Blue Lights installed in Japan Train Stations to prevent Suicide!
The Japan Railway authorities are doing an unusual experiment to stop suicidal people jumping in front of the trains…or at least They are trying.
East Japan Railway Co. will install blue lighting, thought to have an emotionally calming effect, on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line in the hope it will make suicidal people think twice about jumping in front of trains.
The lights, made using blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), will be installed at all 29 stations on the loop line by the end of October, a JR East official said.
According to JR East’s Tokyo office, suicides at stations under its control have risen from 42 in fiscal 2006, to 58 in fiscal 2007 and 68 in fiscal 2008.
In many cases, people have thrown themselves in front of trains arriving at platforms. The lights will be positioned on ceilings at ends of platforms.
Although similar lighting devices have been used elsewhere, it is unusual for them to be installed at every station on a train line.
Blue LED devices have been used at crossings on the Hanwa Line of West Japan Railway Co. since December 2006. Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. also installed the lights at the Gumyoji Station in Yokohama’s Minami Ward in February 2008.
The color blue was chosen because it is said to calm the emotions, the JR East official said.
Although expert opinions are divided on the psychological effect of blue lights, the system has been increasingly used by railway companies across the nation.
JR East installed blue LED devices in February above the platforms of Kita-Ageo, Okegawa and Kitamoto stations, all in Saitama Prefecture, on the JR Takasaki Line.
Blue fluorescent lights have been installed at Ogikubo and Nishi-Ogikubo stations on the Chuo Line in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward.
The LEDs have already been installed at seven stations on the Yamanote Line, including Shinbashi and Yurakucho. JR East plans to complete installation at other stations by the end of October.
Source: Asahi / Image Source
If this experiment really works, I can imagine every corner in Japan having this blue lights. Let´s hope this really works.
On a curious note, now I know why the office walls where I work are painted in Blue!…Interesting… 
Related posts:
- Japan TV stations cutting costs…New faces may arrive!
- Japan reworks plans for tallest tower in the world!
- Sayonara Wendy’s Japan!
- Japanese teacher installed spy camera on toilet!
- Anime and Manga helping Tourism in Japan!
Loading ...
An interesting post but, although a tragic loss of life, these numbers of people who commit suicide at stations are only a fraction of one percent of the total numbers of people who kill themselves in Japan every year.
I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on the real reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide Japan from Japan and so will limit my comments to what I know about here in Japan but would first like to suggest that western media reports on suicide rates in Japan should try harder to get away from the tendency to ‘orientalize’ the serious and preventable problem of increased suicide rates here over the last 10 years by reverting to stereotypical ideas of Japanese people in general.
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless the new administration initiates very proactive and well funded local and nationwide suicide prevention programs and other mental health care initiatives, including tackling the widespread problem of clinical depression suffered by so many of the general population, it is very difficult to foresee the previous government’s stated target to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 as being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.
During these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions.
Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only to clearly if any journalist is prepared to learn Japanese or get a bilingual researcher to do the research to get to the real heart of the tragic story of the long term and unnecessarily high suicide rate problem in Japan.
I would also like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles (or works of fiction which I appreciate this is) dealing with suicide in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal.
Useful telephone numbers and links for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal:
Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：
Japan: 0120-738-556
Tokyo: 3264 4343
Tokyo Counseling Services
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
http://www.counselingjapan.com
Rate comment:
0 
0
I would rather see red lights.
Rate comment:
0 
0