The Japanese government has decided to stop using the term "double suicide" (shinju) for cases where parents kill their children and then take their own lives.
According to the Asahi Shimbun on the 11th, Japan's Children and Families Agency decided to refer to such incidents as "child abuse cases accompanied by the parent's suicide."
This follows a decision by an expert panel within the agency that reviews child abuse death cases to adopt this terminology.
Previously, the committee had used the expression "abuse deaths resulting from shinju."
Shinju originally refers to consenting lovers ending their lives together, and experts have long criticized its use for "masking the reality of child murder."
Within the expert panel of the Children and Families Agency, it was also pointed out that "because awareness of child abuse is not deeply rooted in society, there are cases where such acts are romanticized as actions born of parental affection."
In its report last year, the committee stated, "It is important to recognize that children are not the property of their guardians, but rather subjects of rights," introducing terms used in other countries such as "filicide-suicide" in the United States and Australia, and "extreme choices following child murder" in South Korea.
The police have also used terms like "so-called forced shinju" (forced joint suicide with a non-consenting party) for similar incidents, but have decided to consider dropping this expression as well.
According to the Children and Families Agency, the number of children who died from abuse nationwide in 2024 stood at 77 (across 65 cases), an increase of 12 from the previous year.
Among the 77 children who died, 27 (across 19 cases) were child abuse deaths accompanied by the suicide of a guardian.
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