For millions of Japanese children, the end of the summer holiday marks a familiar transition: uniforms are put back on, alarm clocks are reset and classrooms fill again after weeks away from school.
For some, however, the return is anything but routine.
Japan has entered another period of heightened concern over student suicide, after government figures showed that 538 students took their own lives last year — the highest number since records began in 1980. September recorded the largest number of student suicides, with 59 deaths, reinforcing concerns about the period when children return to school after the long summer break.
The figures have prompted parents, teachers and support organisations to pay particular attention to the weeks surrounding the start of the new term.
Sayoko, a mother in Yokohama who did not want to give her full name, is watching her 13-year-old son more closely than he probably realises. He is beginning his first year of junior high school, keeping up with his studies and enjoying popularity because of his sporting ability.
But his mother remembers her own experience at the same age.
“I was not good at sport and did not have a large circle of friends and, of course, there were always the ‘cool girls’ of the class who could be unkind,” she said.
Her experience was not severe, she said, and she eventually came through it. But another tragedy has made the possibility of a young person reaching a breaking point more tangible. About four years ago, the teenage son of one of her husband’s colleagues died by suicide.
“I don’t know what I would say to him,” Sayoko said of the father. “Perhaps I am wrong not to try to be normal around him, but I fear anything I say will be the wrong thing.”
The government has designated August 20 to September 9 as a period for “intensive efforts” to identify young people at risk and strengthen suicide prevention measures.
The Children and Families Agency has also released a video titled The video to watch when you don’t want the summer holidays to end. Its message is direct: young people do not have to struggle alone and can seek free and anonymous support by telephone or online chat.
For those working directly with vulnerable children, the timing of the campaign is not accidental.
“For a lot of young people, this is one of the most difficult times of the year,” said Fujiko Yamada, founder of the Child Maltreatment Centre in Kanagawa prefecture.
A long summer holiday can provide a temporary escape from the pressures associated with school. Children can sleep later, spend time with friends, travel with their families and temporarily step away from academic demands.
Then the routine returns.
“They have just had a really long summer vacation when they have not had to study, they have been able to be lazy and play with their friends and go on holiday with their families, and all of a sudden they have to go back to school,” Yamada said.
“For lots of them, school is a place of rules, where they have to study and they are under pressure to get good grades. They have to get up early and many of them go to cram school in the evenings. Even wearing a school uniform again can be stressful.”
The pressures do not necessarily begin or end in the classroom.
Young people can also be dealing with arguments with parents or friends and concerns about their family’s financial circumstances. Yamada said she encounters children who are not attending school even though they know they are expected to.
“Too often, I see an attitude of ‘all or nothing’ in them,” she said. When they believe they cannot return to school, they may struggle to see an alternative path.
“Killing themselves looks like the only choice they have,” she said.
The scale of the problem is striking even against Japan’s wider suicide statistics.
The 538 student suicides recorded last year exceeded the previous record of 529 in 2024 and were substantially higher than the 289 student suicides recorded in 1980. The number of male students who died decreased by 20 from the previous year, while the number of female students increased by 36. Among junior high school girls, suicides rose by 24 per cent.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare identified “school problems” as the largest category of causes. These included fear of academic failure, disputes with other students, concerns about future careers and bullying. Health problems and difficulties at home were also identified as contributing factors.
The trend among students is particularly troubling because it runs against the broader direction of suicide in Japan.
Overall suicides declined gradually, with 19,097 deaths recorded in 2025 — 1,223 fewer than the previous year. It was the first time the national total had fallen below 20,000 since records began in 1978.
The September spike is not unique to Japan. Research suggests that other countries also experience increases in child suicide around late August and early September, when students return to school, while many countries see heightened risks around the beginning of their academic year in spring.
A US study published in the April 2024 edition of the Journal of Human Resources identified academic stress, economic instability and continuing post-pandemic disruption as factors, alongside heavy social media use, cyberbullying, screen addiction and deteriorating mental health.
For Vickie Skorji, senior adviser to the Tokyo-based TELL Lifeline, the immediate priority is recognising changes in behaviour.
“We need parents, in particular, to notice changes in their children, to look for signs of a young person who is struggling,” she said.
Some children may already have experienced mental health difficulties before the summer break. Returning to school can intensify those problems.
“Anxiety and depression are the most common signs of mental health conditions among children,” Skorji said.
She urged parents to watch for children withdrawing from friends and family, losing interest in activities they once enjoyed, changes in sleeping patterns, loss of appetite and increased irritability.
Japan’s position in international comparisons adds another dimension to the concern. A Unicef study released last year ranked Japan third among 43 countries for children’s physical health but only 32nd for mental well-being.
This year, TELL is conducting the Step Up Challenge, a nationwide campaign intended to raise awareness of the problems facing young people and offer hope and support.
The message is directed not only at schools and professional organisations but at families.
“Every parent needs to know what that could look like in their children and when the signs are there, getting support is vital,” Skorji said.
The challenge is recognising that distress may not always appear in dramatic form. A child may simply become quieter, withdraw from friends, sleep differently, stop eating normally or lose interest in activities that once mattered.
Those changes can be dismissed as ordinary teenage behaviour.
Skorji believes that assumption can be dangerous.
“Parents need to talk to their kids and yes, sometimes that can be hard, but not talking to them can be fatal.”
As Japan’s schools reopen, the warning is therefore aimed at a deceptively ordinary moment in the calendar. For most students, returning to class will mean little more than the end of summer.
For others, it can bring back academic pressure, social conflict, bullying, family worries and a sense that there is no acceptable way forward.
The task facing parents and teachers is not simply to monitor the start of a new term. It is to recognise when a child is struggling before that struggle becomes invisible — and before returning to school turns from an everyday transition into a crisis.
