For the past two weeks there have been projections about a spike in juvenile suicides as the new school term approached. Suicides among junior high and high school students rise around Sept. 1, and teachers and parents were urged to pay close attention to young people.
Naturally, the media paid close attention, and as of Sept. 3, two days after most schools reopened for classes, police said that in the Tokyo metropolitan area there had been three cases of what appeared to be suicide by persons under 18 and one attempted suicide by a person under 18. Various media outlets reported these deaths and even went into detail, despite warnings from the World Health Organization that such publicity can trigger other suicides.
The main source of the fear regarding juvenile suicides at this time of year is a 2015 Cabinet Office study that reported 18,048 Japanese people under the age of 19 killed themselves between 1972 and 2013. Of these, 317 died on either Aug. 31, Sept. 1 or Sept. 2, an average of 105 for each of the three days over the 40 years surveyed. For the rest of the calendar year, the average would be 49 for each day, or half as many.