SIX GIRLS DIE

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 28

SIX GIRLS DIE

JAPANESE SUICIDE PACT > . The authorities are considering making it a prison offence to attempt shinju, or double love suicide. The tase of a 32-year-old pedlar, Kageo Sato, has focussed attention on 'shinju, although double love suicide has long been a common thing in Japan. Sato has just survived his seventh attempt at double love suicide. Each of his indy partners in shinju has died, although the sixth one failed at the first attempt and had to join Sato in a second effort before finally expiring. Sato, however, has always managed inexplicably to come through the seven attempts at self-destruction without harm and without any noticeable damper on his ardour. Double love suicide has always interested the Japanese. More lhan a dozen years ago the nation could talk of nothing else for days hut the double suicide of one of its famous writers and the wife of a wealthy man who, finding love on earth honourably impossible, killed, themselves together. Sato’s, double love suicide career, numbering as it did seven attempts, is believed to set a record. It extends over eight years, the pedlar not being one to mope over a lost love, SWEETHEART VICTIMS. His firist sweetheart victim was a maid servant at a seaside resort near Kobe. This was followed with a death pact with one of his own relatives at the popular hot springs resort of Beppu. A bus girl came next, then another maid servant, followed by a young woman from Osaka. This latter was a charming widow who lived near Sato’s home. After her death—and Sato’s usual recovery—-the police sent Sato to prison for two years. The nature of the charge against him, however, was not made known. Released at the end of his term, Sato struck up a fervent affair with a young mayried woman, and they resorted to double suicide—a business at which Sato was now quite adept. Something went wrong, and both of them recovered. Some weeks later they tried it again This time the woman died, but Sato survived, as usual. Sato’s friends, however, point out that any punishment the Japanese may fix will be as nothing compared to the problem he will face when he actually expires. Under the belief of shinju, Sato will meet in after life the six women who slew themselves for love of him, and each will claim him as her exclusive mate.