Last month a 13-year-old Japanese boy wrote a simple suicide note on a piece of crumpled paper. "Dear Mom and Dad," it read, "Sorry I was an inadequate child. Thank you for everything. I cannot live while being bullied."
Over the past two months, at least seven children in Japan have taken their own lives after being tormented by school bullies. The problem of ijime, or bullying, has long been a problem in Japan. But the spate of recent suicides, coupled with unyielding media coverage, has turned ijime into a national epidemic.