Tackling the deadliest day for Japanese teenagers...

"I couldn't bear the school's ambience and my heart was pounding. I thought about killing myself, because that would have been easier."

Masa, which is not his real name, had an understanding mother who did not force him to go to school. Otherwise, he wrote for a newspaper for children who refuse to attend school, "I would have chosen to kill myself on 1 September when the new semester started".

Masa was not alone in thinking so bleakly in Japan, which has one of the world's highest suicide rates.

Last year, for the first time, the most common cause of death of those aged 10 to 19 in Japan was suicide. Full story...

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