Boy gives Nov. 11th suicide deadline in letter to the Education Minister.

Yesterday, Minister of Education Bunmei Ibuki received a letter from an anonymous school boy.

"I hereby declare that I will commit suicide on Saturday, Nov. 11. I wrote this letter because it's hard to live," it read.

A recent survey of 13,000 Japanese school kids showed that more than half of them don't think bullies are ever at fault. Usually, the perpetrators are the more popular kids in class, right? So I guess they're sticking by that. The same survey showed that a fifth of kids admitted that they would not consult anybody should they be on the victim end. Even worse, more than half of junior high school kids believed that some kids deserved to be picked on. 

In 2005, over 20,000 cases were reported in elementary through high schools nationwide. 105 kids committed suicide because of bullying that same year.

Bullying most often takes the form of physical assault, humiliation, threats, and taking money. Lots of money, hundreds of thousands of yen, which kids often have to steal from their parents. The kid who wrote the letter to the Minister claimed to have had his pants pulled down in public. He also consulted a teacher but got absolutely no help.

Will the decision of the Education Ministry to expose this letter to the public stop one little boy from taking his life?

Find out on November 11th.

Comments

[My Own Biggest Fan]

I work in a junior high school in Shibuya-ku. We took this letter very seriously and have sent a letter out to our student's parents. I keep my eyes open around our school and I don't believe that our school has any more problems than a similar one in Canada, where I am from. I hear that teachers are sometimes involved in the bullying here in Japan and the thought makes me sick. I can't see any of my co-workers, Japanese or Gaijin, doing that.