Comments on: Incentives to suicide http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/08/23/incentives-to-suicide/ Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:50:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 By: Andrew Grimeshttp://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/08/23/incentives-to-suicide/comment-page-1/#comment-145029 Andrew Grimes Mon, 16 Aug 2010 03:32:25 +0000 http://eastasiaforum.wordpress.com/?p=857#comment-145029 I would just like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles dealing with mental health issues in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal. Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service): Japan: 0120-738-556 Tokyo: 3264 4343 AMDA International Medical Information Center: http://amda-imic.com/ Tokyo Counseling Services: http://tokyocounseling.com/english/ http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/ Counseling and Psychotherapy in Japan http://www.counselingjapan.com I would just like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles dealing with mental health issues in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal.

Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service):
Japan: 0120-738-556
Tokyo: 3264 4343

AMDA International Medical Information Center:
http://amda-imic.com/

Tokyo Counseling Services:
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/

Counseling and Psychotherapy in Japan
http://www.counselingjapan.com

]]> By: Luke Nottagehttp://www.eastasiaforum.org/2008/08/23/incentives-to-suicide/comment-page-1/#comment-38 Luke Nottage Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:05:31 +0000 http://eastasiaforum.wordpress.com/?p=857#comment-38 Shiro, The paper you mentioned doesn't seem to cite this, but the big amendments to Japan's Moneylenders Law in 2006 prohibited lenders from getting borrowers to take out life insurance policies nominating the lenders as beneficiaries. (These reforms and the background are outlined in my posting on "Consumer Overindebtedness in Japan ...', and the Sydney Law School Research Paper on www.ssrn.com cited there.) The reason was that this insurance practice exacerbated the "sarakin san-aku (three evils of loansharking)": high interest rates, aggressive marketing, aggressive debt collection. Prof Mark D West of Michigan Law School wrote a paper around 2000 (also on SSRN, included in his 2005 book of essays) including some econometrics linking many Japanese suicides to overindebtedness (while acknowledging that culture also played a role). As Prof Kozuka and I explain in a forthcoming book chapter following on from our SSRN paper, although information assymetries on the part of borrowers and lenders do help explain the dramatic rise and the "sweat box" business model of unsecured consumer lending in Japan, as in other countries a lot can be explained by behavioural economics. Japanese lenders, like credit card companies in Australia and the US (and subprime mortgage lenders there), have cleverly exploited biases and heuristics less well-known or addressed by borrowers. Luke Shiro,

The paper you mentioned doesn’t seem to cite this, but the big amendments to Japan’s Moneylenders Law in 2006 prohibited lenders from getting borrowers to take out life insurance policies nominating the lenders as beneficiaries. (These reforms and the background are outlined in my posting on “Consumer Overindebtedness in Japan …’, and the Sydney Law School Research Paper on http://www.ssrn.com cited there.)

The reason was that this insurance practice exacerbated the “sarakin san-aku (three evils of loansharking)”: high interest rates, aggressive marketing, aggressive debt collection. Prof Mark D West of Michigan Law School wrote a paper around 2000 (also on SSRN, included in his 2005 book of essays) including some econometrics linking many Japanese suicides to overindebtedness (while acknowledging that culture also played a role).

As Prof Kozuka and I explain in a forthcoming book chapter following on from our SSRN paper, although information assymetries on the part of borrowers and lenders do help explain the dramatic rise and the “sweat box” business model of unsecured consumer lending in Japan, as in other countries a lot can be explained by behavioural economics. Japanese lenders, like credit card companies in Australia and the US (and subprime mortgage lenders there), have cleverly exploited biases and heuristics less well-known or addressed by borrowers.

Luke

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