Japan created a national ministerial post for loneliness in 2021, becoming only the second country after Britain to appoint such a minister, after data linked prolonged social isolation to a measurable rise in suicides during the pandemic.

Japan created a national ministerial post for loneliness in 2021, becoming only the second country after Britain to appoint such a minister, after data linked prolonged social isolation to a measurable rise in suicides during the pandemic.

In February 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga appointed Tetsushi Sakamoto as minister in charge of loneliness and isolation, a portfolio no cabinet in Tokyo had ever held before. The country had recorded its first annual rise in suicides in over a decade, with women accounting for most of the increase, and government data tied the trend directly to the social severing of the pandemic. Japan became only the second nation on Earth to fo…