Internet-Assisted Suicide in Japan, 1998-2013

Mike Alvarez, University of Massachusetts

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Abstract

In 1998, Japan’s national suicide rate exceeded thirty thousand, and in the ensuing years it has shown few signs of abating. During this time, fears regarding the Internet’s possible relationship to suicidality surfaced. There have been many attempts to historicize suicide in Japan, though attempts to historicize Internet-assisted suicide, or cybersuicide, are lacking. The present study is one such attempt, and it enlists Stuart Hall’s notion of the historical conjuncture to arrive at the many levels of determination implicated in Japan’s cybersuicide crisis. To this end, 81 articles from Yomiuri Shimbun (a leading Japanese newspaper), obtained from the Yomidas Rekishikan database (the archive for the purposes of this study), were examined. Three particular crises in Japanese history received much media coverage: the emergence of net suicide pacts (netto shinju), the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) suicide “epidemic,” and computer-mediated bullycide. Excavating these moments reveals deeper cultural anxieties about the economy, the education system, traditional family values, and Japanese youth, which were projected onto the Internet. These moments also reveal concerns about the tension between public safety and personal privacy, and how far policies and regulatory practices lag behind developments in technology.

Keywords: Internet, suicide, Japan, net suicide pacts, cyberbullying, mass media

Prologue

At 3:00 p.m. on 12 December 1998, a 24-year-old woman from Nerima Ward, Tokyo, was found by her mother going into convulsions. The woman, who had previously threatened and attempted suicide, was rushed to a hospital in Mitaka, where she died three days later. Toxicology reports revealed that she died of potassium cyanide poisoning and that her system contained fifteen times the lethal dose (“Fatal cyanide,” 1998). The cyanide capsules had been mailed from a convenience store in Sapporo; the woman herself ordered them from an online source.

On 15 December 1998, the day of the woman’s death, police dialed the number on the capsules’ packaging. A man picked up, a 27-year-old cram school teacher and licensed pharmacist who went by the name “Ryuji Kusakabe” (“Failure to spot,” 1998) and operated a website called Dokuta Kiriko no shinsatsu-shitsu, or Dr. Kiriko’s Consultation Room (“Dr. Death,” 1998). The name of the website paid homage to Kiriko, foil to the titular character of Osamu Tezuka’s comic series, Black Jack. Whereas Black Jack, a genius surgeon, sought to keep his patients alive, Kiriko, a former military doctor and euthanasia expert, gave his patients permanent release from suffering and pain. Kusakabe, taking on the mantle of Dr. Kiriko, offered such a release via cyanide poisoning.

When asked by police if he had sent the woman cyanide, Kusakabe said yes, but that he “never expected her to actually take it” (“Fatal cyanide,” 1998). He also said that he had recently sent similar packages to six other people, and that he himself carried the poison on his person. After terminating the call, Kusakabe terminated his own life with the cyanide in his possession. Police never had the chance to interrogate him further; by the time they tracked him down and paid him a visit, he had already been cremated and reduced to ashes (“Failure to spot,” 1998).

Police investigation revealed that Kusakabe possessed enough cyanide to kill more than three thousand people (“Teacher had enough,” 1999); they had been purchased from a pharmacy in Hokkaido and from a pharmaceutical wholesaler in Sapporo, going as far back as February 1997. Kusakabe charged each of his online customers 30,000 to 50,000 yen (300 to 500 USD), and deposits to his six bank accounts enabled the police to discern the identities of all but one customer. Two were dead: the 24-year-old woman from Nerima, and a 21-year-old housewife from Adachi Ward, Tokyo, whose death had been a mystery since July 1998. “We failed to recognize earlier the possibility of an Internet link between these suicides,” said one senior investigator (“Failure to spot,” 2008). The remaining customers were confirmed safe, including a friend of the Nerima victim, who had helped the decedent obtain the capsules (“Woman admits aiding,” 1998).

Police found a broken computer in Kusakabe’s residence, presumably the one used to maintain the website. Floppy disks and a health insurance card with fake credentials were also found (“Cyanide retrieved,” 1998). But besides the capsules surrendered by Kusakabe’s surviving customers, which amounted to a measly 12 grams, the remaining quantities of potassium cyanide were never recovered. Dr. Kiriko’s Consultation Room was ultimately shut down, as were copycat websites (“Dr. Death,” 1998).

Introduction

Suicide has been a growing public health concern in Japan ever since the national rate surpassed the 30,000 mark in 1998 and hit a record high of 34,407 in 2003 (Kaga et al., 2009). In fact, according to McCurry (2006), “you are five times more likely to kill yourself than be murdered” (p. 383) in Japan. In the ensuing years, the annual rate showed little signs of abating, and in 2006 the Japanese government issued a call to cut the rate by 20 percent by the year 2016. Currently, Japan has the second highest rate of suicide among G8 nations (after Russia), and when adjusted for population size, it is double that of the rate for the United States. The initial spike could be attributed to the economic downturn, which was a decisive factor in the suicides of men in their 40s and 50s (Aiba et al., 2011). However, more recent years have seen an increase in suicide among high school students and young adults in their 20s and 30s, despite an improvement in the economy (Allison 2013, 2017), suggesting a myriad of other factors at play. One factor typically vilified in mass media is the Internet, and the case of Ryuji Kusakabe is perhaps the first to concretize Japanese people’s fears of the technology’s potential impact on suicidal persons. Such fears were soon compounded by the emergence of websites that offer instructions on how to commit suicide, with one outrageous estimate placing the number at 600,000 (Hagihara, Miyazaki, & Abe, 2012). Further advances in the technology—increased connectivity, access, speed, and reach—would exacerbate these concerns.

There have been many attempts to historicize suicide in Japan, including Maurice Pinguet’s (1993) seminal Voluntary Death in Japan. However, recent attempts to historicize cybersuicide—or “Internet-assisted suicide,” as defined by Stamenkovic (2012)—are lacking in Japan, specifically. Extant literature on “thanatechnology”—that is, the relationship between emerging technologies and death and dying practices (Sofka, Cupit & Gilbert, 2011)—is concerned primarily with the role of digital and mobile media in grief, bereavement, and memorialization (e.g. Altena & Ngwenya, 2012; Cumiskey & Hjorth, 2017; Dobler, 2009; Kern, Forman & Gil-Egui, 2013). Studies on cybersuicide are in a silo of their own, and as Stamenkovic (2012) points out, most come from the mental health disciplines; are preoccupied with Western and English-speaking countries; treat the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ as mutually exclusive; and place individual pathology at the center of inquiry (e.g. Baume, Cantor & Rolfe, 1997; Gunn & Lester, 2011; Rajagopal, 2004).

The present study is a modest attempt to provide a social history of the cybersuicide phenomenon in Japan, in the spirit of the British cultural studies tradition—specifically, Stuart Hall’s notion of the historical conjuncture. As Hall (2007) suggests, “one should use concepts like a scientist uses a microscope, to change the magnification, in order to ‘see differently’—to penetrate the disorderly surface of things to another level of understanding” (p. 269). To think conjuncturally is to view a historical moment as having many determinations, which only begin to unravel when the proverbial surface is penetrated and breached. An exemplary application of conjunctural analysis can be found in Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., 1978/2013), which illustrated that the “mugging” panic of 1970s Britain was the coming together of four types of crises: political, economic, ideological, and racial—crises that had been brewing for three decades, finally reaching a boil when the word “mugging” entered British consciousness. The work addressed the socially constructed nature of deviance; challenged the objectivity of statistics, which had been enlisted for ideological ends; and highlighted articulations between crime, media institutions, law enforcement, and the judiciary.

Following Hall’s precedent, my conjunctural analysis of cybersuicide in Japan does not focus exclusively on technology and psyche, but instead, situates them within larger social, cultural, historical, and material formations specific to the Japanese context. Towards this end, I treat suicide and the Internet as entry points rather than endpoints, and throughout, I ask how Japan makes sense of itself in the face of life’s precarity. I also view the Internet as a “Folk Devil” onto which social anxieties are displaced, scapegoated for the disruption of the familiar and threats to (national) identity. As Hall and colleagues (1978/2013) write: “When things threaten to disintegrate, the Folk Devil not only becomes the bearer of all our social anxieties, but we turn against him the full wrath of our indignation” (p. 160). Lastly, this conjunctural analysis also asks: What social forces are sustaining the conditions Japan has found itself in? After all, says Hall, social forces are not random but formed out of history, with their own conditions of existence.

For the purposes of this study, the archive here is comprised of popular press and scholarly articles from the following online databases: Yomidas Rekishikan (primary), Bibliography of Asian Studies (secondary) and Academic Search Premier (secondary). I searched Yomidas Rekishikan for all news articles in Yomiuri Shimbun, a leading Japanese newspaper, containing the words “Internet” and “suicide” anywhere in the text. The search yielded 158 results; after a thorough examination of their content, 77 were excluded for lack of relevance or new piece of information, leaving 81 articles for inclusion in the analysis. For the sake of feasibility, I restricted myself to a single news outlet.

I searched the other two databases for relevant journal articles, again using the terms “Internet” and “suicide,” with “Japan” added as an additional search criterion for Academic Search Premier. Combined, the two academic databases yielded 19 articles and book-chapters after the elimination of redundancies. These databases were selected because they can search for content across many disciplines. Given the study’s aim of providing a historical overview, no time frames were imposed. According to Hagihara and Abe (2009), Internet use in Japan began on a commercial basis in December 1992. Therefore, the study period stretches from 1992 to 2015 (the year in which the present study concluded), although the earliest relevant Yomiuri Shimbun article is dated 13 January 1998, which coincides with the year the annual suicide rate breached the 30,000 mark.

As points of entry, I excavated three particular moments in Japanese history: the emergence of netto shinju (Internet group suicides); the hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) suicide “epidemic”; and computer-mediated bullycide, or suicide by cyberbullying. I chose these three phenomena because of the media attention funneled towards them. Of course, these are not the only manifestations of the larger “cybersuicide” phenomenon. Select others include personal websites featuring photographs of suicide attempts (“Suicide Web site,” 1998); fee-for-service suicide-assistance websites (“Web site accepted,” 2007); and suicides due to deregulation of non-prescription drug sales online (“Net retailers back,” 2013). However, none of these received nearly as much coverage as the three aforementioned crises.

Internet Group Suicide

The case of the Sapporo cyanide dealer in 1998 was monumental, in that it established a link between the Internet as an information technology—a tool for the delivery and acquisition of content (material or immaterial)—and suicidality. Such a link resurfaced when a 37-year-old woman from Aichi Prefecture was found unconscious after imbibing muscle-relaxant drugs obtained illegally online (“Police: Net used,” 1999; “Woman arrested,” 2000). The buyer lived, and the seller was arrested. However, the link between suicidality and the Internet as a communication technology, enabling bilateral communication as opposed to linear transmission, did not become apparent until the emergence in mass media of a new suicide phenomenon: Internet group suicide, or netto shinju.

In netto shinju, two or more suicidal individuals who meet online end their lives together at a designated time and place, often utilizing methods learned from the Internet. The first case of netto shinju reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun took place in October 2000, when a 46-year-old man from Fukui Prefecture and a 25-year-old woman from Aichi Prefecture were found dead in a private house (“Web site facilitates,” 2000). The man, a dentist suffering from chronic disease, and the woman, a former company employee who had fallen out of favor with her family, met over the Internet three weeks prior to their joint suicide. There would not be another reported case until February 2001, when two middle school girls, who had befriended one another via e-mail and exchanged text messages via cell phone, jumped from a building in Tokyo (“Internet dating sites,” 2001). But after these two initial spurts, the paper remained silent until March 2003, when two women and one man (all in their twenties) were found dead with a gas cooker and burnt charcoal inside a rented station wagon in Tokushima Prefecture (“1 man, 2 women,” 2003; “Tokushima deaths,” 2003), marking the beginning of a years-long wave of coverage.

With few exceptions (e.g. “Group suicides,” 2005), netto shinju victims are typically in their 20s and early 30s. Groups of three or more are preferred, because a dyadic death would give others the false impression that the deceased were in a special relationship (“Group Net suicides,” 2003). Victims often travel long distances to meet with pact members (“Action needed,” 2004) and enact their pact in enclosed spaces, like an apartment or vehicle, which could be sealed with little effort (“7 die in Saitama,” 2004). To minimize chances of escape and maximize death, victims sometimes rendered their bodies immobile—for instance, by tying their arms, legs, and other body parts to the car or van’s door (“Woman used Net,” 2004).

It must be noted that group suicide is not a new phenomenon in Japan, nor did online group suicides replace traditional group suicides. Prior to the Internet’s commodification as a consumer technology were myriad forms like jo-shi (lovers’ suicide), oyako-shinju (parent-child suicide), ikka-shinju (single-family suicide), and kazoku-shinju (whole family suicide) (Pinguet, 1993). Jo-shi¸ romanticized in tales of the star-crossed geisha and her lover, occurs in the face of threats to the continuation of a relationship, such as disapproval by one or both sets of parents. Anne Allison (2013) describes it as “an act resonant in Japanese history with doomed love affairs—affairs of the heart that can’t be fulfilled or contained by social norms” (p. 42). Meanwhile, oyako-shinju, ikka-shinju, and kazoku-shinju typically occur when the head of the household’s ability to ensure the survival of the child or family is compromised, as in loss of employment or diagnosis with a terminal illness. In such an event, the parent or head resolves to end his or her own life, but decides to take the child or family along, because leaving them with no means of fending for themselves is deemed too cruel.

Nevertheless, Internet group suicides differ from traditional suicide pacts in at least two ways (Ikunaga et al., 2013). First, participants are strangers with no relations to one another prior to meeting. In this regard, usage of the word shinju, which connotes psychological oneness and unity (Pinguet, 1993), takes on a different inflection. Closeness becomes the outcome, rather than the precondition, of the pact. Second, preference is given to suicide methods that are affordable, accessible, relatively painless, less disfiguring, and shareable—hence the popularity of sleeping pills or carbon monoxide from a portable charcoal stove (shichirin).

Naturally, many media outlets voiced concern over the Internet’s dark underbelly, which not only made the acquisition of suicide means and methods easier, but also made it possible for suicidal individuals to find like-minded strangers. But as Tadashi Takeshima, then director of the Department of Mental Health Administration, cautioned: “You can’t alienate the Internet, which  has already taken root in our society, and it’s not the Internet’s fault that people try to kill themselves through it” (“Should we hang,” 2004). In other words, it is people and not technologies that possess agency—but of course, even human agency lies at the confluence of social, material, economic, and psychic realities.

Masaaki Noda, professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, implicates the education system, which encourages ruthless competition at the expense of meaningful communication with others (“Should we hang,” 2004). The education system, in turn, implicates the economic system, for the school one attends becomes the source of one’s social and economic capital as an adult, and such capital is scarce. As Allison (2013) points out, Japanese youth who are unable to secure regular employment within two years of graduating from college become indefinitely stuck on irregular employment, which confers unlivable wages, but also, devaluation by others as social waste. There is a long-standing association in Japan between one’s line of work and one’s social worth; to lack productivity is to be a blight upon society, a “disposable human” who deserves no sympathy or recognition. It is not surprising, then, that netto shinju victims cite failing university entrance exams, inability to find work, and becoming NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training”—in their suicide notes (“Action needed,” 2004). As of 2007, NEETs made up 2.7 million of the Japanese population (Allison, 2013), and unsurprisingly, their age profile (18 to 34 years of age) matched that of netto shinju victims.

Ai Ikunaga and colleagues (2013) corroborate the association between netto shinju and diminished social worth. Analysis of posts on 2-chan’s Suicide Bulletin Board from January to July 2007 reveals several precipitating factors, such as negative views of the self as an outcast; perceived lack of support and people to trust; interpersonal conflicts at home, school, or work; and loss of a sense of place (ibasho). Participants also reported depressive symptomatology, including loss of interest and energy, social anxiety, sleep disturbance, and hikikomori—a state of extreme reclusiveness in which the afflicted refuses to leave his/her own room or house. Given the stigma of seeking mental health services in Japan—one is expected to assume self-responsibility, or jiko sekinin (Allison, 2013), for one’s well-being—few sought counseling, and those that did criticized treatments as unhelpful. Participants sought to escape social situations that produced existential pain, but too frightened to die alone, they posted on 2-chan to solicit partners in death. However, many also sought affirmation to continue living, lending support to the idea that suicidality is marked by intense ambivalence (Sueki & Eichenberg, 2012).

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva’s (2008, 2010) ethnography of Internet suicide websites arrive at similar findings. Users perceived offline relations to be inauthentic, felt an absence of meaning in their lives, and questioned life’s worth (ikigai). However, Ozawa-de Silva attributes her subjects’ sense of anomie to the larger tension between traditional Japanese values and Western individualism, which has led to the reconfiguration of sociality and family. Unlike past suicides, which were due to too much social integration, Ozawa-de Silva, invoking the work of Emile Durkheim (1897/1966), says that contemporary Japanese suicides are the outcome of too little integration. Against this backdrop, netto shinju is an antidote to (rather than escape from) existential loneliness, a restoration of sociality’s bonds, albeit ending in death. That the egg-shaped shichirin is present in many netto shinju cases supports this idea, for the shichirin is “a nostalgic symbol of comfort, togetherness and communal action, like gathering around for a barbeque” (Ozawa-de Silva, 2008, p. 533).

However, the social values Ozawa-de Silva speaks of cannot be separated from the educational and economic systems implicated by the netto shinju crisis. After all, says Allison (2017), the Japanese family is a social factory tied to “productivity and corporate capitalism” (p. 26). It is “expected to foster ties (kizuna) conducive to high output and competitive performance (for men at work, women at home, and children at school)” (p. 27)—values that marginalize NEETs as well as single or childless women, producing much stress and loneliness. In the face of the economic crisis, which rendered futile efforts to be exemplary in school and in the workplace, such values began to show their seams.

For the years 2003, 2004, and 2005, a total of 34, 55, and 91 people, respectively, died from netto shinju (“Internet group suicides,” 2006). The upward trend persisted for years until attempts beginning in 2005 by the Japanese government to circumvent online solicitations for suicide partners. Concerned about the rising numbers, the National Policy Agency (NPA), in a panel consisting of representatives from the telecommunications industry, drafted in May 2005 recommendations for stemming netto shinju (“ISPs urged,” 2005). One such recommendation was to waive the requirement of a police search warrant when requesting metadata on suicidal users—provided that the police furnish proof to Internet service providers (ISPs) that a suicide threat is imminent. Others included police monitoring of suicidal communication online; the promotion of filtering software for home computers; and the development of comparable software for mobile technologies (“Government acts,” 2005).

From 1996 to 2002, cell phone usage in Japan jumped more than three-fold (21 million to 76 million), with 86 percent of 15 to 24 year olds having access or possession (“Should we hang,” 2004)—hence the insistence on equipping cellular technologies with filtering capabilities. The blanket promotion of filtering software, on the other hand, can be traced to a survey conducted in November and December 2004 by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Association (“Poll: Parents ignorant,” 2004). Of the 4,800 parents surveyed, 85 percent reported zero understanding of the Internet, while 70 percent were unaware that access to websites with questionable content, including triggering information on suicide, can be blocked. A technological solution was thus prescribed for what was perceived to be a technological problem.

The Telecom Services Association, which has 300 member companies, endorsed the NPA report, and in October 2005 a system for stemming netto shinju was launched jointly by the NPA, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, and the Telecommunication Carriers Association (“Crackdown needed,” 2005). The system appears to have staved off many would-be suicides, both group and individual. Within the first three months of its launch, 11 people who announced plans of ending their lives were taken into protective custody (“Internet group suicides,” 2006). In 2006, police saved 43 of 75 potential suicides using information furnished by ISPs (“Internet tipoffs,” 2007). That same year, the total number of netto shinju deaths fell from an all time high of 91 in 2005 to 56 (“Web site accepted,” 2007). And in 2007, police talked 72 of 105 people out of committing suicide (“72 potential,” 2008).

Hydrogen Sulfide Suicide 

The system for stemming Internet-assisted suicides is not without problems. First, not all ISPs observe guidelines or accept police requests during holidays or at night. Second, it is not possible to locate every suicidal user, especially when they use public computers. Third, the number of online comments for police to wade through is simply overwhelming—tens of thousands, at the very least. Fourth, police can only flag users who express their suicidal intentions online. Police cannot shut down websites for making harmful content available, not when the same content already exists in print form;^[1]A popular example is provided by Allison (2013): Kanzen jisatsu manyuaru (The Complete Manual of Suicide) by Wataru Tsurumi, which sold over 1 million copies in 1993 and was found alongside the … Continue reading doing so is an infringement on the rights to freedom of expression guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution. Lastly, even when a website’s service is terminated, there is no preventing its re-emergence on a foreign server, outside the Japanese government’s jurisdiction. This is especially worrisome when websites provide instructions for a particular suicide method that has suddenly gained notoriety, as the hydrogen sulfide crisis illustrates.

In 2008, deaths due to hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) poisoning, also known as “detergent suicides” (Truscott, 2008, p. 312), reached “epidemic” proportions, outnumbering the highest annual rate for netto shinju by a factor of 10. Based on information provided by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (see Kamijo et al., 2013), in 2006 only 7 people died of H₂S poisoning, and those were due to industrial accidents (Morii et al., 2010). The following year, when several websites demonstrated how to make H₂S using toilet bowl cleaner, liquid bath essence, and agricultural chemicals, the figure rose to 26—this time mostly suicides. Information about the method then spread across online message boards, and was presumably augmented by sensationalistic media reporting (more on these ahead), so that by the end of 2008, the previous year’s figure multiplied by a factor of 40, for a total of 1027 deaths. It is important to note that H₂S suicides did not replace netto shinju. Rather, media and public attention shifted to H₂S suicides from that year onward.

Suicide by H₂S inhalation is especially problematic for several reasons. First, the ingredients are easy to acquire; if they are not already in the home, then they are readily available from online or offline retailers. Second, detection through the senses is difficult; at lower levels, H₂S gives off a pungent, “rotten egg” smell, but at higher levels the warning odor is lost due to olfactory nerve paralysis. Third, because a single inhalation can lead to immediate (and painless) loss of consciousness (a factor contributing to its popularity), the mortality rate is high. Respiration is blocked at the cellular level, resulting in suffocation, brain damage, then death (Morii et al., 2010). Survival hinges upon immediate removal from the toxic environment so that antidote therapy may be dispensed: amyl nitrite inhalation if spontaneous breathing is intact, otherwise, intravenous administration of sodium nitrite. Fourth, H₂S poses harm via secondary exposure to individuals such as family members in adjoining rooms, neighboring tenants in the same apartment complex, and first responders (e.g. police, firefighters, paramedics), sometimes necessitating mass evacuations. For instance, the Peninsula Hotel in Tokyo had to evacuate four stories when a patron attempted suicide by H₂S inhalation (Truscott, 2008). Elsewhere, in Kōnan, a 14-year-old girl’s attempt at H₂S suicide resulted in her mother’s hospitalization and ninety neighbors fleeing from their homes.

The etiology of the H₂S suicide crisis is said to lie at the juncture between media institutions and technological innovation—specifically, the shared power of news media and digital media to disseminate. As Paul Links, chair of suicidology at the University of Toronto, cautioned: “there is a relationship between media reporting of method and copycat suicides” (cited in Truscott, 2008, p. 313). Morii et al. (2010) concur, recalling that cases of H₂S poisoning “made headlines” almost daily, nationwide, during the first few months of the “epidemic,” which they point out coincided with 220 new cases in the mere 49 days between 28 March and 15 June 2008, as reported by the Japanese Cabinet Office. A vicious circle seemed to be at play: a new suicide method was rapidly gaining traction online, which was then given greater visibility by news media, leading to more deaths and to even more coverage.

Using Google Insights for Search (GIS), Hagihara, Miyazake, and Abe (2012) observed a positive correlation between the search terms “hydrogen sulfide,” “hydrogen sulfide suicide,” and “suicide hydrogen sulfide,” on one hand, and the incidence of suicide among people in their 20s and 30s, on the other, which peaked in the first half of 2008. One must exercise caution when interpreting these findings, however. GIS cannot explain what people do with the information they obtain online, or why they sought that information in the first place. The people who typed in the search terms were not necessarily the same people who ended their lives.^[2]For the years 2004-2009, Sueki (2011) actually found no correlation between monthly suicide rates and search volumes for “suicide” (jisatsu) and “suicide methods” (jisatsu … Continue reading Just as likely, media coverage of H₂S suicide raised the general public’s curiosity, which in turn fueled the online search. Whatever the case, it is clear that many people were using the Internet to seek information on this new method.

The H₂S suicide crisis has also been attributed to loss of employment among people in their 30s and 40s (e.g. “To cut suicides,” 2008), even though in 2008, the unemployment rate fell below the 4 percent mark for the first time in 10 years, marking the end of what Allison (2017) calls the “lost decade” of economic decline. In other words, the economy was already improving when the H₂S crisis began. Rather than the economy, we should perhaps turn to the lost decade’s impact on the Japanese sense of self, which had been severed from the communal fold, for traditional pathways to adulthood that once guaranteed relational security (education, employment, marriage, family—in that order) no longer seemed tenable in the aftermath of economic precarity.

It is not surprising that the onset of H₂S suicide overlapped with the climax of “lonely death” (kodokushi) and “solitary death” (koritsushi), in which persons die alone and go undiscovered for weeks, sometimes months. In 2009, thirty-three thousand such deaths were reported (Allison, 2017). Though mutually exclusive, H₂S suicide and lonely/solitary death were both symptomatic of a Japanese self stripped of its relational context. That most reported cases of H₂S suicide were individual rather than group, despite the method’s large area of effect, suggests this. But unlike kodokushi and koritsushi, H₂S suicide sought to fill the existential void by threatening to engulf others.

Government and law enforcement were nothing short of aggressive in their attempts to curb H₂S suicides. On 30 April 2008, the National Police Agency (NPA) ordered ISPs to terminate access to websites that provided detailed instructions. That same month, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) created a manual for the safe handling of H₂S poisoning by medical institutions and fire departments nationwide. The manual included protocols for dry and wet decontamination, and recommendations for the safe transport of patients, including the use of well-ventilated vehicles (Morii et al., 2010). The NPA then ordered MUTOHAP, the manufacturer of bath additives featured in many suicide websites, to suspend production, despite the fact that people were already swallowing MUTOHAP products as a means of suicide prior to the H₂S crisis. In June of the same year, an Internet control bill was drafted, which stipulated websites detrimental to the well-being of Japanese youth, including “suicide-inducing” websites, thus putting pressure on bulletin board managers (kanrinin) to delete problematic postings (“Bill to protect kids,” 2008).^[3]Other websites deemed problematic include sites that “arouse sexual desire” and sites that contain “cruel” and malicious information (“Bill to protect kids,” 2008). To collect more detailed suicide data—and therefore, enable more complex analyses of its etiology—the NPA increased the number of reasons (e.g. “work-related”) from 8 to 52 categories, and allowed for the selection of up to three motives in police reports—as opposed to a single motive, as had been done in previous years (“To cut suicides,” 2008).

For the years 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, Kamijo et al. (2013), citing statistics provided by the MHLW, report 1027, 675, 513, and 258 H₂S deaths, respectively. This 75 percent drop in four years suggests that while suicide by hydrogen sulfide inhalation continued to be a problem, the aforementioned countermeasures were at least partially effective. But as one crisis began to fizzle, a new one ignited.

Computer-Meditated Bullycide 

On 23 October 2010, a 12-year-old girl from Gunma Prefecture was found dead by her mother, hanging by a scarf from a curtain rail in her bedroom (“Driven to suicide,” 2010). Apparently, she had been bullied by her classmates and for weeks had eaten lunch by herself, despite her teachers’ attempts to get students to eat in groups. At first, school administrators denied allegations of bullying, but eventually, expressed deep remorse for what they perceived to be the failure of the school system. In the article, the girl’s death is linked to failures in classroom management, which make unpopular students the target of “unruly” and “frustrated” classmates—although the cause of their unruliness and frustration is never explicitly stated. The potential role of mobile technology and the Internet are also invoked.

Bullying has been considered a public health concern in Japan for some time. For the year 2005, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) reported 20,143 incidents, based on a definition of bullying as “cases in which a child acutely suffered from continuous bullying”; however, after broadening the definition in 2006 to “cases in which a child feels he or she has been bullied,” the number soared to 124,898 (“125,000 cases,” 2007). The transition from objective to subjective criteria, and from long to short duration of victimization, made bullying an even larger public health concern.

Closer inspection reveals that the statistical transformation of bullying into a crisis of epidemic proportions coincided with a noticeable rise in suicides due to bullying—and it is tempting to consider that the former might have been a response to the latter. Between 1997 and 2005, there was only one bullying-related suicide per year, but in 2006 alone, there were at least six reported cases. Phrased another way, there was a six-fold increase from 2005 to 2006. As mentioned, within the same time frame, the incidence rate of bullying jumped from 20,143 to 124,898—also a six-fold increase. For the imaginative, these findings might suggest that the definition of “bullying” was changed in order to produce rates proportional to that of bullycide.

Curiously, the link between bullying, suicide, and the Internet also emerged in news discourse in 2006; in the Yomiuri Shimbun, the first article in which all three terms co-occur is dated 15 November 2006 (“Prefectural education boards,” 2006). That same year, the MEST started collecting information on bullying over the Internet and via mobile phones, which totaled 4,883 cases. In sum, by linking the three terms a causal chain is created, one in which technological diffusion propped up the incidence rate of bullying, which in turn fueled a proportional increase in suicides due to bullying.^[4]Related to cyberbullying is Internet defamation, which is also articulated with suicide and is said to affect both children and adults. The NPA reported 8,037 cases in 2006; 8,900 cases in 2007; and … Continue reading

In addition to widespread concerns that digital and mobile media extend the temporal and spatial reach of cruel behavior, there were also concerns that they enabled new and exaggerated forms of its expression. Examples from the Yomiuri Shimbun are not lacking: sending information on unpopular students to questionable dating sites; urging peers via text or instant message to ignore a classmate (i.e. mokusatsu, or silent killing); leaking pornographic photos and personal data;^[5]The photos are digitally manipulated by superimposing the target’s face onto a porn star’s torso. bombarding the target with vitriolic e-mails; hounding the target for money; and flooding the comments section of the target’s blog with hateful messages. In one particular case, a 16-year-old girl hanged herself after comments like “Die” and “You make me sick” were left on her blog (“Girl commits suicide,” 2008). One could attempt to circumvent hateful remarks by restricting access to one’s blog, though such attempts are often ineffectual. Remarks that bypass filters no longer constitute defamation, which by Japanese legal definition must be accessible to all members of the public. Furthermore, even if one were to shut down one’s blog, defamation and harassment would likely continue on other platforms.

Many targets of bullying and cyberbullying become truant, refusing to go to school and choosing to stay at home. Others transfer schools, which is permissible according to the Council for Regulatory Reform, provided there is evidence that the student had been bullied at the outgoing school (“Few lessons learned,” 2006). A few others are driven to extreme psychological despair that they attempt or commit suicide. In a study of 590 junior high school students, Katsumata et al. (2008) found that hurtful experiences on the Web doubles the risk of a child contemplating suicide.

There have been many attempts in Japan to circumvent bullying, cyberbullying, and suicides due to (cyber)bullying, but their effectiveness then, now, and in the years to come remains uncertain. Such measures include expanding consultation services for victims;^[6]This measure inadvertently puts the burden on the aggrieved rather than the aggressor. creating manuals for the detection and prevention of school bullying (“Prefectural education boards,” 2006); and designing slogans to appeal to the conscience of the Japanese public. For instance, Child Welfare Week featured this slogan by an 11-year-old boy: “Look for the good in everyone you know” (“Let’s encourage children,” 2007). IT companies also started services that monitored “underground” school websites. In October 2006, the Basic Act on Suicide Countermeasures was enacted, making it the nation’s duty to address the growing suicide problem (Kaga et al., 2009). The Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Initiative (CSPI) of 2007 was one application of the Act, and its motto was “Creating a Society Where Life is Easier” (p. S20). In addition to work-life balance, mental health promotion and education, financial improvement, and the enhancement of mental health services, the CSPI also included media literacy programs and strategies for disseminating the message that children are valuable members of Japanese society, hence the maudlin slogan of Child Welfare Week.

More recently, the National Diet—Japan’s bicameral legislature, which consists of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors—passed a law promoting anti-bullying measures, which took effect on September 2013 (“Relentless efforts,” 2013; “New law,” 2013). These measures put pressure on schools and municipalities to set up counseling centers and conduct periodic surveys on bullying. The law also called for the formation of anti-bullying teams of teachers and counselors, and organizations that monitored bullying in cyberspace. In addition, “bullying” was redefined to encompass various forms of slander on the Internet. However, the law has been criticized as insufficient by some and as ineffectual by others, including suicide bereaved parents.

The aforementioned strategies represent concerted efforts between government, media institutions, the education system, and the mental health system. Absent from these discussions, however, is the perspective of youth. According to Usui Mafumi (quoted in Allison, 2017): “While everyone has a cell phone and is constantly twittering on social media, no one really talks, and especially not about those things that may be troubling them—an observation others have made about youth culture/sociality in Japan today, where the dynamics of belonging can be brutal and cutthroat” (p. 28). What is troubling Japanese youth, says Mafumi, is a sense of directionlessness and unease (fuan) over the lack of a reliable roadmap to a fulfilling adulthood, for the pathways of old have proven themselves untenable.

Summary and Conclusions

The first reported case of cybersuicide in the Yomiuri Shimbun, the case of the Sapporo cyanide dealer, coincided with the year (1998) in which the annual suicide rate in Japan breached the 30,000 mark. That same year also happened to mark the beginning of the “lost decade” of Japan’s economic decline. Though it is without doubt that the Internet moulded the expression of suicidality, making the dramas of the individual psyche unfold on a national stage, it would be erroneous to assume linear causality between the digital revolution and Japan’s suicide crisis. After all, suicide rates in Japan were already on the rise prior to the commodification and diffusion of the Internet. But despite the fact that the three “crises” explored here amount to a mere sliver of Japan’s annual suicides (even at its peak, suicide by H₂S accounted for only 3 percent of all suicides in 2008), the Internet became the bearer of Japan’s social anxieties—the “Folk Devil,” in Stuart Hall’s parlance.

Unspooling the cybersuicide phenomenon reveals myriad articulations between technology, psyche, social institutions, and material considerations. On the surface, cybersuicide appears to be a technological problem in which the temporal and spatial reach of triggering content and malicious behavior are exacerbated, augmented further by sensationalistic media reporting. Probing the surface, however, reveals an economic system that has left many with little sense of fulfillment; a labor system that (de)values social worth on the basis of productivity (or lack thereof); a ruthless education system that encourages cutthroat competition; traditional family values that are unraveling; relational bonds that have been evacuated of their meaning; and young people who are uncertain of their future—and by extension, Japan’s future as a nation. Indeed, the cybersuicide crisis has many levels of determination.

A closer look at concerted efforts to stem (cyber)suicide similarly reveals myriad articulations. Players include governmental bodies seeking to regulate online access and content, toeing the line between public safety and personal privacy; a heath care system forced to adapt to novel forms of dying; an education system struggling with the surveillance and management of bodies; and public health campaigns designed to appeal to the conscience of the Japanese public, among others. In 2013, the annual suicide rate dipped below the 30,000 mark; curiously, there was a corresponding decrease in the number of Yomiuri Shimbun articles that contain the words “Internet” and “suicide” from September of that year onward. With the crisis attenuated, at least for the time being, it would seem that the need to displace has also weakened. But as Allison (2017) cautions, while the national annual rate has decreased, when stratified by gender and age, suicide among men in their 30s continues to be a problem.

In the last two decades the Japanese have experienced a profound reconfiguration of social and relational values. However, it would be a mistake to say that the social is coming to an end in Japan. Rather, the ecology of attachment is transforming, and Allison (2017) points to a need to “rethink the very attachment to attachment altogether, to imagine a lifestyle, or death style, that does not privilege belonging to long-term organizations or groups” (p. 32)—in short, to prioritize “being” over “belonging.” She cites several examples already underfoot, such as lower-pressure jobs, share houses, and communal burial plots.^[7]Traditionally, upon death, the Japanese are cremated and interred in their family’s ancestral plot (first-born sons), their own family plot (males), or that of their husband’s family (females). … Continue reading

The present inquiry centered negative associations between Internet use and suicidality. In order to craft a more “syntopian” view (Katz & Rice, 2002), however, we must also attend to positive applications of the technology. Although beyond the scope of this study, examples of the Internet’s use in the arena of suicide prevention warrant at least a passing remark, for they too are important facets of cybersuicide’s social history.

The very first Yomiuri Shimbun article in which the words “Internet” and “suicide” co-occur is actually uplifting in tone. It tells the story of a man in Osaka who felt his suicidality dissipate after connecting with a hundred other depressed users online (“A light,” 1998). Fast forward ten years, Inochi no Denwa, a network of fifty crisis helplines run by the Japan Suicide Prevention Association, launched an online service targeting suicidal teenagers and young adults (Kaga et al., 2009). Sueki (2015) likewise recommends using the Internet (specifically, the micro-blogging platform Twitter) to “detect suicidal youth online and to give them information about helpful resources through promoted tweets” (p. 159). Elsewhere, Hidaka and Operario (2006, 2009) envision the electronic delivery of counseling and information, chat rooms, and web-based mental health support for another disenfranchised segment of the population at heightened risk of suicide: gay, bisexual, and questioning (GBQ) men.

Stuart Hall and colleagues (1978/2013) write that there is more than one way to arrive at the broader narrative; that one must always start with the concrete, because one cannot draw any connections if one were to start with the abstract; and that the outcome of a struggle is never wholly given. The present study is but a modest attempt at a social history of cybersuicide in Japan, a mere entry point that offers a partial view of a “crisis” with an unknown future. It is also an invitation to others to unspool the myriad articulations between culture and technology, psyche and society.

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Biography

Mike Alvarez is a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow and a PhD candidate in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His dissertation explores the co-creation of meaning and community in suicidal individuals’ online discourse. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Paradox of Suicide and Creativity (Rowman & Littlefield).

© 2018 Mike Alvarez, used by permission

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Technoculture Volume 8 (2018)