The Miraculous True Tale of a Man Driven to Suicide by the Fear of Death Amidst Mental Illness Caused by 800 Million Yen Debt

According to national statistics, 21,881 people lost their lives by suicide in FY2023.

It is said that many people who commit suicide have depression and other mental illnesses immediately prior to their suicide. They take their own lives as a result of a combination of factors at work and in their lives, and as a result of their mental illnesses, they develop feelings of hopelessness.

Many of those who have actually survived say that rather than being distressed by the decision, their minds were filled with thoughts of near-death before they knew it and they had no other choice but to take their own lives.

Japan has been focusing on suicide prevention measures for the past 20 years. While efforts differ from prefecture to prefecture, one prefecture in particular has significantly reduced its suicide rate. Akita Prefecture.

The suicide prevention measures taken in Akita Prefecture have become widely known as the “Akita Model. Why and how has Akita Prefecture implemented suicide prevention measures? I would like to show the process from the reportage “Mukonenrei senronen” (The Elderly without Relatives) (Kota Ishii, Ushio Publishing Co., Ltd.), which describes the elderly isolated from society.

The Melancholy of Akita Prefecture

Akita Prefecture, which faces the Sea of Japan, has long been known for its high suicide rate, as evidenced by the fact that its suicide rate per 100,000 people has been the worst for 19 consecutive years.

However, until the early 1990s, it was not even known that the suicide rate was that high in Akita. It was Naofumi Yoshioka, a forensic scientist at Akita University, who first drew attention to this fact. He noticed the high number of suicides while conducting autopsies of corpses, and started an investigation to clarify the situation.

To communicate this fact, Yoshioka compiled the results of his suicide research into a booklet titled “Akita Prefecture’s Melancholy,” and tried to make it widely known. The booklet was intended to raise awareness by documenting in detail the high suicide rate and the current situation in the prefecture.

The contents of the booklet were shocking, but despite Yoshioka’s enthusiasm, it did not attract much attention. Undeterred, Yoshioka continued his research and distributed new booklets.

It was around the year 2000 that his efforts first saw the light of day.

The number of suicides had been in the low 20,000s in the 1980s, but by the late 1990s it had surpassed 30,000.

In the midst of these changing times, local media gradually began to report on Yoshioka’s research. In Akita, the number of suicides in the 1980s was in the 300s, but in the 2000s the number exceeded 500 in some years, and the need to take action was growing.

At the same time, the private sector also began to take initiatives in suicide prevention. The leader of this effort was Hisao Sato.

Mr. Sato was born and raised in northern Akita Prefecture in 1943. His father was a business owner, and one day when Sato was in the second grade of elementary school, he was suddenly found dead in the shallows of a river. The cause of death was said to be unknown, but since he had been in good health until the day before, suicide was the only explanation.

His father’s death left his family destitute, and after graduating from high school, Mr. Sato gave up on college and began working for the prefectural government. The turning point came seven years later. He quit his job at the prefectural government and moved to a private real estate appraisal firm, then started his own real estate business. Like his father, he must have had the blood of a businessman in his veins.

Thanks to the tailwind of the bubble economy, Sato’s company grew and grew. At its peak, the company had 50 employees and annual sales of 1.5 billion yen. However, all that came to a crashing halt with the bursting of the bubble economy, and from the early 1990s, the company’s business continued to deteriorate, and by 2000, its total debt had risen to 800 million yen.

I have no choice but to die.

It was hopeless to keep the company afloat. Mr. Sato made the painful decision to file for bankruptcy. It was some time later that he became mentally ill. His health deteriorated and he began to have thoughts of dying, and he felt suicidal several times a day.

He felt he had no choice but to die. He rushed to a hospital, received treatment, and managed to start on the road to recovery.

At the same time, Mr. Sato learned that a fellow manager had failed in his business and committed suicide while undergoing treatment. Perhaps he had gone through the same process of mental illness as himself. Thinking of this, Mr. Sato couldn’t stand still.

–I want to lose this kind of tragedy. I have to do something.

In 2002, Mr. Sato established the non-profit organization “Spider’s Thread” out of this desire. He decided to use it as a base for a project to reach out to people suffering from suicidal thoughts.

However, it was not all smooth sailing for Mr. Sato. In the beginning, Sato worked with his own hands to create advertisements, rent meeting space, and set up a system for one-on-one discussions with counselors. He believed it was important to listen to the concerns of the counselors.

It is true that Mr. Sato’s efforts were able to temporarily ease the minds of the counselors. However, no matter how much he studied how to listen and how many hours he spent listening to their problems, the essential problems they were facing would not disappear.

For example, let’s say the client was contemplating suicide due to the bankruptcy of his company. If Mr. Sato listened to him, his stress might be alleviated to some extent. However, it does not eliminate the problems caused by the company’s bankruptcy, such as the disintegration of the family, conflicts with former employees, and repayment of debts. Even if they feel better, the problems are still there.

In order to truly save the clients from suicide, we must not only listen to them but also eliminate the problems they are facing.

I thought so, but there was a limit to what I could do on my own. For example, I had to seek the help of lawyers for debt, schools for children, and hospitals for illnesses. In other words, suicide prevention in the true sense of the word cannot be realized without involving specialists in a variety of fields.

With this in mind, Sato began visiting various specialists in the prefecture and asking for their help in suicide prevention. This later led to the creation of an organization that brought together a wide variety of groups in the prefecture (medical associations, newspaper companies, social welfare organizations, civilian welfare organizations, child welfare committees, NPOs, etc.).

The detailed background and contents of the “Akita Model” will be described in Part 2: Akita Prefecture’s “Four Efforts to Save People in Deep Distress,” in which the number of suicides has been dramatically reduced.

Part 2: Akita Prefecture’s “Four Efforts to Save the Worried” as Suicides Decrease D ramatically