A New Topic

I wanted to address a delicate but timely topic today. In recent weeks there has been a spike in suicides reported in the media. What stands out in my mind is in their tragic nature because many are students. It leads me to wonder if this is a snowballing effect. In this post I will not detail the causes because so long as we are human such actions will always be mysterious. However, it becomes hard to ignore after a point and there are certain elements that can apply only to Japan that make it of interest.

One important fact to keep in mind is that despite its image Japan doesn't have the highest suicide rate in the world. This is a surprisingly wide misconception on the news forums I frequent. It's actually tenth. The countries ahead of Japan on the list are all dark former eastern block countries. None of them have the extensive wealth and high quality of life Japan has. What seems to mark the deaths in Japan is that all victims had their life opening before them. This is in contrast to those higher on the list than Japan whose victims, have, in many cases, hit absolute rock bottom because of alcoholism or some other such socio-economic effect.

While in modern Japan there is total condemnation of suicide, and decades of building institutions to prevent it, this has not always been the case. As recently as WWII suicide was seen as an courageous path. It would not be proper to ignore the power of looking back through one's own history and reading about the so-called honourable actions of others and people's praise of it. (It takes a long time for a complete re-interpretation of Japanese history to take place.)

The most disturbing modern trend is that of group suicides, something not unheard of in other parts of the world but more prevalent here in recent memory than is reasonable. It seems far too often the news reports another car found in the mountains with three or four young people inside with a burning charcoal stove. This trend is explicitly tied to the rise on the internet where people meet to plan to commit suicide together. This type of news gives me pause and moves me to try to understand this crazy world.