"The terrible thing about the Internet is that misinformation that spreads in one country can spread to other countries in an instant. Today, on the Chinese edition of the "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" website (hereinafter referred to as "Nikkei Chinese Network"), a "rumor-busting article" entitled "This is a rumor that Japan is a suicidal power" appeared. The author, Hiroshi Murayama, made the above remarks in this article, and said that the information circulating on the Chinese Internet that "Japan is the country with the highest suicide rate in the world" is wrong, and this information is one of the misinformation that spread from Japan to China.
Screenshot of the Nikkei Chinese network report
In fact, since December last year, the Nikkei Chinese network has done a set of debunking articles, and this article discussing whether Japan is a suicide power is the fifth article in the series, released on May 5, after which there were four articles such as "Japan Sank", "Sony Collapse", "Japanese People Began to Immigrate to China in Large Numbers", and "Japanese Media Nonsense". At present, the article "This is a rumor that Japan is a big country committing suicide" is only seen on the Nikkei Chinese network, and it has not been published in the Japanese edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Screenshot of the Nikkei Chinese network series of reports
The author of this series of "rumor-busting texts" of the Nikkei Chinese Network is Hiroshi Murayama, who is an editorial board member of the Nikkei Chinese Network. In addition to the Nikkei Chinese Network, Hiroshi Murayama has also published many articles on Sino-Japanese relations in other Chinese media such as Lianhe Zaobao.
In the latest issue, the authors say that "Japan's suicide rate is the highest in the world" is a misinformation circulating online in China. Citing data from the World Health Organization (WHO), he said that if the suicide rate is calculated according to the "number of suicides per 100,000 people", Japan ranked 14th in the world with 18.5 in 2016, the highest number 1 was Lithuania at 31.9, the second place was Russia's 31st, and South Korea ranked 4th with 26.9. He said that among European and American countries, France's suicide rate is 17.7 and that of the United States is 15.3, so "Japan is not particularly prominent among developed countries."
But at the same time, he also showed that this mistake did not occur in China, but was misinformed from Japan to China. The authors said that the Internet in Japan is still full of voices such as "the government has falsified statistics on the number of suicides in order to publicize the falsification of the number of suicides"; The spread of false information that "the number of suicides in Japan is increasing" can be said to reflect the dissatisfaction of Japanese netizens with the real society, and it can also be said that it is criticizing the government's insufficient measures to prevent suicide.
After this article was issued, Huanhuan has not seen a corresponding Japanese version of the report, and there are no Japanese netizens on Japanese Twitter and the Japanese Internet discussing that "Japan's suicide rate is the highest in the world" news is "rumors circulating on the Chinese Internet". But in fact, "Japan's suicide rate is high" and "Japan is a big country of suicide" and other voices have been discussed by many Japanese people, especially on May 4, near Umeda Station in the center of Osaka, Japan, another person jumped off a building to commit suicide, so there are many Japanese netizens on Twitter discussing the topic of Japan's suicide rate.
タツノコ: Someone in Osaka committed suicide by jumping off a building... Reiwa just started with such a terrible thing... Although Japan is a good country, compared with other countries, there are many people who commit suicide, so it is also called a "suicide country". A country where 1 in 100 people commit suicide can really be called a "good country"?
@kumacuma90: Japan is really a suicidal power. Although this was not the case in the past, after the popularization of mobile phones, an average of 30 people committed suicide in 1 day.
Masaki Yamamoto: Although it is a sad fact, Japan is indeed a big country that commits suicide. There are many people suffering from depression, which is also the current situation in Japan. It's not that cool.
Zhi りたいニュース: Every day, 100 people commit suicide, and Japan, as such a suicide power, really can't laugh.
It is also true that as these netizens said, even if Murayama believes that Japan is not the country with the highest suicide rate in the world, Japan's suicide rate is still at a high level in the world. Although data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan in 2019 showed that the number of suicides in Japan has declined for 9 consecutive years in 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare admits that the suicide rate in Japan is still high in developed countries.