Trans-Pacific Radio on Japanese suicide statistics

By Ken Y-N ( March 17, 2007 at 23:42) · Filed under Statistics

Just in case you missed their podcast, I’d just like to remind you of another great post by the guys at TPR. This one looks at the facts and myths regarding suicide in Japan, and reveals, to my surprise, that Japan is not an outlier in the worldwide figures. I strongly recommend you pay them a visit, and if you haven’t already, please listen to the content in the archives; I’m not a podcast fan at all, in fact these guys are the only people I listen to, and I always try to catch every episode they do.

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Ken said,

March 18, 2007 @ 01:52

Ken,

Thank you so much for your kind words. We try to do what we can, and present all of Japan’s points of view at the same time. It’s not easy. If you listen, we are happy. If others will listen and take part in the dialog surrounding Japan, we are overjoyed.
jorge said,

March 20, 2007 @ 02:50

The reason why many people believe that Japan has the highest rates of suicide is mostly due to the enormous rise of people taking away their lives at the end of the 20th century. I don’t know exactly which year it was (and it’s late, I don’t wanna search (-__-)), but I think it was either 1998 or 1999.
But you can’t underestimate the numbers of Japanese suicide. Their rates are still among the highest in the world (among wealthy countries), and there’s also of course the question ‘When is a case classified as suicide?’, which seems to be unanswered.

I’ve read the article, and I’ve heard it before, so I wasn’t really surprised except maybe for the low ranking in the age group 15-24 (which seems to me quite an odd age-group, seen that it includes highschool students as well as working people). I actually have my doubts about these figures, but I guess I have to be even more prudent in my research.

I’m doing research about suicide in Japan, and it was an interesting article. I even got stuff to look at
What’s most different and therefore interesting about suicide in Japan is in my opinion a slightly more violent character, a tendency to get to ‘new ways of suicide’ (even though absolutely not widespread) and of course the different reasons (which include the traditional charachter, the burst of the bubble-economy, a fairly pathetic social welfare system,…)

I must admit that I never even heard of GECD, I always use statistics of OECD, which I consider to be very reliable.

But thanks!
Garrett said,

August 18, 2007 @ 01:06

Jorge,

It’s been months now, and, Ken, you brought me back to my own article, but, just to clarify, GECD is a Spnaish statistical body, whereas OECD is a consortium (for lack of a better term at the moment) of wealthy, industrialized nations - completely different things working in completely different ways, although both have statistics and both mainly observethe same countries.