Postcard: Tojinbo Cliffs
By Coco Masters in Time Magazine, June 22, 2009
They come on sunny days, when the sky is bright and clear above the Tojinbo cliffs along the coast of the Sea of Japan. Yukio Shige says they don't look at the view. "They don't carry a camera or souvenir gifts," he says. "They don't have anything. They hang their heads and stare at the ground."
For five years, Shige, 65, has approached such people at the cliffs' edge with a simple "Hello" and a smile. He might ask how they came there and at what inn they were staying. Sometimes after a light touch to the shoulder, Shige says, they burst into tears, and he begins to console them. "You've had a hard time up until now," he says, "haven't you?"
The basalt cliffs in Fukui prefecture, north of Kyoto on the western coast of Japan, are a well-known site for suicide in a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world; at 23.8 per 100,000, Japan's rate is significantly higher than that of the U.S., for example, where the rate is 11 per 100,000. One in 5 Japanese men and women has seriously considered taking his or her life, according to a recent government survey; each year over the past decade, more than 30,000 people have killed themselves. And as the economic downturn has pushed rates of unemployment and bankruptcy higher, the number of suicides has risen. From January through April, 11,236 people killed themselves, up 4.5% from the same period in 2008. "I think there will be many more suicides this year," says Shige.
The retired detective from nearby Fukui City has patrolled the cliffs two or three times a day since 2004, wearing white gloves and a floppy sun hat, carrying binoculars to focus on three spots on the cliffs where suicides are most common. He has set up a nonprofit foundation to aid the work and says he has helped prevent 188 potential suicides. After he's talked them off the cliffs, Shige--a trained counselor--takes them to his small office, where two gas heaters keep a kettle boiling, ready to make the tea that accompanies his counseling sessions. For men, Shige says, the biggest problems are debt and unemployment; most of the women are there because of depression or health issues. "If it's a case of sexual harassment, I'll go with her to the office and confront her boss," says Shige. "If a child has issues with his father, I tell the parent that he is driving his child to suicide and get them to write a promise to change. They hang it on the wall."
There's no rush in Shige's office. He offers those who go there oroshi-mochi, a dish of pounded sticky rice served with grated radish. Traditionally the food is prepared to celebrate the New Year, with each family taking its own rice to be mixed with that of its neighbors. "When people come here and eat mochi, they remember their childhood--father, mother, siblings, hometown. They remember they're not alone," Shige says.
So far, Shige has funded his operation, including office rent of $800 a month and occasional support for those trying to get back on their feet, with his retirement savings and donations. But in April, the Japanese government committed to supporting Shige's and similar efforts with about 10 billion yen ($100 million) over the next three years. "It's taken five years to get the support," says Shige. "But we also need the kind of policies that keep people from becoming depressed in the first place"--particularly by bolstering the safety net for people with mental disorders and those who have hit hard times.
In April, on the fifth anniversary of starting his operation, Shige sat reading a three-page, handwritten letter he had received that day from a Shizuoka man, one of many he gets from those he has helped. The letter concluded by thanking Shige for providing the man with an awareness of the love that surrounded him. As Shige finished reading, the melody of "Amazing Grace" rose from his cell phone. "I want Tojinbo to be the most challenging place," he says. "Not where life ends, but where it begins."
Wow, what a great story! What a great statement of life and a great statement of purpose from a pretty simple man. So, the challenge lies before you friends. You could be 10 years old or 90 years old, perfectly healthy or strapped in a wheelchair and still be a caring voice, a gentle hand, a cup of tea, a walk with compassion and actually save a life. You may never know that you did, and it may not be as dramatic as keeping someone from the cliffs. But, you might just encourage someone to live a life to its fullest, that they had already given up on.
