com Vonskippy

What’s wrong with suicide?

It’s natures (Darwin’s) way of weeding out the weak minded (hopefully before they breed).

6 billion plus people on the planet – we can afford to lose a few by natural selection.
ポール

15 mn is a significant increase, but this report looks more like a “filling” report than anything else… It’s like they did not have anything new to say, so they decided to take some ranom out of the International News…
I found them doing this more and more on CNN… Two weeks ago, they were focused on B. Spears or something else…
CNN does not deserve to be called NEWS anymore…

CNN report on Japanese suicide forest

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