Posted on 03/10/2006 11:30:40 AM PST by freepatriot32
TOKYO - Nine people in two groups were found asphyxiated in sealed cars, apparently the latest cases of group suicides that have surged in Japan, police said Friday.
Six bodies _ five men and one woman in their 20s _ were discovered early Friday in a car in Chichibu, about 50 miles northwest of Tokyo, said Ichiro Fukumoto, a spokesman with Chichibu police.
Fukumoto said three charcoal burners were still smoking in the car when the bodies were found, and the windows had been sealed with tape. Authorities thought the six met over the Internet before dying together in a forested area Thursday night.
A separate group of three bodies _ one man and two women _ was discovered Wednesday in Aomori, 360 miles northeast of Tokyo, a police official said on condition of anonymity because of department rules.
The three, in their 20s and 30s, also died by inhaling charcoal fumes in a car. Kyodo News agency reported they had met in a hospital and had told others they wanted to die.
Their deaths were the latest in a rash of group suicides in Japan, particularly those set up between strangers over the Internet.
A record 91 people died in 34 Internet-linked suicide cases last year, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, the National Police Agency reported last month. The number of Internet suicide pacts has almost tripled from 2003, when the agency started keeping records.
Suicide pacts have been made over the Internet since at least the late 1990s, and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands.
But especially large numbers have occurred in Japan, where suicide rates are among the world's highest. More than 32,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2004.
Buh-bye, kooks.
I saw the Mass suicides line and thought America was cleaning up after itself, but this is in Japan.
Growing upduring the 80's everyone was running around telling us how "perfect" the Japanese were. What gives?
That's bizarre as hell!
Holding a mass suicide with people you met OVER the Internet?!
Yikes!
Are they sure it wasn't the Judean People's Front Crack Suicide Squad?
Sayonara in this case.
"Everyone" was the same group of yutzes who decided that giving lots of standardized tests and requiring teachers to do lots of extra paperwork would result in better schools....
Japanese culture can come up with some very, very strange things -- like, "rent-a-kid" services for parents whose own children are too busy to visit them.
you know for being rated one of the most intelligent societies in the world, they do alot of dumb things.
hibachi - charcoal - japanese hmmmmmm??
As long as they're not crash-diving into our aircraft carriers, who cares?
Hot women, strange society
Kinda like the Victorians, I suspect. If you must present a perfect image you can't live up to, you probably ultimately consider drastic ways out of the lie you must live.
Suicide is nothing new to the Japanese culture. Wonder if it's still considered "honorable"?
Excerpt:
"The new guidelines mean that providers can pass on information without fear of violating rules on freedom of expression and privacy, says Yoshikuni Masuyama, deputy director of the National Police Agency Cyber-Crime Division."
Just spent a week in Tokyo. True on both accounts.
Didn't that happen here, and one of the guys who urged his 'net pals to join him was actually just pushing people to kill themselves for his own pleasure? Serial killing by proxy, so to speak.
Or am I thinking urban legend? I thought the guy was arrested. Yes, I'm too lazy to even type this into a search.
Lucky you. Asian women are sexy. Are the Japanese women friendly to Americans? I would think a Japanese woman would make a good wife.
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