Children who have lost one or both parents to suicide met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi earlier this month to appeal for measures to curb the growing number of parental suicides, according to a private nonprofit group.
Seven of the 11 children used their real names and did not cover their faces when they met the prime minister and the media in an effort to alleviate the social stigma accompanying a parent's suicide, according to officials of Tokyo-based Ashinaga, a scholarship society for orphaned children.
"I think all orphaned children blame themselves for their parents' deaths," said Yasunori Kuboi, a 20-year-old university student, after meeting Koizumi.
Kuboi added that when he was a junior high school student, he was afraid to tell anyone that his father had committed suicide, fearing discrimination.
"I want to live my life without being ashamed of my father's suicide, so that's why I came out with my real name," Kuboi said.
In a survey on suicides so far in this fiscal year, the group said it found close to half of parental suicides were either work- or money-related, up 22.1 percentage points from the previous fiscal year.
The officials said the children of suicide victims live in severe economic conditions, with average annual family income of only 1.72 million yen, less than half the lowest taxable annual income of about 3.8 million yen. About 25 percent of families with a mother as the surviving parent have no source of income, the officials added.
To help the children, the group has provided scholarships for high school students. The number of recipients had reached 144 in the last fiscal year, seven times the figure three years ago, the officials said.