The basic law to cope with Japan's high suicide rate went into force in 2006. Then in 2007, the government adopted an outline of policies to deal with this serious social problem. But the government was slow in tackling the problem and even after the outline was adopted, ministries and agencies failed to take a unified approach to reduce the number of suicides.
2011 marked the 14th straight year that the number of suicides topped 30,000. A January 2012 poll by the Cabinet Office shows that the central and local governments should make greater efforts to enlighten citizens about the nation's suicide problem.
It found that 34 percent of those polled did not know that the number of suicides had topped 30,000 every year for 14 years in a row. The corresponding figure was about 50 percent among the pollees who were in their 20s and 30s.