Caring for human life through unreserved dialogue and engagement

In this project, while focusing on the issue of suicide and considering our existence, livelihood, and other problems related to our being as "life issues", we try to comprehensively address variety of issues concerning "Care for Life" by considering a wide-range of support and a whole process of countermeasures from the autonomous activities of the parties concerned to the policies of the government.

In Japan, it was only after the enactment of Basic Law on Suicide Countermeasures in 2006 that the issue of suicide was considered as a social issue that should be taken into account by the national government and the society as a whole. This is because suicide has been gradually perceived as a structural problem due to various social factors, rather than simply as an individual's free choice. Addressing these structural problems requires not only knowledge about suicide numbers. The processes that result in suicide must also be carefully considered from individual and social perspectives. Through such processes we then come to realize that various things such as domestic violence, child abuse, poverty, child and nursing care form a large web of problems.

The purpose of this project is to consider series of problems that constitute such web of problems as subjects of "Care for Life" and to find better ways to solve them through joint research with researchers and practitioners from within and outside Japan. In addition, as an exploration platform involving researchers and people working in public and private offices, we have been regularly conducting study group through which participants can have opportunities to freely talk regardless of their job and position, and listen to the cutting-edge research and life stories from different workplaces.