Regarding the May 30 article "Japanese found hanged on KAL jet": It's a sad statement of a country's culture that so many Japanese people's ultimate form of expression is suicide. It must be hard for many non-Japanese to understand why this anomaly has persisted for so long.
In Japan, the illusion that suicide actually solves something seems deeply ingrained. After the high profile suicide of a Cabinet minister last year, one wonders what it must take to bring home the truth that the suppression of individual expression leads the average citizen no outlet to vent frustration and despair other than self-annihilation. Isn't it about time the government invest in counseling for these people rather than, say, military buildup?
Data suggest that employment-related issues are one of the top causes. But apart from creating advisory bodies to tell us the obvious -- that we shouldn't go around killing ourselves -- what exactly has the government done to tackle this perennial problem? The answer, it seems, is as little as possible.
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