Nine to go! (suicide party cars)

[Mulboyne]

MDN: Teens leap into train in suspected suicide pact
A high school boy died and a high school girl was injured after jumping from a bridge into a speeding train in western Tokyo Thursday night in a suspected suicide pact, police said Friday.
Investigators are poised to question the girl over the incident after she has recovered from her injuries.
At around 7:55 p.m., a train hit a second-year high school boy and girl, both aged 17, on the JR Hachiko Line between Hachioji and Kita-Hachioji stations in the western Tokyo city of Hachioji, local police said. The boy died while the girl was injured. However, her injuries are not life-threatening.
Investigators said they believe that the boy and the girl jumped from a pedestrian overpass onto the Hachiko Line track in a suicide pact and were hit by an oncoming train, noting that their bicycles and bags were left on the bridge. They were dressed in high school uniforms. No suicide note has been discovered.

[Taro Toporific]

MDN: Teens leap into train in suspected suicide pact....the boy and the girl jumped from a pedestrian overpass onto the Hachiko Line track in a suicide pact and were hit by an oncoming train, noting that their bicycles and bags were left on the bridge. They were dressed in high school uniforms. No suicide note has been discovered.

I just mentioned this story to my pushing-40 landlady, Rika-chan, and she cooed, "Ah how romanic."

Stuff they don't tell you in Japanese school
....the Japanese language is unrivalled when it comes to suicide-related vocabulary. There's jisatsu (plain old suicide), the term most common in modern usage, hara-kiri and seppuku (see this months SAQ), inseki jisatsu, (suicide to alleviate guilt), and jyunshi (following your lord in death). Even seppuku has a sub-category called jumonji-giri, in which a second, even more painful vertical cut is added to the regular horizontal one, to show you're really, really sorry.

Another famous term is shinju (double suicide), which in recent years has also come to include murder-sucide and also has several sub-categories, including joshi (lover's suicide), oyako shinju (parent and child suicide), bohsi-shinju (mother and child suicide), [i]fushi shinju (father and child suicide) and ikka shinju (family suicide). If the suicides are both voluntary, they are called a goi shinju whereas muder-suicides are called muri shinju.
The Hagakure, (a famous manual for samurai), also lists the following terms for suicide: oibara (following your feudal lord in death by committing seppuku, which is further sub-divided into maebara and sakibara, depending on whether you kill yourself just before or just after your lord dies), kobara (suicide for the sake of your children), and rokubara (suicide for the sake of your family). Archaic though some of these terms may be, General Nogi Marusuke committed oibara upon the death of the Mieji emperor in 1912, the famous writer Yukio Mishima committed funshi (suicide to express indignation) as late as 1970, and inseki jisatsu is still common among disgraced public officials and failed businesspeople. Ed Jacob, Japanzine, THE DEATH ISSUE - FEBRUARY 2003

[AssKissinger]

Four men found dead in latest suspected mass suicide in Japan
Four men were found dead Sunday in a sealed shut Tokyo apartment littered with charcoal stoves in what police said may be Japan's latest suicide pact.

It is suspected that the four died of carbon monoxide poisoning, police said, and their identities were trying to be established.

The bodies were discovered in northwestern Nerima district, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Four small stoves with remnants of burnt charcoal were found at the scene, and the room had been sealed shut from the inside with tape, the spokesman said.

Kyodo News agency reported that a friend of the apartment's occupant discovered the bodies after he found a spare key to the flat left in an envelope in his mailbox.

Suicides in Japan hit a record high last year, exceeding 32,000.

Last week in two separate incidents, six people were discovered dead in deserted cars _ also strewn with charcoal stoves and sealed shut with tape. In October, a group of seven people killed themselves in what police said was Japan's largest-ever mass suicide.

Japan has recently suffered a rash of suicides pacts, with many involving people who met over the Internet. According to the National Police Agency, 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting online between January 2003 and June 2004.

Officials say suicide pacts have been made over the Internet since the late 1990s, and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands

Any group of morons can meet on the Internet and then kill themselves. But how many can continue to post on the Internet AFTER they commit suicide Face it people, I'm doing something special here.

[Captain Japan]

An update...
7 found dead in Tokyo, Gunma in 2 apparent suicide pacts
Kyodo

Four men were found dead early Sunday morning inside a Tokyo apartment, while two women and a man were found dead in the afternoon in a parked car in Gunma Prefecture, apparently in suicide pacts, police said.

In both cases the police found small stoves containing burned charcoal apparently aimed at inducing carbon monoxide intoxication as were common in a recent spate of suicide pacts among people who got acquainted via the Internet.

The police said the bodies found in the apartment in a two-story building in the capital's Nerima Ward had no external wounds but four small stoves were found in the room with them. The room was sealed from inside with adhesive tape.

The resident of the apartment, Takeshi Hattori, a 27-year-old company employee, was among the dead, the police said.

A second man in the group was identified as Kazuhisa Namatame, a 29-year-old company employee from Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture. The identities of the two other men -- believed to be in their 20s or 30s -- were not immediately known.

The police said a friend of Hattori's returned to his home, also in Nerima Ward, early Sunday and found an envelope in his mailbox containing a spare key to Hattori's apartment.

He and a friend went to Hattori's apartment, opened the locked door, found the four bodies and called the police.

The police said a computer was found in the apartment but was locked. Password-type wording was included in the envelope containing the key mailed to Hattori's friend but police officers were unable to access the computer with it, the police said.

In the town of Minakami, Gunma Prefecture, meanwhile, a passer-by shortly after 3 p.m. found a car parked in a wood and three people dead inside.

The police said all three appear to have been in their 20s. The car is registered in Niigata Prefecture, they said.

[Captain Japan]

Four found dead in van in Shizuoka in another suicide pact
Kyodo via Japan Today

SHIZUOKA — Two men and two women were found dead Monday afternoon inside a van in Shizuoka Prefecture, apparently in a suicide pact, police said. The police said a passerby found the four people dead in the van parked near a mud-control dam in the city of Shizuoka at around 3:30 p.m. and reported it to police.

The police found a letter on one of the men that is believed to be a suicide note and two portable stoves containing burned charcoal. They also found sleeping pills, painkillers and liquor, and signs that the four had taken the pills and alcohol. (Kyodo News)

[AssKissinger]

http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTExMnJlZDF1BF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEdGVzdAN2MTg4BHRtcGwDdjE4OC1pZQ--/s/222468

Japan has the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world, with 24.1 suicides per 100,000 people each year, according to the UN's World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO).

Number One!!!And I helped!

The country registered a record high of 34,427 suicides in 2003.

A new record!!!It's suicide season right now. Let's go for the gold!

[Taro Toporific]

Construction boss takes suicide leap
Mainichi Shimbun, Dec 3
... 56, president of the company, lying on a street just in front of the company's headquarters building in the Koraku district of Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo ... A pair of shoes and a handwritten suicide note that partly reads, "Sorry for causing you trouble," were found in the president's office on the 10th floor of the Penta-Ocean headquarters building, leading investigators to suspect he committed suicide by jumping from his office....

[Captain Japan]

And from the more heartless news sources...
Japan's Stocks Gain, Led by Sony, Honda; Penta-Ocean Plunges
Bloomberg

Penta-Ocean Construction Co., a Japanese construction company, plunged 18 yen, or 11 percent, to 153. President Hideaki Kato, 56, was found dead in front of the company's head office in Tokyo, the Yomiuri newspaper said in its news service. He may have committed suicide by jumping from his 10th-floor office, the Yomiuri reported, citing police. A suicide note was found at his office, the report said.

[AssKissinger]

And from the more heartless news sources...
[url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000101&sid=aNQtPtlwjZjM&refer=japan]Japan's Stocks Gain, Led by Sony, Honda]
Bloomberg

Penta-Ocean Construction Co., a Japanese construction company, plunged 18 yen, or 11 percent, to 153. President Hideaki Kato, 56, was found dead in front of the company's head office in Tokyo, the Yomiuri newspaper said in its news service. He may have committed suicide by jumping from his 10th-floor office, the Yomiuri reported, citing police. A suicide note was found at his office, the report said.

I couldn't be that mean and I'm trying my hardest. "Plunges"...Really, those corporate cocksuckers are heartless. Funny link. At first, I thought you probably forged it.

[dimwit]

Construction boss takes suicide leap
Mainichi Shimbun, Dec 3
... 56, president of the company, lying on a street just in front of the company's headquarters building in the Koraku district of Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo ... A pair of shoes and a handwritten suicide note that partly reads, "Sorry for causing you trouble," were found in the president's office on the 10th floor of the Penta-Ocean headquarters building, leading investigators to suspect he committed suicide by jumping from his office....

Well that is certainly going to be a morale booster for the employees.

[Captain Japan]

Construction boss takes suicide leap
Mainichi Shimbun, Dec 3
... 56, president of the company, lying on a street just in front of the company's headquarters building in the Koraku district of Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo ... A pair of shoes and a handwritten suicide note that partly reads, "Sorry for causing you trouble," were found in the president's office on the 10th floor of the Penta-Ocean headquarters building, leading investigators to suspect he committed suicide by jumping from his office....

That trouble certainly wasn't reflected in the stock price. Penta Ocean is up over the past year:
http://www.reuters.wallst.com/reuters/chartapi/chart_index.asp?

[Captain Japan]

Three Dead in Japan in Suspected Suicide
AP

TOKYO - Three people were found dead inside a car parked outside a remote forest in southern Japan early Tuesday in what police suspected was the country's latest group suicide.

The two women and a man, whose identities were not immediately known, were found in Yayoi, in Japan's southern prefecture of Oita, local police spokesman Hideo Sugano said.

The three were believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, Sugano said. Three portable stoves containing solid charcoal fuel sat on the floor and the windows were sealed with vinyl tape from the inside.

Japan has uncovered a series of recent suicide pacts, many plotted by people who met over the Internet.

Eight people were found dead in two separate suicide pacts last week, and at least 13 others have died in similar circumstances since October.

Suicides in Japan hit a record high last year, exceeding 32,000.

The National Police Agency said 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting online between January 2003 and June 2004.

Suicide pacts have been made over the Internet since the late 1990s and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. Experts say they tend to occur in cycles, with news of group suicides sparking copycat incidents.

Oita is about 500 miles southwest of Tokyo.

[Steve Bildermann]

Japan's internet 'suicide clubs'

In Japan, the internet has been blamed for a spate of group suicides which appear to have been arranged in online chat rooms.

Andrew Harding talked to one young man searching for someone to die with.

Naoki Tachiwana opened his apartment door with a surprisingly warm smile, and beckoned us in to a neat living room. His computer was switched on - the screen facing out towards Naoki's eleventh floor balcony, and the night sky above Tokyo's eastern suburbs.

BBC article

Suicide Manual

[Mulboyne]

Last year's "Suicide Manual" film Trailer link
The above link is to the film website. Click the WMP icon to see the trailer. It's a horror film so it's not pictures of fluffy bunnies.

[Mulboyne]

[Captain Japan]

Two teens jump to death from 14th floor in apparent suicide
Kyodo via Japan Today

TOKYO — Two teenage boys were found dead Tuesday at an apartment complex in Tokyo's Kita Ward after apparently jumping from the 14-story building in what police suspect was a case of suicide. The two, aged 16 and 17, were second-year students at different high schools in Saitama Prefecture, the police said.

They said they found a notebook belonging to the 16-year-old boy which contained a note saying, "tired of study and brass band club." The police are examining the communication logs of their cell phones as their parents said they have no idea how the boys were acquainted. The police also found two pairs of shoes and two bags on the top of the building. (Kyodo News)

[AssKissinger]

two pairs of shoes

Ghosts don't need no fucking shoes.

[Buraku]

Two teens jump to death from 14th floor in apparent suicide
Kyodo via Japan Today

TOKYO &#8212]

very bad

[Mulboyne]

MDN: 3 found dead in car in suspected suicide pact
MITAMA, Yamanashi -- Three people were found dead in a car here Thursday morning, apparently after they gassed themselves to death by burning briquettes inside the vehicle, police said. A construction worker filed a report with police at about 10 a.m. on Thursday, saying he had found a car on a forest road in Mitama. When police examined the vehicle they found the bodies of three people inside, along with portable clay stoves containing briquettes.
The victims appeared to be aged between their 20s and 30s police said. Investigators said it was likely the victims had burned the briquettes to release toxic carbon monoxide gas and poisoned themselves.

[Captain Japan]

Suicide jumper kills man on ground
Mainichi

A man has died in bizarre circumstances after a suicidal woman jumped from a 12-story building and landed on top of him, killing them both, police said.

Koichi Sato, 54, was walking past the 12-story apartment on the last day of 2004 when the woman jumped. He was killed as a result of the impact as she landed on top of him.

The 43-year-old woman from Hidaka, Saitama Prefecture, also died from the impact of her landing.

Police said they do not believe the woman deliberately landed on Sato.

[yakinoumiso]

Last Saturday (Dec 25), I and a friend were held up for about 1 1/2 h on a Tokaido-sen train between Nagoya and Gifu because someone apparently threw themselves under the train. Ugghhh. It wasn't my train that was involved, but the one ahead of us. Ugghh. What a horrible way to go out.

You have to feel for any person who commits suicide, and especially his/her family, but the car in the woods with a habachi doesn't like sound half bad to go about it. At least there is little mess, and no one really has to suffer the terrible aftermath.

[kurohinge1]

... Police said they do not believe the woman deliberately landed on Sato.

And even if she did, at least we can sleep safely at night knowing that she won't be doing it again ... unless this is another internet-cult-thingy and more will follow ...



I need to get a stronger umbrella.

[Captain Japan]

This is a deeply weird story...even for this thread.
After botched surgery, woman sought companions for suicide
Gomiuri Shimbun via the Kansas City Star

TOKYO - (KRT) - In October, a 21-year-old woman committed suicide in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, suffocating herself by burning charcoal briquettes in a sealed car. Found dead with her was another woman she had - met through an Internet site for people who wish to die.

Similar cases of people committing suicide with others they met through Internet sites have been reported in recent years.

"I've decided to disappear from this place on Aug. 5. I'm sure you know why. It's the unsuccessful surgery on my eyes. It's been tormenting me since I had the operation when I was 18. I'm not strong, and I'm tired. I'm really sorry," the 21-year-old woman wrote in a farewell note addressed to her parents.

The woman went to the roof of a department store on Aug. 5, with the intention of jumping to her death, but she was too scared to do so. The note, which was found in her bag placed in her closet, was thought to have been written before this event.

She left her hometown and moved to Tokyo in April 2001 at age 18. The young woman, who had large eyes, often said she wanted to have eyes like those of Ayumi Hamasaki, a popular singer known for her large eyes.

The young woman had so-called petite seikei - a simple form of cosmetic surgery that has become popular recently - at a Tokyo clinic in January 2002. The clinic advertised itself as frequented by actors and actresses, but her operation did not go well.

"My eyes swelled, and I can't lift my eyelids. The doctor told me to wait for three months to check on the condition of my eyes and then visit him again. I did as I was told, but he wouldn't even see me," she was quoted as saying to her parents.

She often wept and told her former boss, "I can't see people with such eyes."

She visited a plastic surgeon in Nagoya in October 2003. The doctor told her the fat under her eyelids had been completely removed and as a result the muscles there obstructed one another, preventing them from properly functioning. The eyelid on her right eye appeared dented and drooped, making her expression unnatural.

She told the doctor she had undergone operations on her eyes at three cosmetic surgery clinics in Tokyo. She also said she had spent all her wages on the surgery.

She underwent two further operations at the plastic surgery clinic to try to return her eyes to their original state. Before the last operation in July 2004, she had told her former boss, with whom she often consulted about various things, that the operation would be her last. However, the operation was unsuccessful and the doctor told her further surgery would not make any difference.

Deciding to kill herself, she went to the roof of the department store the day after she left the clinic in Nagoya. However, she later told her former boss that she was too scared to jump. In her farewell note to her parents, she had written, "To tell the truth, I'm still undecided whether to live or die."

She then decided to sue the cosmetic surgeons and contacted a law firm in Tokyo. A lawyer there told her it was very difficult to win compensation for mistakes in cosmetic surgery. The lawyer recalls she did not look so concerned at the time.

After the suicide, one of the woman's e-mail correspondents told the woman's parents their daughter had learned around August 2004 that there were Internet sites to find others who wanted to kill themselves. It may have been such a site that finally pushed her toward death.

People around her said she started to avoid other people about that time.

On Oct. 4, she tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide in Okutama, Tokyo, with three people she had got to know through an Internet site.

At a nearby police station, she promised her former boss, who came to take her home, not to try to kill herself again.

However, about a week later, she was found dead with a 27-year-old woman in a sealed car in Yokosuka.

The Internet seems to have changed the nature of suicide from a solitary act to one undertaken with other people.

There were a number of messages stored in her mobile phone, which she kept with her until her death, that had been recorded by people who wished to die.

"We knew she was really depressed about the failed operation. However, we're sure she wouldn't have killed herself if she had to do it alone," said her former boss, who knew her well.

Her parents, who saw her body at the Yokosuka Police Station, agreed with her former boss. They said it seemed that she had applied her makeup more carefully than usual.

"Petite seikei" is a generic term for minor cosmetic operations that involve no or only minor incision. It causes less soreness and swelling, but the effect does not last long.

Such operations can be done for various purposes: to make single eyelids double, to remove wrinkles on the forehead or around the eyes, and to make the face look smaller.

The number of patients has been increasing year by year. The comparatively low fee is one reason people choose petite seikei. The fee for an operation to double eyelids is, for example, about one-fourth to one-fifth of those of major operations.

Hospital officials say they explain it is possible that eyelids may be swollen after the operation.

However, Yumi Yamashita, a writer who is well-informed about cosmetic surgery, criticized cosmetic surgeons, saying that they seldom sufficiently explain possible problems to their patients.

"On the contrary, many such clinics overly stress in their advertisement the easiness of such operations, as if they are a kind of extension of makeup," she said.

[FG Lurker]

This is a deeply weird story...even for this thread.
After botched surgery, woman sought companions for suicide

To get passwords for sites that require *free* registration, use Bug Me Not.

I stress the free part above because Bug Me Not's aim is to help people avoid long registration processes and increased spam in their mailboxes, just so you can view one article on a site like KansasCity.com.

Anyway it's a great site that I use all the time, and there is even a Firefox extension to automate the process!

[Captain Japan]

POINT OF VIEW/ Takeshi Tamura:Improve online content to stop suicide pacts
Asahi

Suicide pacts carried out among young people who meet via the Internet are occurring frequently. A chain reaction seems to be at work, as attested by the common use of rentan charcoal stoves in sealed-up cars. It is reasonable to assume they imitated earlier cases reported by the media.

Many people experience despair from time to time. On occasion, people wish they were dead. But some people feel very strongly that they want to die, or more frequently than others. But as people interact in society, they accomodate such feelings and try to keep going.

The Internet, on the other hand, allows people to isolate themselves. They can withhold their identity and speak freely about suicide, which is considered taboo in most circles.

Families and friends rarely understand the feelings of people who are so desperate they would rather die. Under such circumstances, those who have lost hope tend to think the only people who understand them are complete strangers who share the same sense of despair...the rest

[Mulboyne]

iafrica.com: Teen 'received suicide help on the web'
A Greek man is suspected of providing suicide tips over the internet to a teenager who took his life in Athens four months ago. Writing from an internet cafe in the town of Chania on the southern Greek island of Crete, the 25-year-old suspect used a female alias to advise the 18-year-old man how to poison himself with an insecticide, police said in a statement. The youth was dead when he was rushed to a hospital on September 10 after taking the substance proposed to him by the suspect, police added. Under Greek law, assistance to suicide is punishable with a maximum five-year jail sentence.
... The British Medical Journal (BMJ) said last month a rash of group suicides that has shaken Japan was a worrying sign of the internet's potential for encouraging suicide pacts.

[Mulboyne]

[goldenboy_ge]

[Captain Japan]

WEB OF SUICIDE
The Mirror

AN internet plot to stage a mass suicide of 32 people on Valentines Day was foiled by police yesterday.

Alleged ringleader Gerald Krien, 26, was arrested after a pact member got cold feet and called police.

Krien is said to have set up 32 suicides from a computer in his home.

Members were due to log on next Monday and commit suicide simultaneously using webcams.

...snip...

In October, seven Japanese were found suffocated in a car near Tokyo in an internet suicide pact....the rest...

[Mels]

WEB OF SUICIDE
The Mirror

AN internet plot to stage a mass suicide of 32 people on Valentines Day was foiled by police yesterday.

Alleged ringleader Gerald Krien, 26, was arrested after a pact member got cold feet and called police.

Krien is said to have set up 32 suicides from a computer in his home.

Members were due to log on next Monday and commit suicide simultaneously using webcams.

...snip...

In October, seven Japanese were found suffocated in a car near Tokyo in an internet suicide pact....the rest...

I saw this on the news yesterday... Gave me chills....they said they the cops went to one womans house.....she was going to kill her two kids and then herself......sad