Japan reports suicides faster and more accurately than anywhere else in the world. Unlike most countries, here they are compiled at the end of every month. During the Covid pandemic the numbers have told a disturbing story.

In 2020, for the first time in 11 years, suicide rates in Japan went up. Most surprising, while male suicides fell slightly, rates among women surged nearly 15%.

In one month, October, the female suicide rate in Japan went up by more than 70%, compared with the same month in the previous year.

What is going on? And why does the Covid pandemic appear to be hitting women so much worse than men?

Warning: Some may find the content of this story upsetting

Meeting face-to-face with a young woman who has repeatedly tried to kill herself is a troubling experience. It has given me new respect for those who work on suicide prevention.

I am sitting in a walk-in centre in Yokohama’s red-light district, run by a suicide prevention charity called the Bond Project.

Across the table is a 19-year-old woman, with bobbed hair. She sits motionless.

Quietly, without any emotion, she starts to tell me her story. It started when she was 15, she says. Her older brother began violently abusing her. Eventually she ran away from home, but it didn’t end the pain and the loneliness.

Ending her life seemed the only way out.

“From about this time last year I have been in and out of hospital many times,” she tells me. “I tried many times to kill myself, but I couldn’t succeed, so now I guess I have given up trying to die.”

What stopped her was the intervention of the Bond Project. They found her a safe place to live, and began giving her intensive counselling.

Jun Tachibana is the founder of the Bond Project. She is a tough woman in her 40s with relentless optimism.

Jun Tachibana
image captionMs Tachibana hopes the Bond Project provides women with the help they need
“When girls are in real trouble and in pain, they really don’t know what to do,” she says. “We are here, ready to listen to them, to tell them – we are here with you.”

Ms Tachibana says Covid seems to be pushing those who are already vulnerable closer to the edge. She describes some of the harrowing calls her staff have received in recent months.

“We hear lots of ‘I want to die’ and ‘I have no place to go’,” she says. “They say ‘It is so painful, I am so lonely I want to disappear’.”

For those suffering physical or sexual abuse, Covid has made the situation much worse.

“A girl I talked to the other day said she is getting sexually harassed by her father,” Ms Tachibana tells me. “But because of Covid her father is not working so much and is at home a lot, so there is no escape from him.”