A minivan in which six bodies were found March 9 at a police station parking lot in Sayama、Saitama Prefecture

The bodies belonged to five men and one woman, all in their 20s, police said. Authorities suspected the six met over the Internet before dying together March 9 in a forested area in Saitama Prefecture.

In a similar case March 7, a man and two women in their 20s and 30s were found dead in Aomori Prefecture. The three also died by inhaling charcoal fumes in a car, and police suspected suicide.

Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s, and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. But in Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world's highest, officials are worried about a recent spate of such deaths.

A record 91 people died in 34 Internet-linked suicide cases last year, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, the National Police Agency reported last month. The number of Internet suicide pacts has almost tripled from 2003, when the agency started keeping records.

"Depressed young people and the Internet -- it's a very dangerous mix," said Mafumi Usui, a psychology professor at Niigata Seiryo University.

"Many young people try to kill themselves, but can't carry through. But when a group of strangers meet on an Internet suicide site, and someone suggests a specific way to die . . . that's the dangerous dynamic behind the recent group suicides," Usui said.

The Japan Times Weekly: March 18, 2006
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