The following is an article in the Kyodo News today. I was depressed reading it. There is no hope for the Japanese outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ. Read on if you must but by all means don't click away without praying.
I saw a video today "Ministry without limbs" they said that there are 60 million Cambodians with 600,000 being Christians.Then it dawned on me the Japanese are 127 million people with about the same number of Christians. Incredible, 60 years of God's servants going to Japan to preach, teach, beg and plead with the Japanese to Convert but there hearts are open yet unwilling to shed the cultural bondage. May God Break Japan and bring her to her knees. Even here Japanese Christians can't assimilate fully into the church without being extricated from their brethren by birth.
◆ Suicides in Japan remain above 30,000 in 2007, depression top cause
TOKYO, June 19 KYODO NEWS
The number of people who killed themselves in Japan in 2007 surpassed 30,000 for 10 years in a row, with depression topping the list of reasons for suicide, a National Police Agency survey showed Thursday.
The number of suicides in the reporting year came to 33,093, up 2.9 percent from 2006 and the second highest after 34,427 recorded in 2003, the survey said.
Suicides believed derived from depression accounted for 6,060 or about 18 percent of the total suicides in 2007, followed by 5,240 over physical ailments, 1,973 over debts from multiple lenders and 1,656 over other debts, said the annual survey.
By age bracket, people of age 60 or older formed a record high of around 37 percent of the total number of suicides.
The readings underlined the seriousness of social conditions in Japan which may lead to a person committing suicide. Japan's first suicide-prevention guidelines, formulated in June last year, proved to be ineffective in reducing the number of suicides. Critics cite the lack of specific measures envisaged under the guidelines.
The survey was the first of its kind since the National Police Agency revised the categorization of reasons and motives for suicide in 2007.
Under the new categorization, suicides committed in 2007 were divided into 52 reasons. Up to three reasons could be listed for each suicide committed in the year, based on notes being left, medical records, remarks posted on the Net and contacts with people close to those who killed themselves.
By age, suicides committed by people aged 60 or older increased 8.9 percent to a record 12,107, followed by 7,046 for those aged 50 to 59 and 5,096 for those aged 40 to 49.
Suicides by those aged 19 or younger decreased 12 percent to 548. Among those, 10 killed themselves apparently due to bullying and 25 due to discord with friends.
Males represented about 71 percent of the total suicides in 2007.
People without a job accounted for 18,990 or 57.4 percent of the total in the year, including those who made a living on a pension 4,982 and jobless people 1,756.
In the 2007 survey, Yamanashi Prefecture posted the highest suicide rate of 39.0 per 100,000 people among Japan's 47 prefectures in 2007, replacing Akita, given as 37.2, as the worst prefecture.
Akita, however, still tops the 2007 list of prefecture-specific suicide counts by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, which compile data based on where those who killed themselves lived.
The police count suicides by where they took place. Yamanashi has the Aokigahara Jukai wooded area known to be a magnet for those wishing to commit suicide.
In June 2007, the government formulated suicide-prevention guidelines, featuring a target to cut the suicide rate by more than 20 percent by 2016.
The package was formulated at a time when the number of suicides topped 30,000 in 2006 for nine years in a row. It was Japan's first comprehensive anti-suicide guideline based on the basic suicide prevention law put into place in October 2006.
==Kyodo
