It should hardly be news that in a country as suicide-prone as Japan that the global economic meltdown is expected to result in a higher-than-normal suicide rate, but I’m still a little stunned by the numbers. Normal levels of suicides in Japan number 30,000 per year - the last financial crisis caused a 34-percent jump in this figure.

Numerous nations across Asia are at risk of increased suicide rates due to the economic climate, according to Shu-sen Chang, a psychiatrist at Bristol University and author of a new report on Asian suicide.

Suicide rates in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong reportedly soared 40 per cent among men and 20 per cent for women following the economic slump triggered by currency devaluations in Asia in 1997, according to the new study.

“Around the time of the recession, we saw an acute rise in the unemployment rate and these changes seemed to be associated with the economic crisis and the rise in the suicide rate,” said Chang. “We concluded that changes in unemployment rates might contribute to some of the rise in the suicide rate.”

When I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, one of the images that lingered after I finished (and I’m not alone in this) was the coffin hotel that Case calls home in Chiba. The inverse of a ‘coffin hotel’ is, of course, a ‘hotel coffin’ - where presumably the dead would go to spend their after-lives in catered comfort. The problem - and the solution - are really the same for both…namely, how do you house lots of people who aren’t going anywhere in a limited amount of real estate? Simple - just stack them on top of each other.

For 79-year-old Shinya Shimada, paying his respects around the time of Japan’s annual Bon festival, when the spirits of ancestors are believed to return home, means a visit to a modern vault rather than a traditional graveyard.

“Initially, I was a bit uncomfortable with a high-tech grave. But now, I have come to see it positively,” Shimada said.

At the nondescript three-storey building alongside a Buddhist temple, Shimada uses an identity card to dial-up the gravestones and urns carrying his ancestors’ ashes.

A library-stack-like machine behind altars transports them, complete with accompanying music and pictures of the deceased on a TV monitor.

“Looking at their pictures, I actually talk a lot more to my deceased parents and sister,” Shimada said. “Unlike the usual gravestone, this makes me feel nostalgic.”

Remember that Toyota employee who died as a result of too much overtime? According to this recent Reuters article, his demise isn’t all that odd, at least by Japanese standards. Deaths caused by excessive work numbers are in the ‘hundreds of deaths a year‘.

Man, just how stressful is Corporate Japan? I can empathize, however. My last job was such a pain in the ass I promptly gave Corporate America the figurative finger and would only go back if I were dragged by rabid wolves. If I hadn’t done that, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead or in an institution of some sort. So yeah - I can see how this happens.

A Japanese woman hit out at corporate bosses this week, after her restaurant manager son died of a brain haemorrhage having done 200 hours of overtime in a month.

The case is the latest of hundreds of deaths a year officially determined to have been caused by the hardships of working for Japanese companies, where overtime is a matter of course and holidays few and far between.

Takayuki Maezawa, who died at the age of 32 last October, was the second employee at unlisted restaurant chain Skylark Co Ltd to die from overwork in the last four years, a union official in Tokyo said.

“My son was an extremely responsible person, who could never refuse if asked to do something,” the Asahi Shimbun quoted his 59-year-old mother as telling a news conference on Thursday.

“The company used him. None of his superiors worried about his health.”