Suicide in Japan

Japan is well-known for its "suicide culture." Cultural tropes such as seppuku, kamikaze pilots, and shinju have been seized upon by foreign observers who use them to portray the Japanese as a people uniquely permissive of suicide and uniquely susceptible to its allurements as a means of expiating shame or merely escaping life's woes.

And yet in many ways it is the Japanese themselves who are most culpable in promulgating the idea of Japan as a "suicide nation" (jisatsu-goku), with their portrayal of suicide as a Japanese national "problem" (mondai) of the first order, and their intense media coverage of year to year suicide trends. Indeed, the terms "suicide nation" and "suicide culture" were first coined by the Japanese themselves during an up-tick in the Japanese national suicide rate in the 1950s.

But is Japan really a "suicide nation"? Compared to other nations, is suicide a more significant social problem in Japan? Are the Japanese really more prone to suicide than other peoples? In this writeup I will attempt to answer these questions by placing Japanese suicide within a global context, exploring some recent trends in Japanese suicide, examining the history of suicide in Japan, and investigating the causes of suicide within Japanese society.

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