Japan has appointed a Minister of Loneliness | Hacker News Reader

Japan has appointed a Minister of Loneliness

insider.com

63 points_zzaw18 comments

Just one of them?

They must be lonely.

I was surprised to hear it was female suicide rates that increased. Although it makes sense why, I figured it was lonely dudes who just gave up as per the usual belief.

these are problems easily solved by immigration. immigration results in vibrant cities look at NY, london & Paris. Immigration would counter low birth rates. Also because of different ideas that come in with immigrants, the native population will find other people to connect with. you're no longer relegated to video games etc as your hobbies.

I wouldn't hold those cities you mention in high regard... They are festering crime walhallas in their respective countries.

Not going to speak for Europe but you're very wrong about New York.

NY's crime rate is almost 4x lower than the worst metro areas in the US according to the FBI. NY isn't even listed among the top 50 worst cities.

Yes you are right. I checked later and Indeed the crime rates are lower.

It's good that they are trying to solve this, but I'm not sure how much this can help.

Most suicide cases I believe come from excessive work, and Japan has a culture around this. This new minister's job is to effectively break part of the Japanese culture that's deeply embedded in their history.

This is definitely not true. Here's the 2020 report from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare:

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/r2h-1-5.pdf

The leading reason for suicide is, by far, health problems. After that, you have economic/living situation, then domestic problems, then work-related problems ranking 4th.

Obviously, there could be overlap in some situations, but I think it's clear that "most" suicides do not stem from excessive work.

The top health problem is mental health. I believe many of them came from the fact we should work to live.

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/h28h-2-02.pdf

Unless you can point out where the statistics say that, your belief is just speculation. I've skimmed over the data and didn't see anything about attributing depression to work problems. (If you have other sources regarding this, please link them.)

Table 2-3 shows the breakdown of "health problems," and depression is at about 40%. Even if all of those were due to overwork, this is only 40% of the "health problems" category, which is not enough to support a claim that "most suicides come from excessive work." For sure, there may be many cases that do, but there are no clear numbers in that regard. Personally, I feel such claims only reinforce the typical stereotypes about Japan rather than try to understand the actual situation.

Really strange that it's purely due to health problems, because they have one of the best health systems I've ever seen.

I was thinking more on the root causes of those health problems, which might or might not be work related, that's just a belief of mine (that's why I provided no sources and wasn't very assertive)

> Most suicide cases I believe come from excessive work,

I would be very surprised if this is the case... Any data to back it up?

I’ve heard this too. They have a term for dying due to being overworked called Karoshi. People who specifically commit suicide due to overwork are called Karojisatsu.

This site has some stats on suicide due to overwork, but it doesn’t have a comparison to suicide due to other reasons. It’s definitely a thing though!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/622325/japan-work-relate...

No data sorry, just a belief from Japan documentaries stating that people work a lot more than the usual 8h a day and quite a strange culture to not leave the office until your boss does, which is usually really late (can't really say an estimate, I've seen 8pm but also 10pm sometimes).

Are they productive or they just work to satisfy social pressure?

Nobody's productive sitting in an office for 12 hours. There's an unspoken rule about showing up before your boss does and leaving after he leaves, it's a huge time waster.

I hope he's not lonely in his job...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com