suicides in Japan related to web

[Alan Sondheim]

   9 Die in Japan Suicides Tied to Web
By JAMES BROOKE

Published: October 13, 2004


OKYO, Oct. 12 - Nine people were found dead on Tuesday in two rented cars with 
the windows sealed and charcoal burners at their feet in pacts that the police 
said were facilitated by Internet suicide sites.

The police said that in the first car, a minivan that had been rented for the 
day, they found seven bodies, including teenagers and a 33-year-old woman who 
had left a note for her children. Parked on a mountain road in a Tokyo suburb, 
the gray van had been wrapped in blue plastic sheets with the windows taped 
closed. Inside, the woman's body was in the driver's seat, and there were three 
bodies on each of the van bench seats. All were believed to have died of carbon 
monoxide poisoning.

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"Mother is going to die, but I was happy that I could give birth to you," said 
a note found next to the driver, according to Kyodo News. An empty package of 
sleeping pills was found near the van.

The group may have come together through a suicide message board on the 
Internet, Japanese news media quoted the police as saying. Japan has a suicide 
rate about twice the rate of the United States, and there are Web sites where 
people discuss suicide and suicide techniques. Some Web sites even sell kits 
offering "painless" suicide.

Using a cellphone, one of the seven in the van e-mailed a friend in northern 
Japan on Monday evening, giving the approximate location of the van, a police 
spokesman for Saitama, a Tokyo suburb, told Agence France-Presse. All the van's 
occupants were dead by the time the police arrived, just after dawn.

At almost the same time Tuesday morning, outside a temple in Yokusuka, about 75 
miles to the south, the police found a rented car containing the bodies of two 
women, ages 21 and 27. They apparently had also asphyxiated themselves by 
burning charcoal in two stoves in the car. The police told Kyodo News that the 
two lived about 25 miles apart and had also apparently met through the 
Internet.

"This is not murder,'' read a message found in the women's car, according to 
Agence France-Presse. "We planned this." The police have asked Internet service 
providers to report information about chat group participants who post suicide 
plans on the Web, but the directive is believed to be largely ignored.

Last year, Japan reported a record 34,427 cases of suicide, a slight increase 
over previous years. From January 2003 to June 2004, 45 people committed 
suicide in groups after meeting through the Internet, according to the National 
Police Agency. In one case last month, four young people were found dead after 
burning charcoal in a car parked three miles from where the van was found 
Tuesday.


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