By George Nishiyama
Tokyo - The number of suicides in Japan is likely to have exceeded 30 000 for the eighth straight year in 2005, and analysts say a widening income gap is partly to blame for the nation's stubbornly high suicide rate.
A Health Ministry official said on Wednesday that there were 28 240 cases of suicides in the January-November period last year, which is likely to mean the number compiled separately by police, and used by the government as the official count, will top 30 000 for all of 2005 given past trends.
Suicides rose in 1998 amid an economic slump and the number of those who take their lives has exceeded 30 000 every year since then.
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"The bulk of the increase since 1998 is suicides by men who are middle-aged or older and have either been laid off or whose businesses have failed," said Masahiro Yamada, a professor at Tokyo Gakugei University.
In 2004, there were 32 325 suicides in Japan, or 25,3 per 100 000 people, according to government data.
Males accounted for over two-thirds of the total and health problems were the most common reason, followed by economic problems.
According to the World Health Organisation, the suicide rate in Japan was 24.1 per 100 000 people in 2000, the second-highest among Group of Eight industrialised countries after Russia's 39,4.
Rates for other G8 countries included 18,4 in France and 10,4 in the United States.
Yamada, who has written that an income gap in Japan has widened recently following the breakdown of a traditional social safety net such as lifetime employment, said a rising risk of dropping out of the middle class was behind the high suicide rate.
He said counselling and offering therapy would not prevent suicides induced by such fears.
In a bid to bring down the number of suicides to pre-1998 levels over the next 10 years, the government unveiled a package of measures in December.
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