Suicide in Japan: Part Five
- Incorrectly Recorded Suicides

J. Sean Curtin (Fellow, GLOCOM)

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.

In some cases, determining whether or not a death was the result of suicide is a difficult task for the police and coroner. Media reports indicate that it is not uncommon for some suspected suicides to be recorded as accidents, especially when the victim has taken care to conceal their true intent or there is insufficient evidence to clearly prove suicide. Less frequent are case where suicide is incorrectly noted on the death certificate. These kinds of problems make suicide statistics in Japan, and all other countries, less than accurate.

Sometimes a suicide is recorded as an accident when there is no conclusive evidence to indicate it. For example, it is often difficult to determine if a late-night car accident, such a vehicle hitting a tree, was the result of the deceased falling asleep at the wheel or a deliberate act by the driver. Because all Japanese life insurance policies have some form of suicide exemption clause, there are people who deliberately try to conceal their actions by faking an accident in order for their beneficiaries to receive an undisputed insurance payout.

At the other end of the spectrum, in recent years the Japanese media has criticized the police in some rural areas for sometimes too readily determining the cause of death as suicide when there are suspicious circumstances surrounding an incident. Critics of rural police forces claim that they sometimes do this to cut down on paperwork. Once suicide is noted on the death certificate, the police investigation is normally completed.

The most recent example of this kind of case came to public attention in October 2003, when it was learned that a prison-inmate had confessed to a 1980 murder that the police had determined was a suicide. The unnamed inmate admitted to police that he murdered a young 21-year-old man, Yoshiki Koyama, in March 1980 by tying up Koyama's hands and feet with rope and throwing him alive off the Ikusaka dam in Nagano Prefecture. Despite the fact that police found the victim with his hands and feet bound up with rope, they concluded that he had committed suicide. Koyama's family long maintained that there was no reason for their son to take his own life, but the police quickly closed the case.

In April 2000, the inmate, who was serving time in an Aichi prison for a drug conviction, wrote a letter to the Nagano Prefectural Police confessing to the crime. The police took three years to determine that he had actually killed Koyama, but were unable to charge the prisoner with the murder because the 15-year statue of limitations on the case had expired in 1995. The man was later released from prison and in October 2003 gave an interview to the Yomiuri Shimbun about the crime.

The victim's family was ineligible for government compensation as the law which governs grants to family members of crime victims was enacted in January 1981, which was after the crime was committed. The murderer could not be tried because of the 15-year limitation on prosecutorial action and because he confessed to the crime about a month after the 20-year statute of limitations for civil lawsuits had expired, the family was unable to pursue a civil action. However, Nagano Prefectural Police did eventually apologize to the victim's family for mistakenly concluding that their son had committed suicide.

Deaths in which murder is recorded as suicide appear to be relatively rare and it seems far more common for a suicide to be recorded as an accident. Both these kinds of cases illustrate the accuracy problem with suicide statistics, especially in countries where there is a financial incentive to conceal suicide or social stigma attached to it.

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.