# A Japanese primary school principal, Kenji Nagata, 56, was found hanged in a forest in an apparent suicide, the second to take his own life in as many weeks
# Japan's education ministry last week received seven letters apparently written by students threatening suicide in response to harassment by bullying classmates.
# There has been a series of suicides by students in recent weeks caused by apparent bullying.
# A 12-year-old girl from Tondabayashi, near Osaka, leaped from the eighth floor of a public housing building and some classmates said she had been teased about her body shape.
# In late October a high school principal in Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, hanged himself in woods near his home after his school was found to be one of hundreds that skipped required courses so students could focus on competitive university entrance exams.
From what I can gather...you have a country with less and less children - the population actually fell by about six million last year - and these children are increasingly viewed as the future.
ReplyDeleteThey are spoiled - but at the same time they face the same things the US does - marketing, advertising, relentless images of what they should and shouldn't be in order to be popular.
Suicide seems to be a tragedy that affects cultures with enough free time to be depressed about something- you rarely see suicides in developing countries that are focused on essentials, such as food, shelter and trying to avoid Israeli missiles.
Good points from Wil.
ReplyDeleteAlso suicide is a cult. In Japan they have a suicide culture and have done for some time....remember the war?
A difficult cult ot get rid of though.
To my thinking, many suicides in Japan believe they are making a statement, in the manner of those who immolated themselves as a protest against the Vietnam war or who today blow themselves up in the name of Islam.
ReplyDeleteSeppuku (harakiri), ritual disembowelment of samurai following capture, humiliation, or dishonour, was the accepted social response for hundreds of years.
Kabuki, in the form of the story of the 47 Ronin who avenge the death of their master and then commit ritual suicide together, lends it a sublime noble quality in the eyes of many Japanese.
And today, a never-ending diet of tv dramas set in their "Age of Wars" regurgitate the same values, the closest thing perhaps to cult-like cant — imagine every third programme in the UK as a tale of King Arthur.
Oddly, the suicide rate among corrupt Japanese politicians is almost non-existent.