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 to comment.
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.
He would not be the first Japanese government minister to kill himself and he won’t be the last. It was reported that he was struggling with the pressures of his job.
The last time a cabinet minister committed suicide was in 2007, when agriculture minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka hung himself after allegations of fiscal misconduct.
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.
Despite laws and outlines adopted by the government to tackle Japan’s high suicide rate, the number of suicides has remained over 30,000 per year for 14 years.
While there have been rises and ebbs, the numbers stay high even as Japan’s population continues to shrink.
The Japanese word for the act is remarkably straight-forward: 自殺 (ji-satsu). It literally means “kill” (殺) “oneself“(自)”.
Suicide in Japan has a long tradition of being a means of apology, protest, means of taking revenge, and dealing with illness.
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