A suicide prevention group will dispatch a drone to monitor remote areas around Tojinbo in Sakai, Fukui Prefecture — whose lonely cliffs remain romanticized in popular imagination as a destination where people go to end their lives — in the hopes that the effort will help reduce the suicide rate.

Retired police officer Yukio Shige, the 73-year-old head of the nonprofit group, said that although there has been a decline in the total number of people leaping off the cliffs in recent years, suicide remains a persistent problem.

"This year we have managed to stop five people from committing suicide but five is a very small number; it's only one per month," Shige said, adding that far more still think about killing themselves.