Hagakure: The Book Of The Samurai

Japan has a very rich history on the view of suicide. It is even discussed in two main Japanese history narratives. The first major writing I will be discussing is Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai (1716) by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. The second was written in 1899 by Nitobe Inazō and it was called Bushido: The soul of Japan. It is important to point out some differences about the two books. On the one hand Hagakure’s book is written to explain bushido (the way of the Samurai) to people from the age of the Samurai. On the other hand, Bushido was written and based off of Hagakure, however it is written in the context of the late nineteenth century, well after European context. Furthermore, Inazō wrote Bushido in America while Japan was in the midst

of modernization. His objective for writing the book was to capture the ethos of traditional Japan before it was swept away in the modernization process. Both authors however, discuss the philosophy behind killing one’s self. The concept of killing oneself was not originally considered negatively, to the contrary, it was indeed viewed positively. Seppuku, also known as honorable suicide, it was performed by cutting of the abdomen, and was considered a righteous death. Often seppuku was used in order to maintain dignity in times of defeat, expiate their crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their friends, or prove their sincerity. The reason for puncturing the abdomen was the spiritual connotation of the stomach. The soul was said to reside in one’s entrails. However, the way the two authors talk about the act is in two different lights. Tsunetomo writes of the act as if it is common knowledge, which it was at the time, so he did not explain the reasoning behind it. But Inazō felt the need to explain the cultural significance of the practice because his targeted Western audience who would not understand the mindset of those who committed seppuku. It is almost inconceivable that someone would kill themselves in order to prove how loyal one person was to another. [1-2]
Often modern Japanese individuals are torn between adopting Western (individualistic) ideals and maintaining traditional values.

Which makes them question whether or not they should put their own, or others’ happiness first. In western culture the sense of self preservation, and concept of suicide as a termination of one’s life and as the termination of all worldly responsibilities and in religious terms, as a sin. However, in Japanese culture, suicide is not seen as a sin, nor is it the cessation of life, but its transformation to another level, and it is a direct way for an individual to take responsibility. Furthermore, one can act in death in ways that influence life according to the Sino-Japanese system of ancestor worship. To state suicide is simply the termination of the self is thus not strictly accurate in Japan. In other words, suicide can be seen as a return to nature, or as the merging of oneself with that of another. This idea is especially true in love or double suicides. For instance, we observe frequent suicides of elderly people following the death of their partner or as withdrawing from society in order to influence it from the outside. [3] In Japan a dominant feature of suicide has been cultural aestheticization. In other words, certain suicides are given a positive cultural attention. For example, the cases of Mishima Yukio and Eto Jun. These two famous writers took their own lives, the public reaction and mass media reports included praises of their

heroism. Largely, Japanese cultural perceptions of suicide are more accepting than those in the west, and in many cases suicide(s) are seen as a sign of maturity and responsibility. [3] In modern times we still see that Bushido ideology still exist but is considered to be superficial. [4] Furthermore, the cultural context around suicide makes it harder for one to perceive themselves in the sick role.
However, it was not until recently, that suicide prevention was a widely recognised concept, but the recent rise in suicide rates and new types of suicide, such as internet suicide pacts, have attracted intercontinental attention that stressed Japanese society to the extent that suicide prevention is now being taken more seriously. Suicide was the leading cause of death among people under the age of 30, in the year 2003. Japan had seen the highest number of suicides historically, at 34,427, or 27 suicides per 100,000 members of the population, followed by 32,325 in 2004. These numbers are all the more startling when we consider that there are 100–200 times as many unsuccessful suicide attempts, as there are actual suicides. [3] The example that I will be using to describe the incline of the suicides are youth, and over worked adults.
The youths, known as hikikomori (the withdrawn) are viewed as high risk individuals in japan.

Hikikomori can be perceived as a manifestation of Japanese democracy, in which the good society is imagined as cohesive, protective and secure, rather than one in which the individual can freely exercise the right to be different. But that is not always so. Schools, families and the sphere of mental health care have focused on producing social inclusion, but have discouraged citizens from being labeled as ‘‘different’’, even when such a distinction could aid them.[5] For example, Japan’s postwar education and health care encouraged relative equality and common social values, as a key to a healthy and productive society. However, society offers limited and constrained substitutes to mainstream social practise. Mental health is often described as a matter of an individual’s attitude (ki no mochiyo ¯), so it is important to keep in good spirits. The over-arching cultural value is attached to being active and participative, and if one fails to do so they are considered “different”. As a result a more diffuse assumption is that mental degeneration, whether in the form of mental illness, senility or even suicide, is, at least in some part, voluntary. [3] This approach to depression does not recognize nor does it emphasize psychological, developmental or even familial issues that were potentially at play in the youth. Instead, the stress is almost exclusively placed on healing through

instilling better social skills. Attitudes toward difference and mental illness are rooted in larger cultural principles of equality. The inclination to join the mainstream is an evident from the earliest stages of education and socialization. The agenda of the Japanese public education system is to educate all children equally, at least through the years of compulsory education. The emphasis on equality does have pros and cons. On the positive end of the spectrum, the strong belief that Down syndrome children should be accepted in the ‘‘normal’’ classroom is associated with the idealistic belief that inclusion would allow stronger children to overcome their discrimination, and allow disabled children to benefit from mingling with mainstream peers. However negatively, inclusion is associated to an ideology of ‘‘sameness’’ and the pressure to hide problems and assimilate into mainstream. [3] The Mainstreaming is rooted in a belief that socialization and social environment strongly shape a child’s outcome, in addition to innate abilities and predispositions. [3] This attitude further verifies the cultural relativist approach that depression is a culturally construed illness.
Natsume Sōseki, is one of the most important writers in Japanese modern history and a well-known neurasthenic. He argues that Japanese people were suffering from neurasthenia because they were thrown into a modernization against their will. In his speeches, “The Enlightenment of Modern Japan” (1911) and “My Individualism” (1914), Sōseki states the theme that Japanese were faced with the task of industrialization and urbanization, in less than half the time that it had taken European nations. The consequence of this accelerated development, imposed on the Japanese by the external threat of colonialism, created dissatisfaction and confusion. [5] Even some politicians, and academic psychiatrists (most of whom were trained in German neuropsychiatry and its ideas of degeneration) “strongly asserted that individuals who kill themselves do so because they have an “inborn, physical, pathological” nature (such as neurasthenia) that would drive them to kill one’s self. These people, according to this theory, were “unfit” to survive in the highly competitive modern society. However as time progressed, Japanese psychiatrists shaped their biological language of depression by their own struggles with traditional biological reductionism, through different historical phases. [5] In an attempt to make depression apparent to ordinary Japanese people, psychiatrists found various ways to present depression on the same playing field as other physical illnesses. While other psychiatrists stayed with technical, neurochemical terminologies, and others with a more clinical orientation began to portray depression by suggesting a set of culturally resonant idioms, some of which were expressive of traditional medical holism. The last set of psychiatrists explained depression as a “disorder in vital rhythm,” “stagnation of vital flow,” and “lowering of vital emotion”. But, these body-centered methods showed their limitations, as psychiatrists began to experience therapeutic failures with antidepressants. The psychiatrists observed that a significant number of patients on antidepressants were not getting better, and some were experiencing relapses, while others turning into chronic patients. [5] These failures have created a new hybrid of medicine. The emergence of “biosociality” and “biological citizenship”, meaning society and biology are addressed; and a medical diagnosis or a patient identity becomes a means for the socially weak to collectively claim their victimhood and gain legitimacy for their suffering. [5] For instance, The Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Labor has labor safety laws, which make it mandatory for anyone working more than one-hundred overworked hours to be examined by a medical doctor. Furthermore, Workers were permitted to spend a long stretch of time in hospital as a way to rest, a kind of down time for recovering from both physiological and psychological fatigue that was deemed inevitable. This system functioned with the Parsoninan idea of a sick role, where tired workers were expected to recover under medical experts, who would determined what the “natural” recovery process should be, and when these workers were well enough to return to their job with their personhood fully restored. [5]