The Japanese Association of School Health

Original Article

ISSN ONLINE : 1880-2400

[School Health Vol.21, 25-32, 2025]

Bullying-Related Suicides among Japanese Elementary, Middle, and High School Students Using Newspaper Databases

Tohru Takizawa*

  • *Department of Social Welfare, Faculty of Health Science, Aomori University of Health and Welfare
  • 50-1 Mase Hamadate Aomori, Aomori 030-8505 Japan
  • t_takizawa@ms.auhw.ac.jp

[Received January 8, 2025; Accepted March 27, 2025]

Keywords:
school bullying, quantitative analysis, suicide prevention, third-party investigation committee

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Abstracts

Background: In Japan, suicide due to bullying has been a matter of strong public concern for half a century. However, there is almost no quantitative understanding of the actual situation. Japanese newspaper coverage of bullying suicides is polite and firm. The newspapers publish the main contents of the report by third-party committee together with the actual event.

Objective: This study quantitatively analyzes the statistics on suicide resulting from bullying as compiled from reporting in newspapers.

Methods: The data for this study comprise online newspaper reports over 10 years, 2012–2021. The term “bullying-related suicide” in these newspaper articles refers to cases in which a third-party committee had identified the occurrence of bullying. The subjects of analysis are Japanese elementary, junior high, and high school students. Statistics are tabulated on students’ gender and grade and the month and day of the week when the bullying-related suicide took place. Chi-square tests were conducted to analyze the presence or absence of bullying vis-à-vis the sexes/grades of the students.

Results: The results for the 98 identified cases of suicide due to bullying are as follows. In junior high and high school, male students outnumbered female students. And the grade with the highest number of bullying-related suicides was eighth grade. In terms of month, the most cases, 12, occurred in July, and the majority of cases, 19, occurred on Mondays and Wednesdays. The chi-square test results indicated significant differences in bullying-related suicides across junior high school grades (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: This study provides explicit findings from a concrete analysis of the reality of suicides resulting from bullying. These findings can contribute to suicide prevention efforts for Japanese youth.

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