young girls 11 and 12 could even consider the thought of leaping together to their death from a 7th or 8th floor level. Who taught them to place their shoes neatly where they jumped? I wonder what was in their note, they left behind? Were they bullied? Why was LIFE SO unbearable that they could not get help, where were their parents? Where were their friends?
I had a friend tell me, she lived in Japan for a while, during her high school years. She told me she had considered jumping to her death, if her parents did not return her to the USA to finish school. She said the kids were so far advanced, that she felt blame for keeping her classmates back, despite the fact, there had been no blame, directed at her. The pressure of school there was so intense that to her leaving Japan or death were her only alternatives.
School there is a totally different mind set there. I have read about musicians who were juniors in high school, actually cutting an album, they were so good, and yet, after high school graduation, giving up the music business, because their parents said there was no future in it. How Corporations like SONY, or Toyota would come to the school scouting for future employees. (Here in the USA its a College scouting for athletes.)
There is a drive there to be the best one can be, and the pressure to go along with it. Most of the suicides in Japan are either elderly or high school kids. One has to ask, why is that? If someone makes a major mistake that effects a lot of people, they maybe re-assigned or given a job way below their performance level, but they can live with that..
In High School, the idea of failure .. is one that students would rather not have to contemplate, and some have simply gone to the roofs at school and leaped to their deaths. Too many have. Its something Japan has been trying to remedy... for a long, long time, and yet here it is in the headlines again.
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