TUJ Journalism 150- National

Suicide rates in Japan are approximately more than 30,000 Japanese commit suicide per year. According to Mamoru Iga, “Japanese suicide rate is bimodal”. One of the peaks is twenty to twenty-four age. The other rate is sixty-five- and over age group”.

The most famous suicide in Japan is internet suicide. The internet suicide becomes widespread in Japan until around 2003.

According to the Wikipedia homepage, “An Internet suicide is a suicide pact made between individuals who meet on the Internet. The majority of such Internet-related suicide pacts have occurred in Japan, which has one of the highest overall suicide rates in the world”. Japan is the first place where internet suicide occurred.
Why are Japanese youths think chat rooms is useful?

Chat room is the most useful and available method for Japanese youths who desire to commit suicide because Japanese youths who wish to kill themselves gather in the suicide chat room and complain about their own life or school. Many of them think that they do not necessary to go to school.

According to chat room manager who wrote about internet suicide, “chat room is a place like a heaven for Japanese youths who desire to kill themselves because they can discuss whatever they wants to say without talking with face to face. Therefore, they can relax to talk or express their real emotion through the chat room”.

Japanese youths who hope to commit suicide want someone to listen their agony in their life. For instance, there is a conversation between Japanese youth and manager of the chat room. Young Japanese student left a message in a chat room. “Parents cannot comprehend what I think, and I am really cannot find the reason why I should go to school. However, if I will retire going to school, my future become dreadful”. This student complained about school however, he has an effort to think about his life and future. Therefore, responder said “you have enough time to think about yourself. You also need to think about your life. If you cannot find the answer why you should alive, please talk to me again. I want you to talk about anything that you worry”.

Some of the youths listen carefully what responder said in a chat room, and find the answer to alive in a world. However, some of the other youths sometimes do not care about responder’s response in a chat room because these youths are already decided to commit suicide.

In detail, Japanese youth gather in the internet chat room and talk about why they hope to commit suicide or how best to commit suicide through the chat board. They sometimes make a decision not to commit suicide by means of other people’s comments.

The method that is the most famous in Internet suicide is three or four people assembles the place which is basically low possibility to find in a person. They use briquette in order to burn it inside of the car and commit suicide. Their death factor is the Carbon monoxide poisoning death.

According to person who experienced Briquette suicide, “Briquette suicide is distressing, hot and stinking somehow. Besides, aftereffects are not avoidable when they attempt like me. I feel uncomfortable at this really strictly. I suggest people who really want to commit suicide. You must ready to endure the hardest pain in this world”.

It seems that it is the easiest way of committing suicide for most of the Japanese. However, it is just our imagination. In a reality, we cannot understand how Briquette suicide is hard unless we try to experience it.

Why are Japanese youths feel depress to alive in the world?”
The reason is that recent Japanese youth are not good at creating great human relationship with others such as classmates, neighbors. One of the young student told audiences about his own experience through TV called NHK. This student expressed that he has a mental problem when he went to junior high and high school because he could not make friends with other classmates. He also insisted that he could not adapt to school environment. Finally, he considered retire school and stay home every day. He felt loneliness every day more than before because he always stay alone in his room.

Large amount of Japanese youths feel loneliness because they are not good at making friends with others. They also have a communication problem. Japanese youths talks with others through the mobile phone or internet because it is convenient for them.

What kind of things stimulates Japanese youth and make them feel commit suicide?
One of the represent things is internet suicide video. Some of the people who desire to commit suicide advice people that if you want to die by yourself, you should watch video which is about mass suicide called “suicide circle” or “suicide manual”. This video produced for audiences who want to watch horror movie or who want to identify how best to commit suicide.

They also think about a method to commit suicide. Japanese audiences think that these videos affected and stimulated Japanese youth too much. Therefore, they began to think that we can die easily if we make use of same method of how to commit suicide in the video. However, producer wished audiences to think about life more cautiously, so the question is whether producer was really thinking about audiences who desire to commit suicide or not. Of course, producer thought about this problem.

According to the producer who made suicide videos, said “it is up to the person who watch this video and how this person feels about video”. People do not feel a sense of responsibility of producer to show this video to people of all age by this remark. Huge amount of people who want to stay alive cannot survive because they do not have enough money, wealth, healthy condition. Furthermore, the huge numbers of ancient Japanese who lived in the 100 years ago often driven into the situation that must die though they did not want to die. As a result of these, Japanese youth should realize that we fade the sense of values for life.

The other stimulus thing for Japanese youth is book which is called “complete manual for suicide”. This book influenced Japanese youth as well as videos. The author of this book is Osamu Tsurumi. According to Osamu Tsurumi, “this film is not recommending people to commit suicide”. However, so many Japanese complained that some of the people affected and attempt to commit suicide after they read it. What author answered against this opinion is Japanese youths gave him a message about this book, and it said some of Japanese youths could relax when they read this book or encouraged after they read his book.

Many of the things such as internet, video and book which are about suicide have a bad influence on Japanese youth. After they influenced, some of the Japanese youth cannot distinguish the difference between reality and non-reality. This means some of them think suicide is ordinary thing to do. However, some of the others realized that suicide is terrible thing to do. They recognized that a lot of people grieve when I commit suicide and also trouble another person such as relatives, friends, and classmates. This situation leads them to commit suicide.

By Yuichi

April 6 was the first day of the new school year in most of Japanese school. About one million of children who are six years old started their education at elementary school. For our children who will support Japan in the future, and will live in global world. Let’s think about education in Japan compare to the other country.

#1 the United States: Is Japanese education better than the United States?

Japan has concrete system of growing teachers’ teaching skill. Education quality in Japan is always at same level everywhere because the ministry of education is in charge of keeping the same quality as New York Times said in an editorial on Nov 21, 2005.

In this article Japanese education introduced as ideal education for the U.S. education. Is that really true? Is Japanese education better than the U.S. system? If so, why do so many students choose to study abroad in the U.S. when they can stay in Japan and get better education?

The article in the New York Times admired Japanese “lesson-study.” Lesson-study is a group study which discusses how to make good and high quality lessons by watching one teacher’s lecture as an example. It is true that the lesson-study has a good reputation among the United States and also other countries. Many representatives from other country visit to Japanese schools for a study tour of lesson-studies. However, in Japan, this method is not really thought of as a useful way to grow teaching skills.

“Lecture-study is just a ritual now,” Taeko Kosaka who teaches math in public junior high school said. Twenty years ago when she became a teacher, lesson-study was a great help to learn how to construct lessons. She could learn how to make a lecture from her colleague’s lesson, and she could get feed back of what she needs to change in order to make good lectures from other teachers. Based of what she learn form lesson study, she could make better lecture. However, the situation changed, and lesson-study lost the value. “We do not have extra time to have lesson-study, and to practice what we learn from the study.”

Physically teachers do not have extra time to make their own lectures better, Ms. Kosaka pointed out. According to the education policy change by Japan’s ministry of education, a teacher’s amount of work was increased. Twenty years ago she only had 10 hour lessons per week. However, the ministry of education divided a class (usually 40 students) into two classes, when studying Math and English, so that teachers pay more attention to students, who are potential dropouts student, are who are slow learners. “It sounds nice, but actually the new policy made Japanese education bad,” Ms. Kosaka said. Though the number of classes doubled the number of teachers was not increased. She had 20hours of lessons per week, and gained more responsibility to care for each student. “I use only textbook for every lessons,” she said. “Before, I made original study sheets and used more materials in the lecture. That was the way I practiced what I learn from lesson-study; however, now I do not have time to make these original materials.” Even though lesson-study is a great method, teachers do not have a field to apply the results of lesson-studies.

“What ever the other countries think that Japanese education is good, education in Japan is not the best for students,” a teacher who teaches science at public high school said. “Yes, education level in Japan is same every where, and it is controlled by the ministry of education. It is good, but the problem is how to make education at same level.” To check the level of education, the ministry of education tests students’ scholastic ability in each five years. He confessed that there is high pressure by the ministry of education when his students did not meet national standard of scholastic ability. The teacher recognized as not having good teaching ability by the ministry of education. And the teacher need to take retraining until he or she achieve own teaching ability. “What teachers care about is not student, but grade of students. What teachers supposed to see is number or statistics, not a character of students. How come we can say it is good education!” he said.

Japanese students are sensitive to the attitude of their teachers. They know that teachers do not care about themselves, but care about their grenade, and they have complaint about that.

Kaori Shibata who is a junior at Seisin University was surprised when she saw class essay who is attending American university. On the essay the teacher wrote several comments. At the university she attends, which is a typical Japanese university teachers do not really care about what students write. Submitting reports means just an announcement that the student is attending the class and following the class subject. In contrast, her friend’s teacher was really cared about not only the content of the paper but also how to write a statement, how to structure the paper, where she needed more development, and what she could do for the next draft. “I think that’s what Japanese education needs,” Ms. Shibata said. Japanese teachers are graders of student work, she thinks. They grade on how much effort she put, how much she practiced, how much she achieved, and how good or bad she is compared to other student. Students work hard and show the results to the teacher, and then the teacher grades it. If it is not enough, the student work again and waits for teachers to give grades again. On the contrary, American teachers aim to help the student. Of course they decide grades, but they also help students to achieve more.

“Teachers do not want to be asked question,” Manabu Inoue who is sophomore of Aoyama Gakuin University said. He had a tough experience at university. Freshman year he asked his teacher about what he should write in the class report. He had a couple of ideas and wondered how to organize these ideas. He expected his teacher to give him some hints. However, the teacher’s response was not what he expected. The teacher said all the answers were in the lectures, and if he listen to the lectures he should be fine, so he needed to find the answer by himself. Eventually he wrote the report by himself, and got an F. “I believed that only that teacher was unhelpful, and I was unlucky. But after two years of studying at university, I realized that almost all the teachers are the same. A student’s mission in the university is to work hard on your own.” Even if teaches give great lessons, without communication between teachers and students, students drop out from school.

The Institute of International Education reported that 40,835 students went to the U.S. to study abroad from 2003 to 2004. They went to the U.S. not only to study English. In fact, 89.7% of the students were attending undergraduate or graduate programs. What they are expecting from the study abroad experience is to receive different and various educations that they can’t get in Japan. They are leaving Japanese standardized education. It means that not all Japanese people are satisfied with domestic education. Even though other countries or scholars give a good evaluation of Japanese educational system, it is the only view from out side. From in side, there are complaints of Japanese education.

By Mariko