Sadly, Japan is a country with a high suicide rate, at around 30,000 annually, which is approximately the same number as in the U.S. despite Japan having less than half the population. The situation is getting worse with the bad domestic economy, and it’s feared the number might be the highest ever this year. There’s one more sad death to report: former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa was found dead, presumably due to an overdose of sleeping pills. He’s the guy who gave a press conference at the February G7 summit in Rome while extremely inebriated, causing much embarrassment to Japan when videos of his slurred speech were broadcast all over the world. He’d supposedly been depressed after he lost his bid for reelection in the Japanese election in August.
