Japan’s Suicides Top 30,000 for 12th Year,

Bloomberg

Japan’s Suicides Top 30,000 for 12th Year, Police Agency Says

May 13, 2010, 6:52 AM EDT

By Eijiro Ueno

May 13 (Bloomberg) -- More than 30,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2009, the 12th consecutive year the nation’s total has topped that mark, the National Police Agency said.

Suicides increased 1.8 percent to 32,845, with the number attributed to economic hardship up 13 percent to 8,377, the agency said in a release on its website. Real gross domestic product dropped 5.2 percent last year, the biggest decline since Japan began tracking the statistic in 1955.

Health issues prompted 15,867 people to kill themselves, almost half the total and an increase of 4.7 percent from 2008. The suicide rates for those in their 20s and 30s reached record highs at 24.1 and 26.2 per 100,000 respectively.

“Young people are having difficulties in finding the meaning of life,” said Yasuyuki Shimizu, a representative for LifeLink, a nonprofit organization focused on preventing suicides, in Tokyo.

Annual suicides exceeded 30,000 for the first time in 1998, after the failures of Yamaichi Securities Co. and Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, and peaked in 2003 at 34,427.

--With translation by Go Onomitsu in Tokyo. Editors: Jim McDonald, Russell Ward

To contact the reporter on this story: Eijiro Ueno in Tokyo at e.ueno@bloomberg.net

To contact the translator of this story: Go Onomitsu in Tokyo at gonomitsu@bloomberg.net