Global Courant
In 2005, Osaka native Hiroshi Maeue used a suicide message board to lure his three victims – a 14-year-old boy, a 25-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man – together, and he suffocated them to death with his bare hands.
He confessed that he found it thrilling to watch his victims’ lives slip away, having developed the desire to kill as a child. He was hanged in 2009.
As for Shiraishi, he took advantage of loosely regulated social media, using Twitter to seek out people who had posted messages about suicide or who wanted to die. He talked to them via direct messaging and switched to private messaging apps like Line or KakaoTalk to communicate with potential victims.
The murders he committed have led authorities to look at how to reach high-risk people more effectively.
Japan, because of its freedom of expression laws, took a loose approach to curbing online speech. However, the Shiraishi case prompted the government to request that social media operators direct those posting about suicide to helplines or resources such as self-care tips.
In extreme cases, social media operators have the power to remove mutterings of suicide, or posts that incite or solicit suicide, from their platforms, and to freeze or suspend accounts for repeat violations.
“People with suicidal thoughts often oscillate violently between feelings of ‘wanting to die’ and ‘wanting to live,’ which are signs of a risk of suicide,” said a government report issued in response to the killings committed by Shiraishi.
“You can say that some messages on social media, such as ‘I want to die’, or ‘I want to disappear’, or ‘I don’t want to live’, correspond to these signals. It is therefore necessary to encourage those who write such messages to seek advice, by developing a system through which they can get support if necessary.”
The report added: “It is important to send SOS messages in times of need, but it is also necessary to educate people that sending SOS messages on social media can be dangerous.”
Psychiatric counseling was made available on social media and instant messaging platforms, among other things, to make it more accessible to people at risk.
Yet these measures have failed to stop similar cases.
In September 2019, student Mizuki Kitajima, 22, killed Hiromi Araki, 36, at a love hotel in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district by strangling her with his hands. Kitajima had aspired to become a teacher, but failed the teacher’s exam and contemplated suicide.
He rationalized his actions in court by saying that he wanted to “be useful to society by helping people achieve their goals,” and that he had contacted many people online who appeared to be in need. In April 2020, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
In September 2022, former salaryman Yuya Nozaki, 29, persuaded a suicidal 13-year-old girl to commit suicide, even facilitating the act by driving her to a river bridge deep in a mountain range.
The Yokohama resident was said to have harbored an “abnormal obsession” with women and enjoyed the power he had exerted over his victim. He was sentenced to 5½ years in prison in August 2023.
