“Everything’s horrible, I want to die,” read the message in the Japanese Internet chat room. “Who will die with me?”

In a grim new problem for officials tackling the nation’s alarmingly high suicide rate, rising numbers of Japanese are dying each year in group suicides after meeting online at sites like this.

On Thursday, four people - two in their 30s, a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old - were found dead in a car by a riverbank in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, the latest of a series of group suicides over the past few months.

In February alone, at least 16 people have taken their lives this way.

As with the other cases, police found several charcoal stoves in the car, which had its windows sealed from inside. The three men and one woman, who had met through the Internet, died by inhaling carbon monoxide from the charcoal.

Group suicides make up just a small fraction of the over 30,000 Japanese who take their lives each year, but more involve pacts between strangers who got in touch via suicide web sites and that has experts worried.

“The idea of dying together is somehow reassuring,” said Yukio Saito, who heads the “Inochi no Denwa” - Phone of Life - suicide hotline. “Dying alone is lonely and takes more courage.

“The way these suicides are carried out is very sensational for the media, and very suggestive for people who may be thinking of taking their lives.”

RISING NUMBERS

According to police, a record 34,427 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, more than a quarter of them because of debt or economic woes.

Of the total, only 34 died in Internet-linked group suicides. But the number rose to 54 in 2004 and police say the real number was probably even higher.

No religious prohibitions exist against suicide in Japan and it was long seen as a way to escape failure, or of saving loved ones from embarrassment or financial loss.

Experts warn that pinning suicide to a single cause is simplistic, but all agree that Japan’s economic downturn since the late 1990s has had an especially disastrous effect.

In 2000, according to the World Health Organization, Japan’s suicide rate was 35.2 per 100,000 for men and 13.4 per 100,000 for women. The rate in the United States that same year was 17.1 per 100,000 for men and 4.0 per 100,000 for women.

Experts say the Internet cannot be blamed for promoting suicide, but that the intensity of some of the chat rooms may worsen the psychological state of some of those involved.

“Some people say to each other ‘I want to die, I want to die,’ and this may lead to their actually doing it,” said Takeshi Tamura, an associate professor at Tokyo Gakugei University.

Japanese Internet providers recently began blocking access to some suicide sites, but it is still easy to find others.

Many have sombre, stark backgrounds of black, grey or white. Chat rooms deal with topics such as past suicide attempts or have links such as “For those who want to commit suicide.”

“These 18 years, 2 months and one day have been the most miserable possible existence,” one young man said. “I don’t want to feel this sadness anymore. This is probably my last message.”

POWERFUL TOOL

The Internet can also be a powerful therapeutic tool, however. Psychological care systems in Japan are still basic and often overloaded, and psychological problems have long been a taboo subject.

“People here find it hard to share their worries, especially face to face,” Tamura said. “But on the Internet, where nobody knows your face or your name, it can be very easy.”

Tamura runs a website for people who suffer from “hikikomori,” or withdrawal, and said he knows of several cases where people have been talked out of suicide after visiting the site.

Saito, at the suicide hotline, warned that group suicides should not be blown out of proportion, adding that they make up only 2 percent of all Japanese suicides.

“The vast majority of suicides in Japan are by hanging,” he said. “But that’s not dramatic, so it doesn’t make the news.”