Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Tim Starr writes:
Japan classifies cases of husbands murdering their wives & kids then killing themselves as all suicides, no homicides, thus skewing their statistics in favor of suicides & against homicides.
This claim is easily seen to be false: You just have to look at the Japanese suicide statistics. There are no recorded suicides of small children.
That doesn't necessarily falsify the claim. How are "small children" defined?
Under 5. And the suicide rate for 5-14 year olds is half of the US rate.
How do you know that "family suicides" in Japan don't usually take place when the children are no longer "small"?
Because I've actually read something on the subject. A typical "family suicide" involves a mother of small children killing her children and herself. Just because the literal translation of the Japanese word for this is "family suicide", it does not follow that the homicide of the children is officially recorded as suicide.
See: R, Markman & D. Bosco, "Alone with the Devil," 342ff (1989).
Iga, Mamoru "The thorn in the chrysanthemum : suicide and economic
success in modern Japan"
