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Police anonymous tip hotline begins accepting child abuse reports

Child abuse reports were not originally included in the hotline’s purview, as under the Child Welfare Act citizens who discover child abuse are required to report it to a child consultation center. Arrests were made in 307 child abuse cases in Japan in 2008 — the most since statistics began being collected in 1999 — though the actual number of cases may be higher, as abuse is often within families and many find it difficult to come forward.

The move may be partly in response to the case of 7-year-old Kaito Okamoto, whose parents stand accused of beating him to death on Jan. 24. A nearby resident had apparently been hearing angry and crying voices from the boy’s home for more than a year before Kaito’s death, while his school had noticed Kaito was being abused in September last year.

The NPA started the anonymous tip hotline system — operated by a non-governmental organization — in October 2007, and also began accepting reports over the Internet in July last year. Since the service began, it has logged 1,396 tips, resulting in the arrest and prosecution of 36 people in 12 cases. Two callers have received cash rewards.

The hotline can be reached toll-free at 0120-924-839 Monday to Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. Internet reports can be made at http://www.tokumei.or.jp (Japanese only).

“Special yearend services kicked off Tuesday at 136 municipalities and 78 Hello Work job-placement centers in 23 prefectures to offer counseling for unemployed people.”

This quotation is taken from an anteresting article in the Japan TImes: Special job services open.

It goes on to say, “”

Most of the emergency counseling services were to end Wednesday, but the cities of Morioka, in Iwate Prefecture, Miyazaki and Tokyo will offer services through Jan. 3.

At the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center in Shibuya Ward, which the Tokyo Metropolitan Government began using Monday as a temporary shelter for a maximum 500 unemployed people, 469, including seven women, had checked in as of 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Since the center has almost reached its capacity, the metropolitan government was to start using a separate lodging facility inside the center that can accommodate up to 300 people from Wednesday, officials said.

Physicians, lawyers and other professionals are providing advisory services on health, employment and debts at the center.

A 63-year-old man, who had been working at a book-binding factory until he lost his job last week, is among the people staying at the center. He had been sleeping in saunas after he could no longer afford to pay rent and had to leave his apartment in May 2007.

“I cannot rent a new apartment because I have no one who will become a guarantor for me. I hope I can get a room by obtaining public assistance,” he said.

In a counseling service center in Nagoya a 49-year-old man said he has been sleeping in internet cafes or in his car for the past four months.

He is unable to obtain welfare benefits because he owns a car, but he cannot abandon it because he needs it for his day-labor job. “It’s so cold (sleeping) in the car and I could no longer stand it,” he said.

Meanwhile, some of the antipoverty campaigners who built a tent village in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park last year have set up tents in a park near Hello Work Shinjuku for laid off workers.

The tent village last year drew media attention to the problem of temporary workers who live in company dormitories and then lose their accommodation when their employers terminate their contracts.”

This seems to mark a change in policy from the previous administration’s attitude towards the unemployed in Japan and the need for all year around attention to the stress and depression that unemployed people experience here. Much more proactive solutions need to be into place in the coming new year to address more effectively the problems of unemployment, fear of losing work, depression and the tragic loss of life through suicide in Japan. But at least it is one good step in the right direction. Much more needs to be done to say these sons and daughters of Japan.

On this topic The Mainichi also published an article focusing on hope that the local government shelters and counseling are providing at this cold time of year:

Laid-off workers at temporary shelters in Tokyo express hope, anxiety for New Year

A man seeks advice from members of a group set up by citizens groups and labor unions to help people who have lost their jobs at a park in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. (Mainichi)

Those who are staying at New Year’s shelters for laid-off workers in Tokyo have expressed hope and anxiety about their livelihood and job-hunting.

“Last year, I saw a temporary shelter for laid-off workers (in the news) while sitting under the kotatsu (a small table with an electric heater underneath) at home. I never imagined I would stay at a similar facility,” said a 31-year-old man who was laid off by a mobile phone factory in the northern Kanto area in February. “I want to secure a home by all means and hunt for jobs.”

An excellent article from the Associated Press and one which is refreshing in that writer, Ms Tomoko A Hosaka, points to the need for both political will and public education to help bring about practical and proactive well funded support schemes and programs to help those who are under experiencing extreme financial difficulties and unemployment. It is refreshing to see an article on suicide in Japan focus on the fact that it takes political will for any nation to bring about any significant lowering of its suicide rate.

To my knowledge this is the first media article in English that has ever focused on the need for effective well funded and proactive suicide prevention policy and programs at both local and governmental levels, as well as clearly debunking the myths that a lot of western reporters have propagated that stereotype both Japanese people and groundless assertions that the reasons behind the unnecessarily high and tragic numbers of people who have committed suicide in Japan, particularly over the last 12 years since the bursting of the economic bubble, are in some way related to historical practices such as seppuku, bushido spirit or the kamikaze pilots.

As a psychologist and psychotherapist here in Tokyo I have been working for just over two decades with people who are suffering depression and feeling suicidal because, among other reasons, there have no hope of starting again if they have lost their jobs or gone bankrupt or, if there are still employed, are under great stress and in a state of panic that leads, as I am sure you know, to work harder to keep their jobs and so to overwork and karoshi and karo-jisatsu. During that time it has been very frustrating at times to read poorly researched and uncaring reports in both the English and Japanese media reports that usually followed the announcement of the annual suicide figures did not focus on the deeper economic and social factors behind the problem of too high suicide rates in modern Japan.

KURIHARA, Miyagi (AP) — Four years ago, suicides in this northern city were running at nearly double the national rate, and as the global financial meltdown hit Japan, they might have been expected to go even higher.

But Kurihara has fought back, with impressive results.

The reason is simple — a recognition that Japan’s famously high suicide rate is not so much a feature of Japanese culture, drawing from samurai or kamikaze traditions, but is uniquely woven into the health of the economy.

So instead of treating the suicidal just for depression, as has long been the practice, the city offers financial and legal counseling, along with “hope loans” — or “nozomi” loans in Japanese — to get the needy out of debt.

“The suicide rate in Kurihara fell from 48.6 per 100,000 people in 2005 to 27.5 in 2007, and city officials expect it to decline again this year, even as the rate rises nationwide.”

Yahoo News: For suicidal Japanese, help is finally at hand

Google News: For suicidal Japanese, help is finally at hand

Bing: For suicial Japanese, help is finally at hand

I would also like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles dealing with mental health issues in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal.

Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service):

Japan: 0120-738-556

Tokyo: 3264 4343

AMDA International Medical Information Center:

http://amda-imic.com/

Tokyo Counseling Services:

http://tokyocounseling.com

http://tokyocounseling.com/english/

http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/

http://www.counselingjapan.com/

Tragedy exposes need to care more for carers’ mental well-being.

Japan Times

“There are 4.5 million people aged 65 or older requiring care in Japan, approximately 75 percent of whom are being looked after by a relative.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan estimates that 25 percent of home carers suffer from moderate depression; and that when those carers reach the age of 50, some 20 percent of them express the desire to die themselves.

There is considerable government assistance available for carers in Japan, and awareness of the needs of the elderly is high. But the issue of carers’ depression has not had sufficient airing, especially in a country with a neo-Confucian ethic, according to which children (that is usually a daughter, or the wife of the eldest son) take care of a sick or dying parent.”

The new administration in Japan, through the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, has released figures for the national poverty rate in Japan for the first time ever. The previous LDP administration not only failed to address this problem it actually contributed to it in many ways, including cutting a single-parent allowance of about ¥23,000 a month. It is good to see the new administration and in particular the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry so proactively addressing the the issues of child poverty and family poverty in Japan, particular at a time when the gap between rich and poor is growing. The following extracts are taken from one of the Japans Times articles on poverty in Japan first published in October 2009:

First ever poverty rate released by ministry stands at relatively high 15.7%

By NATSUKO FUKUE
Staff writer Japan Times

“The national poverty rate stood at 15.7 percent in 2006, according to first-ever figures released Tuesday by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, a fairly high rate for a developed country.

The poverty rate for children was 14.2 percent that year, the ministry said. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines households with less than half the median national disposable income as poor. For Japan it was ¥1.14 million in 2006.

The OECD has published the poverty rates for member countries through 2004, but the Japanese government had not previously calculated the rate.

The rate in Japan “is quite high among the OECD countries,” welfare minister Akira Nagatsuma said at a news conference.

According to an OECD report on poverty rates in the mid-2000s, Japan had the fourth-highest rate of relative poverty among OECD member countries.

“Once the poverty rate is announced (by the government), you will be able to check if the figure goes up or down under the administration,” welfare parliamentary secretary Kazunori Yamanoi said.

Nagatsuma stressed that the poverty rate for single-parent households is particularly high in Japan at 58.7 percent in 2004, according to OECD figures.

‘It’s the worst in the member countries,” he said, adding that the government will hammer out measures to improve the lives of children living in relative poverty.

Nagatsuma said the government will strive to cut the poverty rate after estimating how steps to support children affect household finances. In April, the previous administration ended a single-parent allowance of about ¥23,000 a month despite the country’s high child-poverty rate, drawing fire from welfare experts.

The Hatoyama administration plans to reinstate the allowance in December and is expected to eventually provide child allowances totaling ¥26,000 per child per month, and to scrap tuition for high school students.”

Rika Kayama - Japanese Psychiatrist

“What kind of changes have taken place in psychiatry in the last 23 years?

“People’s understanding of psychiatry has improved a great deal. They don’t regard psychiatry as special anymore, and they are at ease to see a psychiatrist. That’s a good change. We see patients of all ages and backgrounds. Overall, the number of patients suffering serious mental illnesses has fallen and mild cases of illnesses have increased, though psychiatrists still don’t know why. Decades ago, the difference between people who do and don’t have mental illnesses appeared clear. It is now becoming less clear.”

This quote and other sections of an interview with the psychiatrist Rika Kayama is useful as she shows that stigma about depression and other mental illness in Japan is no longer the problem it once was. Also she clearly shows the direct link between unemployment and bankruptcy and the too high annual suicide rates in Japan:

What do you make of the fact that more than 30,000 people have committed suicide annually in Japan in each of the past 11 years?

It is very serious. The number of people who killed themselves exceeded 30,000 in 1997, when the economy hit the bottom and the number of unemployed and bankrupt people increased. After that, the economy seemed to recover due to structural reform. However, 2003 saw a record number of suicides. Even though the economy recovered, more people killed themselves. This is rich in irony. Since then, we’ve realized that not just economic problems but also uneasiness and lack of trust among people drive them into isolation and lead them tocommit suicide. Recently, public sentiment has shifted to the view that measures to prevent suicide should involve not only creating employment but also fostering in people a healthy mentality. This has been reflected in the government’s enacting of the Basic Suicide Prevention Law in 2006.”

For the full interview with Dr Kayama (her pen name) see this link from the Japan TImes on:

““Finding satisfaction in being ourselves”
Growing access to information and the ease with which we can compare ourselves to others is making people less happy in life, says psychiatrist Rika Kayama

By ERIKO ARITA
Staff writer Japan Times

Alarmed by a rise in child abuse cases, medical specialists, social workers and nurses have recently joined forces to establish a new study body.

The group, the Japanese Medical Society on Child Abuse and Neglect, held its inaugural meeting last month in Kitakyushu.

Worldwide and in Japan the vast majority of the victims of domestic violence are women and children. The following article from the Japan TImes puts forward a lot of unproven and false assertions that this is no so and implies that women in Japan are manipulating Domestic Violence Law to abduct their own children.

“The problem is that Japanese courts and other governmental agencies appear to deal with domestic violence by applying two simple rules of thumb: that domestic violence is only committed by men against women and children, and that almost any conduct (by men) constitutes domestic violence.” Japan Times

This is simply not true and my experience as  a mental health care professional of over 20 years in Japan shows me that there is even greater need for stronger and better protection of women in abusive relationships. The following links to media reports and articles over the last year or so supports this view:

As in all countries in the world, there is a lot of domestic violence in Japan too. For anyone interested in the severe problems faced by victims of domestic violence in Japan check out this report in April this year from Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem.

http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/japanese-women-hit-back-at-domestic-abuse-25-apr-09/17189639

Although the report is well done well researched it seems to imply at the end that nothing is going to chance for a long time about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.

Here, as in any other country in the world historically, there has been domestic violence in all types of societies, not in the least of course in societies and cultures that have taken a sexist (’paternalistic’) view that women were not as equal as men and could be beaten and suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands.

Now, thanks to the work of volunteer women’s groups and activist lawyers in Japan who have worked hard against this problem of violence against women and children in their homes, the Japanese government enacted the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims in 2001. This was the first official recognition by Japanese politicians and law makers in Japanese history that domestic violence is in fact a crime. As a first step it was an important recognition of the widespread problem of spousal violence against women in Japanese homes throughout Japan. However there was considerable criticism that the low financial fines on Japanese husbands who attack their wives and the limit of only 1 month long restraining orders on men who abused their wives and children did not go far enough to provide Japanese women with a credible degree of legal protection and safety from further violent attacks. The law was revised to some extent in 2004 but still met with criticism as not going far enough to protect the victims of domestic and also for not focusing on the men who are being violent toward their wives and children:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20041204f2.html

Amendments to the Domestic Violence Prevention Act were passed and became law in July 2007 but did not receive so much attention in the media as would have been desirable:

http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4785391/

However more and more Japanese women are taking action in Japan and, like the women featured in the video above, are no longer to suffer without protest former generations have had to do without any effective legal protection. The following links are to articles on domestic violence and National Police Agency reports that have appeared in the media this year that show that modern Japanese women in 21st century Japan are standing up against violent husbands and using the existing laws to protect themselves and their children:

http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4723531/

http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4857497/

These brave women need and deserve stronger and even more effective legal protection for themselves and the children they are trying to protect from their own fathers hands. There needs also to be considerable public and national political will focused on providing Japanese wives and partners with safe emergency residences and legally protected abuse shelters. I think it is also of vital importance that serious decisions to provide and implement official funding to ensure that refuge and protection to all women who are suffering domestic violence of all forms.

Andrew Grimes

Tokyo Counseling Services

http://tokyocounseling.com/english/

http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/

http://counselingjapan.com/