Suicide Stories and Rising Trends

Stephanie Schoeller
Japanese Short Fiction
Final Project Essay
Due: 05.05.06

Suicide is never a comfortable topic to discuss in any situation. However, recent trends in Japan make it a necessary topic in some instances. One might not think that there is a lot of correlation between rising suicide rates and Japanese short stories of fiction; however, the mentalities of the stories we have read in class are similar to the mentality of Japan. Depressing and confusing stories are akin to the depressed and confused mental state of the nation of Japan. The rising suicide rates and recent internet cult suicides are indicative Japan’s mental state. Three of the stories we read in class have either an instance of suicide such as in “House on Fire”; something I interpreted as suicide, as in “Snow”; or just a generally self destructive mindset for the main character, such as the main character in “The Marsh”.

In recent years Japan has become a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates. With a rate of 27 suicides per population of 100,000, Japan doubles the United States rate of 12 per 100,000 and even triples the United Kingdom’s rate of 7.4 per 100,000. Most of these suicides are committed by young adults. This has lead to suicide being the leading cause of death in young adults from the ages of 23 to 39. It is also the second leading cause of death for youths between the ages of 15 and 24 and adults ages 40 to 54. Also of note is the fact that in the age range of 40 to 54, men commit suicide five times more than women. This trend is popularly attributed to unemployment and economic recession. One has to think that the high rates of suicide in the adults of Japan might be contributing to the high rates in the youth. If the youth of Japan sees that the adults are committing suicide, it might be instilling in them the idea that suicide is not such a bad thing.

Another recent and depressing phenomenon in Japan is the rise of internet cult, or club, suicides. With today’s massive increase in telecommunications, thousands of young people can meet online in chat rooms, websites, or other venues and chat about things, including killing themselves together. Like in the case of Naoki Tachiwana, who said,“‘I visited a website and thought - ah, if I join this I won't have to go through with it on my own. It's like crossing the road when the traffic light is red... it's not so scary when you're with others’ ” (Harding). These websites and chat rooms make suicide seem more accessible, easy, and even popular. There are mixed feelings about the internet group suicides. Some say they are inhuman and cult-like while others seem to think along the lines of Wataru Tsurumi, who said, “‘there’s nothing bad about suicide. We have no religion or laws here in Japan telling us otherwise. As for group suicides - before the internet people would write letters, or make phone calls... it's always been part of our culture’” (Harding). Regardless of whether or not there are laws against suicide, while the internet suicides currently only represent a small portion of the overall suicides in Japan, the trend is growing quickly.

In "House on Fire" by Kenji Nakagami, “brother’s” older brother kills himself at the age of 24. The “brother” notes that “since then he had felt the gaze of the dead on him – assuming his brother’s voice, breath, and eyes lived on in the realm of the dead. But the man, he realized, had been watching him with the gaze of the living. Still, everyone dies. Everyone fades away. As he’d said the other night when his mother called him, ‘They just keep on dying’ (120, Nakagami). The story of "House on Fire" is one of the struggles of burakumin in Japanese society. It’s a depressing story of a man who is domestically violent and he passes it on to his son. The suicide of the “brother’s” older brother is just a further example of the depressing state of things. The suicide in the story is just mentioned. There is no explanation as to why the older brother decided to kill himself. Was he ashamed of his family? Was he depressed at his situation in life? We don’t know. What we do know is that his solution to his problems was to kill himself. By committing suicide he ended all of his pain and suffering and instead passed it all on to his younger brother. This story says that “everyone fades” and “everyone dies”. With that reading of it, why then would someone want to accelerate the fading process? Why speed up death; make it premature? One would have to be in a very desperate situation to think that suicide it the best option. The older brother obviously felt himself to be in such a situation. Whether we would do the same in his place…there is no way of knowing unless we were to experience what he experienced. Readers are confused as to why this young man committed suicide and the story is rather depressing as a whole, considering the domestic abuse and mental anguish that occurs throughout. A story with suicide for a nation with one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

In Yuuko Tsushima’s "The Marsh" we read about a character that seems to have a self destructive tendency. She is constantly searching for a way to keep the men in her life close to her, and she seems to pick the wrong sort of men; the married sort. Even when she knows that she should not be getting involved with a certain man she is drawn to him and cannot help herself. This woman at the end of the story says, “I want to go to see the Round Marsh. My longing is getting stronger every day, but I haven’t been able to tell the man who described it to me that I want to visit it with him. I am merely gazing at this man, with whom I became acquainted on some unexpected occasion” (163, Tsushima). There is this longing to become self destructive. The marshes are her longings in a more substantial form. These dangerous bogs that pull the unwary visitor down; she cannot hope to escape the problems of either the marsh or a married man. I think that the tone of this paper is very much the way it is because the father of the author committed a love suicide. Dazai, Tsushima’s father attempted many love suicides in his life and finally succeeded. He was tempted by the idea of a group suicide, even if the group only consisted of one other person. This is akin to the internet cult suicides. People find it easier to kill themselves when they have company when doing so. When you are not alone in a difficult time, things seem to go more smoothly and there is less fear of the unknown, because someone is there with you. I think that this is the main mentality behind the internet cult suicides and also behind love suicides like the one performed by Dazai.

The last story, "Snow" by Kouno Taeko has Hayako the main character attempting to bury herself in snow at the end of the story. She even tries to enlist help from her boyfriend Kisaki in the burying process.

“Bury you? In the snow?” Kisaki asked in amazement. The shock in his voice only exacerbated Hayako’s desire. Just then, a sharp pain ran through her head. She waited for it to recede, then stood up and caught hold of Kisaki’s wrist above the hand holding the umbrella.
“Please do it. I want you to!”
“But you’ll die of pain.”
“Yes, that’s what I want! I want to die just this once. Please bury me. Go ahead—please dig!”
Kisaki was silent, his wrist pulling back from her hand.
“Bury me here, in the deep s-s-snow,” Hayako begged him again through her stutter. “J-j-just cover me a little. Please do it!”
Kisaki staggered, and the snow fell from his umbrella with a soft thud, the thud of a dead bird falling out of the sky.

When I read this story I interpreted it as Hayako truly wanting to die and Kisaki in horror of her request. Hayako has gone through so many difficulties in her life, particularly as a child with the snow incident. I think that she might think it would be better if she had died in the snow when her mother put her there when she was younger. Since that death was thwarted by her father, she now has another opportunity to die in the snow. Even though her first snow experience was not her choice, she now at the end of the story chooses to bury herself in the snow. Again we have another person in the mix. Kisaki’s presence seems to help give Hayako the courage to do this thing. While Kisaki is not burying himself beside her, he is asked to help kill her. So, while not strictly a group suicide, it would be assisted and continue the idea that having someone else with you during suicide makes it easier. When Kisaki staggers at the end and the snow sounds like a dead bird, I believe that Kisaki staggers backward in horror. The sound of snow like a dead bird falling, to me, is a forbidding sound. It foretells of Hayako’s death in the snow. Hayako is the dead bird falling from the sky. She died that night in the snow when her mother left her outside. Her existence up until the end of the story has been one of a dead bird still somehow able to fly in the sky. When she finally decided to bury herself and kill herself in the snow, it was the last process of removing the dead bird from the sky. Hayako would be truly dead.

I’m not trying to say here that the stories we have read in class are adding to the rising suicide rates in Japan. I am simply trying to show the similarities in the mentality of the stories we read and the mentalities of the people in Japan; the mentality of the nation of Japan as a whole. Suicide is a topic in stories from all countries and people can be self destructive in any language, not just Japanese. While I hope that suicide rates in Japan start to decline and that people start to realize that internet group club suicides are pretty stupid, I am afraid that the current trend does not point to that happening. While this was a rather depressing topic, the stories were still excellent and I just find it interesting how the writing of people from a country can represent the feeling of the country as a whole.



Sources
Goerzen, Matt. Suicide: Japan's Growing Nightmare. Apr. 2003.<>.
The Foreigner-Japan.2005

Harding, Andrew. Japan’s Internet “suicide clubs”. Dec. 7 2004. BBC News.

Kouno, Taeko. Toddler Hunting and Other Stories: Snow. New York, New Directions Publishing Corportation. 1996.

Nakagami, Kenji. The Cape and other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto: House on Fire. Berkeley, Ca. Stone Bridge Press. 1999.

Tsushima, Yuuko. Unmapped Territories: The Marsh. USA. 1991.

Ueno, Kayoko. Suicide as Japan’s major export? 2004.