New outbreak of group suicides occurs in Japan

TOKYO – Nine bodies were found in two cars in central Japan in what appeared to be the country’s latest group suicides, police said Saturday.

One group of six people was found on an isolated farm road south of Tokyo by a farmer who called police after noticing people slumped over in a vehicle. Investigators who searched the car found three men and two women in their 20s and one woman in her 40s, said T. Morishita, an investigator from the Misaki police station in Kanagawa prefecture.

The other car, with the bodies of one man and two women, was found in front of an empty vacation home in a resort area farther west, said an official at the Shimoda police station.

In both vehicles, charcoal stoves were found on the floorboards while the windows were sealed with tape from the inside.

The vehicles were found about 60 miles apart.

Japan has been the scene of a slew of suicide pacts recently, many thought to have been plotted by people who met over the Internet.

Of those found near Kanagawa farms, five hailed from different parts of the Tokyo metropolitan area, while one was from an area farther west, Morishita said. The police were still trying to contact their relatives Saturday afternoon.

One of the women left a note saying “I am tired of life. I’m sorry.” She added she didn’t want a funeral or a grave and asked for her ashes to be scattered.

Suicide pacts have been made over the Internet since the late 1990s, and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands.

They’ve been happening in especially large numbers in Japan, where the suicide rates are among the world’s highest.

Suicides in Japan hit a record high in 2003, exceeding 34,000.

Officials have blamed a decade-long economic slump for an increasing number of people killing themselves.