All the phones at a Japanese suicide hot line started ringing, exactly when it opened, filling a narrow room off a Tokyo back street with the voices of those trying to help, said a Reuters report.
Speaking softly into her headset, Machiko Nakayama, a hot line volunteer in her 60s, asked: "Is it trouble at work, or something at home? You feel like you want to die?"
In Japan, a place known for personal reserve, experts and volunteers say allowing people to express their innermost feelings has helped reduce suicides by nearly 40 percent from their 2003 peak.
Author and suicide activist Akita Suei said: "The fact that I couldn’t talk about my feelings at all became oppressive. So once I finally was able to talk, all of a sudden my mood became much lighter."
Suei's mother killed herself in 1955, when he was a child.
Operating every day, almost always from 8 pm to 5:30 am, the phones at Befrienders Worldwide Tokyo are rarely silent, staffed by about 40 volunteers working four at a time in three-hour shifts.
Nakayama, who volunteered for 20 years and now is the director: " If the phones stop ringing for a few minutes, we worry they're broken."
Befrienders Worldwide Tokyo is one of scores of organizations operating hot lines around Japan. They advertise with messages like "Are you down? There are people to help lift you up" in Tokyo’s vast network of subways, the site of many suicide attempts.
Yoshie Otsuhata, sub director of the helpline, said: "There are still very closed-off aspects to society here; it’s really hard to talk about personal things, especially for men, who since the old days have scorned letting things out."
