Glued to a computer screen in his north Tokyo apartment, the sushi delivery man spent weeks searching the recesses of the Internet. Going simply by the handle ‘‘Murata’’, the 28-year-old surfed for online companions harbouring his same dark interest: the desire to die. He found what he was looking for on a host of new Japanese-language websites such as ‘‘Underground Suicide’’ and ‘‘Deadline’’. Promising to supply most of the materials, he made arrangements to kill himself with two anonymous Internet friends. Face to face for the first time, the three young men drove to a tranquil mountain pass six hours north of Tokyo. They shared sleeping pills, and then — following detailed instructions posted on a website — set charcoal alight inside their car and died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The deaths of the three men marked only one incident in an extraordinary string of Internet suicides to hit Japan. Over the past six months, police investigators say at least 32 people — mostly in their teens and twenties — have killed themselves after meeting strangers online. The deaths come at a time when Japan is undergoing an alarming surge in its overall suicide rate — with financial problems cited as the fastest growing reason for despair. Even by Japanese standards, there has been a staggering jump in suicides, to 32,143 last year, compared with 21,346 in 1990, the beginning of Japan’s economic slide. The current suicide rate — 25.2 suicides per 100,000 people — is about double that of the US. The deaths have drawn attention to a deadly mix between Japanese traditions of suicide and its mega-tech society, which have now melded into a proliferation of ‘‘how-to-die’’ websites accessible from schools, offices, subways, trains and cars through wireless connections on most Japanese cell phones. They have become a source of morbid fascination for a growing subculture of troubled, younger Japanese. Japan today is nation where unemployment and homelessness have soared, and companies no longer offer workers the promise of a job for life. The new realties have put added stress on families, sending the divorce rate steadily higher. ‘‘They are lost and confused. The long-held direction and goals of Japanese society are collapsing around them,’’ said Rika Kayama, a Tokyo psychiatrist who has studied the Internet suicide phenomenon. As many as 1 million Japanese, mostly young men in their twenties, have withdrawn from society altogether, becoming ‘‘shut -ins’’ inside their parents’ homes for six months to several years. Investigators have tracked the beginning of the Net death trend to a February 11 tableau in a vacant apartment near Tokyo. One man and two women, all in their twenties, were found dead inside. A 17-year-old girl who had originally agreed to join them but backed out at the last minute, told police that the three were jobless and worried about the future. They had met after Michio Sakai, a 26-year-old unemployed magazine salesman from just north of Tokyo, posted a ‘‘death ad’’ on an underground site: ‘‘I am looking for suicide partners,’’ it said. ‘‘If you join me, I will give you sleeping pills. . It is lonely to die alone.’’ Things became worse when citing freedom of expression, Japanese authorities have been loath to clamp down on the sites, instead asking content providers to police themselves. (LAT-WP)
