Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrianna  In Japan most people who commit homicides kill themselves as well (to save face) however if they kill themselves or are killed by the authorities then they and everyone they killed are listed as suicides (so the authorities can save face too)... and now you know why the suicide rate for Japan is so high. It's not just their teenagers freaking out over school. |
While I agree that Japan isnt
safe... your previous argument doesnt sound like an entirely valid conclusion. It doesnt gel with any of the education I recieved on Japan, the research Ive done or my experiences here.
While the crime rate is indeed speculated to be MUCH higher than reported in certain areas, especially the realm of sexual crimes, the murder rate is rather low... even taking population density into account. Muder-suicide is also a fairly Western idea... Ive not heard of any murder-suicides recently, and nearly all violent crimes make the headlines in one form or another. If murder-suicide were indeed so common, there would be very little need for the death penalty...
Lack of access to firearms is a contributing factor in the lack of -successful- murders... but random acts of violence like slashing are on the rise as is violent youth crime.
Suicide is still a much larger problem than murder... but the only criminals who regularly seem to choose to take their own lives are involved in politics or business and are outed for corruption. Its not uncommon at all for a public figure or CEO to toss himself out of a window upon conviction of a coorporate crime.
Murders per year per 100,000 people -
Japan - 1.1
Germany - 3.9
England - 1.03
USA - 8.7
population in the UK is 60.6 million
population in Japan is 127 million
It then follows that there are more murders per year in Japan than the United Kingdom... more than twice as many... but its still in the lower range of nations in the realm of murder.
murder-suicide rates are not currently recorded by any census/statistics bureaus so its difficult to find anything more on the subject than hearsay. A search yeilds no papers or studies done on murder-suicide in Japan... only a handful of articles detailing cases of murder-suicide. Still, gut feeling... and 3 years of watching the news every morning would imply the rate is not particularly high.
Perhaps youre mistaking statistics for group suicide or family suicide as murder-suicide?
Crime in Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Japan Reference - Society - Crime in Japan : analysis per nationality