As graduation ceremonies get under way at schools across Japan this month, 1,029 students will not be graduating — not this year, not ever. That is the number of students who committed suicide last year, according to statistics released by the National Police Agency earlier this month. Though, overall, the number of suicides declined by 3.3 percent last year, suicides by students increased by nearly 11 percent.
Those figures include 529 university students and 269 high school students, and an unspecified number of other students. The numbers are just part of the total number of people who commit suicide in Japan every year. The total has remained over 30,000 suicides a year for the last 14 consecutive years.
From suicide notes and other evidence, some of the reasons students committed suicide were evident: 140 committed suicide due to academic underachievement and 136 did so because of worries about their future after school. The reasons for others, unfortunately, are more difficult to discern. School issues accounted for 429 cases, an average of over one suicide per day.