Back From the Brink
Retired japanese policeman on mission to prevent suicides By LAM LYE CHING
After serving more than four decades as a police officer, Shige Yukio was looking forward to life after retirement. In September 2003, he was
just six months away from stepping down from his job in Fukui, a prefecture on the west coast of Japan. Then, while on patrol on a clear
evening in a local forest, he met a couple who changed his life.
Shige
knew something was amiss with the pair as they sat hunched on a bench.
Their wrists were wrapped in bloody handkerchiefs. “Hello,” Shige said
as he approached. “What are you doing here?”
“We are waiting for
sunset to go jump at the cliff,” they replied bluntly. The couple, who
had amassed crippling debts when their Tokyo business failed, planned to
throw themselves from the nearby Toujinbou cliff, where people from all
over Japan came to commit suicide.
Shige talked to them for
nearly an hour and finally persuaded them not to jump. “I told them that
if they consulted the authorities, they could get help,” he recalls.Five days later, Shige received a letter from the couple, saying that they had been turned away by government offices and had no choice but to end their lives. He later learned that the couple hanged themselves.
Seven years later, the memory still fills Shige with sadness. It also stirs a different, sharper emotion: anger. When he took the couple’s letter to the local social security department, they said there was nothing they could have done.
Shige, who calls this attitude a “socially organised crime”, decided to take action. When he retired in March 2004, he opened a teahouse about 100 metres from the cliff as a place where people contemplating suicide could come for solace and counselling. Until last year, when he started getting funding from the government, Shige paid expenses of more than ¥3 million ($40,000) in five years out of his pension and borrowings.
Initially, Shige walked the cliffs a few times each day by himself. Even as volunteers came, drawn by ads and word of mouth, Shige’s patrol duties increased and he also took more time to counsel people in need.
Today, the group has 85 members, including 20 active patrollers. They wander the cliffs every day from 10.30 am, looking for likely “candidates”, such as people who are not looking at the view. “I just say a simple hello to them and this can lead to a conversation,” Shige says.
He then brings them to the teahouse, where he offers Japanese rice cakes known as mochi. “Japanese mochi are served during the new year and funerals,” Shige explains. “Mochi brings back memories of people’s hometown, families and childhood, giving peace of mind.” Depending on the situation, he provides these people with counselling, helps them get social welfare support or directs them to temporary housing. In some cases, he helps them find a job.
Shige recalls one man who had lost his job in the construction industry when he injured his back. After his wife became abusive, he asked for a divorce, but she refused. When she bought life insurance in his name and told him to “go and die”, he travelled to Toujinbou. Shige spotted him standing on the cliffs holding a cup of Japanese wine. “What are you doing here?” Shige asked. “You may accidentally fall.” Although the man initially refused to reply, Shige persisted and they talked until after sunset. Eventually, the man agreed to come to the teahouse for more counselling. Later Shige accompanied him to negotiate with his wife for a divorce and “he is now happily back in society”.
The group’s activities include organising gatherings for suicide survivors, lobbying government officials to do more to prevent suicide, giving talks and searching for people who have gone missing. Shige has also written four books. The latest, published in May, is Let’s Prevent Suicide, Toujinbou’s Shige Declares.
Shige’s overriding goal is to provide support to people who have lost all hope. He seems to be on the right track – so far his group prevented more than 240 suicides in the area. “These people were waiting for someone to tell them that they do not have to die,” he declares. “Nobody wants to die.”
Ref; Reader Digest
