JAPAN: A growing Japanese trend for Internet-assisted group suicides claimed its largest single toll yesterday when seven people in their teens and early 20s were found dead in a car in mountains north of Tokyo.
The bodies of the four men and three women were found in a car park in Saitama. Almost immediately afterwards, the bodies of two more women were discovered in a car in Kanagawa, south of Tokyo. They apparently died from the same method of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The police began searching for the larger group after one of the men in the car e-mailed a friend to tell him he was about to take his own life. A police spokesman said all seven were discovered sitting up in the rented station wagon, where they had died after inhaling carbon monoxide from burning charcoal. He added: "We believe they got acquainted through the Internet."
Dozens of young Japanese have taken their own lives in the last two years after accessing Internet sites and bulletin boards that facilitate anonymous suicide pacts. More pacts have been uncovered at the last minute after the victims sent text messages telling relatives and friends of their plan, sparking a frantic scramble for their whereabouts.
In June last year, four young men were found dead in a parked car at the foot of Mount Fuji after meeting on the Internet, the previous worst incident in the current wave of group suicides.
The victims often drive to a secluded site, seal themselves in their car and light charcoal stoves, which the websites say causes slow, peaceful asphyxiation. Many have spent years locked in their rooms, only tenuously attached to the outside world via their computer after withdrawing from Japan's sometimes gruelling education system.
The discovery sparked more criticism that the government is not doing enough to tackle a growing mental health crisis.
Osamu Mizutani, a teacher and counsellor who has written a bestselling book about social problems among the young, said: "Suicide is a warning sign to the rest of society that we are failing in some way. The government must heed the warning."
A record 34,427 Japanese people took their own lives in 2003, with the biggest rise of 22 per cent recorded for the under-20s. Nearly 8,000 people in their 20s and 30s killed themselves last year, making suicide one of the leading causes of death for Japanese in the prime of life.