Those statistics are highly suspect, from the article: "Every year, the government gathers these statistics by approaching 6000 households and asking them to f

Those statistics are highly suspect, from the article: "Every year, the government gathers these statistics by approaching 6000 households and asking them to fill in a questionnaire. They don’t have to write their names on it, but they do have to hand them over to a government official. In a country where – as I’ll discuss later – even doctors call the police to inform them if their patients are suspected of using drugs, it is very likely that this method leads to figures that hugely underestimate the proportion of Japanese people using drugs." As well as: "He concluded: “A very Japanese way of not dealing with the problem is – don’t take the data that would show that it exists.”" We have no idea what the statistics might be as they don't want to measure them since then they would have to admit that they have a problem. If people are in pain they'll find a way to escape it, and it seems there's a lot of people in pain in Japan and Korea due to the focus on extreme amounts of work and strict social rules. How they are doing compared to the west is a matter of debate, I think roughly equal just with different areas being difficult, however we can't truly measure and compare as the numbers are being deliberately ignored.