Overwork and shame: suicide in modern Japan

To understand the motives more specifically, you need to take into account the relationship with age and profession. And in Japan it is quite logical. The maximum number of suicides is committed by people aged sixty years and older - 8,558 people. The general aging of the nation is taking its toll. The rhythm of life is changing: in Japan, sick leave is not paid, and illness causes inconvenience to colleagues and clients, so all illnesses are restrained by the principle “You can’t get sick, you have to work!”, and after retirement they finally make themselves felt. And many simply get tired of illnesses: “If I can’t regain my health, then it’s easier to die.” Euthanasia is prohibited. Loneliness immediately takes its toll: the children have grown up, and the old people are left on their own. Those who have families feel guilty before them: “I live too long and interfere with the children.”

They are followed by the forty-fifty-nine age group with 7,783 cases. This age in Japan, oddly enough, is considered the “prime of strength”, when a person already has experience and has reached a certain level of responsibility. But there are more and more elderly people, and every year there are rumors that pensions are about to not be enough for everyone. And bankruptcy of a company or dismissal at this age is akin to a disaster. It is impossible to find a new place, and the strength is not the same. In an attempt to ensure a comfortable future, some Japanese take risks and take out loans for business, but this does not always become a salvation - rather, on the contrary.

In modern Japan, the average age of marriage for women is twenty-nine years, for men - thirty-one. Therefore, at the age of thirty to thirty-nine, family difficulties come to the fore: disagreements in the couple, problems of young parents and disappointment in marriage. In April 2015, in Tochigi Prefecture, in a small town with a population of just over one hundred thousand people, two female friends (their names and ages were not disclosed), whose children studied at the same school, committed suicide within a week of each other. The first, A., a mother of two children, became the object of bullying from the mothers of her daughter’s classmates, an elementary school student. The woman was either reprimanded for improperly raising a child, or deliberately ignored both “live” and in a parent group online. And the reason for hostility and persecution was the girl’s harmless story to her classmates about a family trip, which was perceived as bragging. “My daughter found her in the morning and called an ambulance, but the area is hilly, and the team did not immediately reach the house. All this time the girl was running from side to side and shouting: there’s mom, mom!” - says the neighbor.

The second woman, B., a mother of four children, an active participant in parent committees, appealed to the school leadership about bullying her high school daughter, which also aroused open hostility from her “fellow mothers.” “At the meeting after A.’s suicide they told her: “A. hanged herself, what will you do?’ She left all in tears. And exactly a week after A., she also hanged herself,” says a witness to the incident.

At the age of twenty to twenty-nine, problems at work become unbearable. Everything here is also logical: starting a career in Japan is a real challenge. The strict senior-junior system breaks the newcomers: they are required to rework and unquestioningly obey. You are young, which means you have to work harder to show loyalty and willingness to serve the company. Often, one of the working conditions is mandatory attendance at “nomikai” - corporate gatherings. Hence, increased stress from relationships with co-workers and fatigue from work are the main reasons that young people indicate in their suicide notes. But you shouldn’t think that the more and more productive you work in a Japanese company, the faster your career growth. Strict order reigns here: promotion is slow, based on seniority.

“I feel nothing except the desire to sleep,” twenty-four-year-old employee Matsuri Takahashi wrote on the eve of her death, although not even a year had passed since she joined the company. The girl could not stand the overwork, which reached one hundred and five hours a month, and the bullying of her superiors, and on December 25, 2015, she committed suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of a women’s dormitory. Only a year later, under public pressure, the head of the company resigned.

And the last ones are children and youth under twenty. Hazing in educational institutions is a problem no stranger to Japan, with nine children killed due to severe bullying last year. But most of all, young people worry about academic performance and the learning process. One of the triggers that leads to the decision to take one’s life is fear of exams. The peak of suicide among young people occurs during their student years. An incident that happened two years ago still pops up in online forums in Japan: a third-year student at the Faculty of Economics at Oita University could not stand the nagging of his academic advisor, who constantly criticized him during a meeting and sent offensive messages at any time of the day. The persecution continued for at least six months. In the found correspondence with the teacher, you can see how the guy “broke down.” Just a few months after communicating with the supervisor, the student asked for forgiveness with every reproach: “Sorry, I have become completely irresponsible.” The guy’s father recalls that he heard from his son more than once: “I can no longer cope with the teacher’s instructions.” In February 2015, he committed suicide at home, leaving a suicide note, which became the reason for the investigation. “I just wanted to act as a scientific director,” the “culprit” of the case tried to explain. A few months later he left the university.

There were a total of one hundred and fifteen fatalities in 2021.

Analysts also note the influence of the Werther effect in Japan - a wave of suicides due to media coverage of suicide. Most often it occurs within ten days after the news is released, and in Japan an average increase of five percent is observed. The more famous the person who committed suicide, the more followers he has. But the Japanese are surprising: the most vulnerable layer in this sense is not so much sensitive teenagers, but housewives and working men about fifty years old. The suicides of creative individuals and politicians have the greatest impact.

Mental health

Japan's mental health system is in chaos. There is an acute shortage of psychiatrists. The country does not offer any government training programs for clinical psychologists to facilitate formal certification. There is also no tradition of psychiatrists working together with clinical psychologists. People suffering from mental illness may be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs, but, unlike in Western countries, these are often not accompanied by a recommendation for the patient to seek professional advice. The consulting industry itself is a free for all.

Schools in Japan have a ridiculous reason for banning freezing girls from wearing tights.

In an attempt to curb the problem of youth suicide, Japanese officials have tried to open a public discussion about mental health, but so far these efforts have been unsuccessful. Non-governmental organizations contributed to these efforts, but with equally disastrous results. The Japanese nonprofit Futoko Shimbun encourages children who are victims of bullying to stay away from school—a misguided decision that reflects a deep cultural discomfort with mental health issues.

For Japan, like any other country, there is no simple answer to how to reduce suicide. The Japanese government aims to reduce the country's suicide rate by twenty percent by 2025, but it remains unclear exactly how it plans to do this.

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Historical background

Japanese culture has a long history of revered suicide, called seppuku, committed by samurai to atone for their guilt and avoid dishonor. Many suicides in modern Japan are also committed as atonement for a mistake that has brought shame or harm to a family, company, sports team, school, etc.

The desperate suicidal behavior of Japanese soldiers during combat operations was also widely known. During the Second World War, for example, Japanese kamikaze pilots, in order to inflict maximum damage on the enemy, flew their planes and gliders to suicidal ramming of American aircraft carriers. There were also ordinary soldiers who carried out desperate banzai attacks to avoid the shame of defeat.[17]

There is a well-known tradition of self-mummification of Buddhist monks of the Shingon school, which can be interpreted as sacrificial suicide.

Gender distribution of suicides in Russia

According to the average suicide rate for both sexes, Russia ranks third in the world.

But in terms of suicides only among men, Russia ranks first - 48.3 suicides per 100 thousand population.

At the same time, Russia ranks 31st in suicides among women - 7.5 suicides per 100 thousand population.

Comparison of suicides in Russia among men and women // WHO data, 2016

See tables. Check the link below. Draw conclusions.

WHO study

WHO study on the number of suicides in the world. In English. Current date: 2016.

Suicide data

Also on MirSerpen.Ru

Shinju

Shinju (Japanese 心中, English shinjū) literally means “unity of hearts” in Japanese[29]. Shinju in its best known sense is the suicide of a pair of lovers whose love is socially unacceptable or rejected by their family. The lovers believed that after shinju they would unite again in heaven. Such double suicides have been quite common in Japan throughout history and have become an important part of the art form. In Japanese theater and literary tradition, shinju plays a very important role. Shinju was described, for example, in the famous play “The Suicide of Lovers on the Island of Heavenly Nets,” written in the seventeenth century by the tragedian Chikamatsu Monzaemon for the bunraku puppet theater. In theatrical plays before shinju, the lovers traditionally take a short romantic trip, enjoying their last days and remembering happy moments. Shinju is also reflected in modern Japanese cinema, for example, in the film “Fireworks” directed by Takeshi Kitano.

A lesser-known type of shinju is the murder by parents (usually one parent) of their children followed by suicide. A case that occurred on January 29, 1985 in the United States, where a 32-year-old Japanese immigrant, unable to bear her husband’s betrayal, became widely known in the West, decided to drown her two children and drown herself on the beach of Santa Monica.[29] In the minds of a woman in Japanese culture, no one can take care of small children better than a mother, so when she decides to end her life, she takes the children with her[29].

Group suicides

Group suicides often occur in Japan, attracting enormous attention from the Japanese media.[29] In addition to the fact that mass participation helps to overcome the fear of suicide, the roots of group suicide can also be found in Japanese history, from which many examples of mass seppuku are known, and there is also a known case from the Second World War, when about a thousand residents of the island of Saipan committed suicide (mostly by throwing themselves from a cliff) to escape American occupation.

Suicides by agreement

A feature of suicide in Japan at the beginning of the 21st century was the emergence of suicides by agreement. Thus, previously unfamiliar people, often finding each other on the Internet, enter into an agreement to commit suicide together or commit suicide simultaneously in different places. The case of 2005 received great coverage in the press, when seven people committed suicide simultaneously in two cars (by suffocation from exhaust fumes), having previously agreed on this via the Internet[30].

After spreading beyond Japan, treaty suicides began to spread around the world, forcing governments around the world to take action. In particular, in Israel, a special police department has been created in which police psychologists monitor new messages in forums dedicated to suicide and respond to them, providing psychological assistance and support where possible.