improving mental health services and easing social burdens on people. A special government panel, headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, approved a plan to cut the nation's suicide rate to 19.4 cases per 100,000 people in 2016 from 24.2 last year.
The panel said the government should implement measures to ensure people have access to psychological care and are not pressured into working Japan's notorious marathon overtime hours.
More than 30,000 people kill themselves every year in Japan, making the nation's suicide rate among the highest in the world.
Japan looks set to miss an earlier goal set in 2000 to reduce the number of suicides to 22,000 by 2010.
"We must make nationwide efforts and change Japan into a society in which people live at ease," the latest panel said in its proposed strategies to be submitted to the cabinet next month.
The panel acknowledged that Japan's suicide rate was high among the Group of Eight industrialized countries and blamed depression and other psychological problems as a major cause.
Economic hardships have been blamed for aggravating the suicide rate, particularly during Japan's protracted economic slump that plagued the nation in the 1990s.
Schoolchildren also killed themselves in recent years due to vicious bullying, a phenomenon experts attribute to the intense social pressure to blend in.
Japan has seen a growing number of suicide pacts -- many arranged among strangers on the Internet -- using charcoal burners in sealed cars, often near peaceful sites such as mountains and forests.
Sociologists have said Japan's suicide rate is high in part because there are few cultural taboos against it compared with Judeo-Christian or Islamic societies.
