{{Tadahiro Matsushita, the Japanese Minister of Financial Services commited suicide over an article that was about to be published in a magazine.}}<\/p>\n
According to Jiji News and other sources, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, was getting ready to print a story involving Matsushita and an affair involving a woman. Shukan Shincho editors were not available to comment. <\/p>\n
The Minister was found dead september 10, on World Suicide Prevention Day in what police are investigating as a suicide. He allegedly hung himself in his own home. <\/p>\n
He would not be the first Japanese government minister to kill himself and he won\u2019t be the last. It was reported that he was struggling with the pressures of his job. <\/p>\n
The last time a cabinet minister committed suicide was in 2007, when agriculture minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka hung himself after allegations of fiscal misconduct. <\/p>\n
The timing of Matsushita’s death underlines the scale of Japan’s suicide problem. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to the World Health Organization. <\/p>\n
Despite laws and outlines adopted by the government to tackle Japan\u2019s high suicide rate, the number of suicides has remained over 30,000 per year for 14 years. <\/p>\n
While there have been rises and ebbs, the numbers stay high even as Japan\u2019s population continues to shrink.<\/p>\n
The Japanese word for the act is remarkably straight-forward: \u81ea\u6bba (ji-satsu). It literally means \u201ckill\u201d (\u6bba) \u201coneself\u201c(\u81ea)\u201d. <\/p>\n
Suicide in Japan has a long tradition of being a means of apology, protest, means of taking revenge, and dealing with illness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Tadahiro Matsushita, the Japanese Minister of Financial Services commited suicide over an article that was about to be published in a magazine.}} According to Jiji News and other sources, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, was getting ready to print a story involving Matsushita and an affair involving a woman. Shukan Shincho editors were not available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}