Niigata boy latest in spate of teen suicides

NIIGATA -- A 14-year-old boy was found hanged Tuesday night in an apparent suicide in a hut on his parent's property in the village of Kamihayashi, Niigata Prefecture.

Police said Wednesday that no suicide note has been found. The local board of education said it had spoken to the junior high school he attended but has not yet confirmed whether he had been a victim of bullying, which has been cited as the reason behind a spate of recent suicides.

However, the school principal told reporters that a classmate had pulled the victim's pants down on Tuesday.

The boy disappeared at around 6 p.m. after he returned home from school.

He was found dead at around 9:30 p.m., according to police.

The suicide comes in the wake of several others involving students that have shocked the public. Three teenagers have killed themselves in separate cases over the last few weeks, apparently after being bullied by their peers.

Since last week, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has received 16 anonymous letters believed to be from students planning to commit suicide due to being bullied at school.

The number of minors who took their lives has risen in the last decade, from less than 500 in 1996 to 608 in 2005.

An 18-year-old girl committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of her school in Sapporo.

The girl was found lying in the school compound Tuesday morning after leaping from a vacant room, police said. She was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Police said she left a suicide note on a teacher's desk saying she was going to kill herself because she was having a hard time with an illness.