Postcard: Tojinbo Cliffs
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For five years, Shige, 65, has approached such people at the cliffs' edge with a simple "Hello" and a smile. He might ask how they came there and at what inn they were staying. Sometimes after a light touch to the shoulder, Shige says, they burst into tears, and he begins to console them. "You've had a hard time up until now," he says, "haven't you?"
The basalt cliffs in Fukui prefecture, north of Kyoto on the western coast of Japan, are a well-known site for suicide in a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world; at 23.8 per 100,000, Japan's rate is significantly higher than that of the U.S., for example, where the rate is 11 per 100,000. One in 5 Japanese men and women has seriously considered taking his or her life, according to a recent government survey; each year over the past decade, more than 30,000 people have killed themselves. And as the economic downturn has pushed rates of unemployment and bankruptcy higher, the number of suicides has risen. From January through April, 11,236 people killed themselves, up 4.5% from the same period in 2008.
For five years, Shige, 65, has approached such people at the cliffs' edge with a simple "Hello" and a smile. He might ask how they came there and at what inn they were staying. Sometimes after a light touch to the shoulder, Shige says, they burst into tears, and he begins to console them. "You've had a hard time up until now," he says, "haven't you?"
The basalt cliffs in Fukui prefecture, north of Kyoto on the western coast of Japan, are a well-known site for suicide in a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world; at 23.8 per 100,000, Japan's rate is significantly higher than that of the U.S., for example, where the rate is 11 per 100,000. One in 5 Japanese men and women has seriously considered taking his or her life, according to a recent government survey; each year over the past decade, more than 30,000 people have killed themselves. And as the economic downturn has pushed rates of unemployment and bankruptcy higher, the number of suicides has risen. From January through April, 11,236 people killed themselves, up 4.5% from the same period in 2008.