On Sunday, USA Today published an article detailing the epidemic of suicide that is gripping Japan. Unfortunately, like many stories on suicide, the article is thin on actual data to back this idea of an “epidemic.”
When crossing international boundaries, one has to understand different cultures’ takes on taboo topics. Suicide is one such topic, and one where culture has a significant impact on how it’s viewed. For instance, in Japan suicide has practically been raised to a virtue, where committing suicide is seen as the honorable thing to do when one’s life seems to be going wrong:
A suicide fad is sweeping Japan: Hundreds of Japanese have killed themselves this year by mixing ordinary household chemicals into a lethal cloud of poison gas that often injures others and forces the evacuation of entire apartment blocks.
The 517 self-inflicted deaths by hydrogen sulfide poisoning this year are part of a bigger, grimmer story: Nearly 34,000 Japanese killed themselves last year, according to the Japanese national police. That’s the second-highest toll ever in a country where the suicide rate is ninth highest in the world and more than double that of the USA, the World Health Organization says.
Honor or not, suicide is not the answer. An economic downturn takes your job? Guess what? An economic upswing is just around the corner and virtually everyone finds another job in time. Girlfriend or wife leaves you? That’s no reason to end your life when a million other women are out there waiting for you. Suicide is an immediate reaction to a momentary life question that will haunt your friends and family for a lifetime.
But the problem isn’t just in Japan. It plagues many Asian cultures, including the South Korean one, where things are far worse. South Korea has the unlucky distinction of having the highest suicide rate amongst developed countries: 24.7 deaths per 100,000 people.
The solution? Make people better appreciate the life they have now by sending them on a “fake funeral” of their own. The Financial Times has the story:
“Korea has ranked number one in many bad things such as suicide and divorce and cancer rates, so I wanted to run a programme for people to experience death,” says Ko Min-su, a 40-year-old former insurance agent who founded Korea Life Consulting, which offers fake funerals as a way to make people value life.
Korean corporations — from Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor to Kyobo Life Insurance and Mirae Asset Management — send their employees on Mr Ko’s courses regularly, partly to encourage them to question their priorities in life and partly as a suicide prevention measure.
People who experience the course first-hand find the experience terrifying and eye opening at the same time:
Yoon Soo-yung, a manager at the Cheonnam Educational Training Institute, who was considering sending her staff on the course, said the experience was terrifying. “I felt like I was suffocating. I cried a lot inside my coffin,” she told the FT. “I regretted so many things that I had done in my life and mistakes that I had made.”
While some experts are skeptical:
Some medical experts are less convinced of the value of such programmes as a suicide prevention measure. “I think treating the fundamental causes like depression and impulsive behaviour is more important and should come before such programmes,” says Chung Hong-jin, professor of neuropsychiatry at the Samsung Medical Centre in Seoul.
My take? The suicide issue is very different in these cultures and the rate is so high, creative techniques like this may hold some potential. The real test is conducting a simple study on the course, assessing participants’ thoughts and attitudes toward suicide before and after, with a random sample of people (those who work in high stress, competitive jobs, and those who do not). It would be a simple study to conduct and one that would show whether there’s more than anecdotal evidence to support the course’s use.
Sadly, the president of the company marketing the course appears to be more interested in expanding into additional markets rather than examining whether his course actually works.
I think such interventions, possibly categorized under the treatment techniques of “psychodrama” (an established field here in the U.S. and Europe, though not well understood or popularized), have potential. Death holds a terrifying mystery to many people. By experiencing first-hand the ceremonial rites associated with death, it may be enough to reach people on an emotional, irrational level as a response to irrational feelings of killing oneself.
It’s an intriguing concept and one I’d like to see the research done on. Because anything that helps change people’s minds about taking their own lives is something that should be more widely understood and disseminated.
Read the full USA Today article about Japanese suicide: Suicide epidemic grips Japan
Read the full Financial Times article: When death is a reminder to live or view the photo gallery, which takes you on an eery step-by-step tour of the fake funeral process
23 comments
You guys are kidding right? I’ve been a patient of the US medical system trying to get treated for depression and what I found out was that the treatment was worse than the disease. What happened was that staff did everything possible to buttonhole the patient, get them on meds and shove them out the door.
The second time around after multiple rounds of useless meds I requested ECT. There I was given a short course of treatement and released before I stabilized. It was a disaster.
You can bet that everyone who glanced my way with a chart in hand added a $80 treatment or consult fee to my bill which I couldn’t pay. That ruined, further, my credit.
Rent-seeking bastards
You know what’s harder than convincing a dogmatic Psy.D. not to use the word ‘irrational?’
Trying to convince the emotionally fragile that their ONLY problem is their inability to realize there’s other fish in the see.
I’d give my left pinky toe…to make it that simple. My right…for you to agree with me….
Either way, at least you stop italicizing the word ‘irrational.’
People do not try to kill themselves simply because they lose a spouse or job. For many people, the depths of depression can be worse than death. To so trivialize this by suggesting otherwise is ridiculous.
James you have serious CONTROL issues, there’s forums for people like you. And for someone so caught up with ‘words’ you could at the very least spell the word sea correctly !
Enjoyed reading it.
There is one interesting article going on Trendsspotting.It suggests Japans weak economic growth and a high rate of unemployment can be attributed as the primary reasons behind high suicide rates.
Also as a topic,suicide is hugely popular among Japanese bloggers in 20-30s & such suicidal blogs are declining.
http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=424
Thank you, Nancy. And you’re right. It is spelled sea.
Thanks for seaing passed my spelling and focusing on the bigger issue at hand.
Much obliged….
P.s. the correct use of English would have been: “There ARE forums for people like you….”
Funny how one can screw up a sentence when one is trying to point out something they do not agree with, huh?
Now we’re both guilty of it. And the world is by far a better place….
J.
Apurba thanks for the link. I enjoyed reading the article. Having taught in Toyko for many years it has been a subject of great interest to me. Here is another one that I thought I would share with the group.
http://www.japaninc.com/jin418
Well ballenced Japanese people need to go against this negative subcutural view and burn the trasy sucide romance books there evil.
Western media reports on suicide and mental health care in Japan rarely get it right. I am a psychologist and psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years To use the wordsexpressions like “fad suicide fad issweeping Japan” and “nation of suicide” is one of the worst examples of the process of trivialization of a very sad and serious problem to be found in Western media reporting on Japan’s very high annual suicide rates over the past 11 years.
I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on the real reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide Japan from Japan and so will limit my comments to what I know about here in Japan but would first like to suggest that western media reports on suicide rates in Asian countries should try harder to get away from the tendency to orientalize the serious and preventable problem of increased suicide rates here over the last 10 years by reverting to stereotypical ideas of Asian people in general. It is ludicrous to for any journalist to report suicide as a fad. People here do not wake up one day and say, “Hey, let’s commit suicide today because I hear it is all the rage in Shanghai and Tokyo and the word is that even the Changs and Suzukis are doing it!” In other words Asians are real people too and not lemmings and it is more than every before the time the world wide media puts aside its mystical cliches, anciently outdated and jaded misconceptions on the hundreds of thousands of men and women who take their own lives every year in Japan and other countries throughout Asia.
As for Seppuku, it was officially abolished as a means of judicial punishment in Japan in 1873. Voluntary seppuku did happen on a sporadic basis from then until the end of the second world war. The last recorded incident of seppuku as a means of committing suicide in Japan took place in 1970 when the novelist Yukio Mishima committed seppuku after failing in his attempt to incite military forces to stage a coup d’etat. Also, as other media articles have recently falsely asserted, no corporate directors in post war Japan have ever “done the hara-kiri traditionâ€, whatever that odd and meaningless expression would try to suggest is the case.
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the prime causes for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan are unemployment, the effects of bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had an annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless the new administration initiates very proactive and well funded local and nationwide suicide prevention programs and other mental health care initiatives, including tackling the widespread problem of clinical depression suffered by so many of the general population, it is very difficult to foresee the previous government’s stated target to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 as being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.
The current numbers licensed psychiatrists (around 132,000), Japan Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists clinical psychologists (16,732 as of 2007), and Psychiatric Social Workers (39,108 as of 2009) must indeed be increased. In order for professional mental health counseling and psychotherapy services to be covered for depression and other mental illnesses by public health insurance it would seem advisable that positive action is taken to resume and complete the negotiations on how to achieve national licensing for clinical psychologists in Japan through the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and not just the Ministry of Education as is the current situation. These discussions were ongoing between all concerned mental health professional authorities that in the ongoing select committee and ministerial levels that were ongoing during the Koizumi administration. With the current economic recession adding even more hardship and stress in the lives its citizens, now would seem to be a prime opportunity for the responsible Japanese to take a pro-active approach to finally providing government approval for national licensing for clinical psychologists who provide mental health care counseling and psychotherapy services to the people of Japan.
Also during these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions. Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only to clearly if any journalist is prepared to learn Japanese or get a bilingual researcher to do the research to get to the real heart of the tragic story of the long term and unnecessarily high suicide rate problem in Japan.
I would also like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles (or works of fiction which I appreciate this is) dealing with suicide in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal.
Useful telephone number for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal: Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：
Japan: 0120-738-556 Tokyo: 3264 4343
Andrew Grimes
Tokyo Counseling Services
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
http://www.counselingjapan.com
This article is very interesting! In the U.S. suicide is thought of as shameful and sinful, which makes it hard for those dealing with suicide to reach out and seek the help they need. I found it interesting that in Japan, suicide is honorable and justified, especially if one is unhappy with his or her life. Suicide is never the answer. I understand that the cultural view on this issue is different for each culture, however, this article is proof that culturally there is a serious need for education and resources for individuals who are dealing with suicide.
I appreciate you mentioning the fake funerals; I had never even heard of that prior to reading this article. That is very interesting.
I agree with what you said about suicide being “an immediate reaction to a momentary life question that will haunt your friends and family for a lifetime.†I know of a few people personally who have committed suicide, and I have seen people who knew them suffer greatly as a result of the individual’s “solution†to their problem. Suicide is definitely a serious problem that harms many, many people. I am glad you have brought some awareness to it through this article.
Culture truly does influence psychological issues. Japan sees it as honorable to commit suicide; therefore, there is a high rate on suicide in the country. Because of this observation, it is not surprising that it is ranked number 10 in the world for suicide rate. South Korea is ranked number one, this is also not too surprising because its culture shames difficult times. The acted funeral is quite an interesting form of therapy; however,it is not very reliable because it has not been studied to see its actual outcomes.
I think that it is sad that people have to result to suicide. I did not know that Korea had it that bad with the rates. I wish that it was more we could do to help people through their problems so they would not have to result to suicide.
It seems crazy to me that 34,000 Japanese people committed suicide in 2007. I’m curious as to if the culture and Japanese society will ever take action on trying to stop people from killing themselves, and not just by having support groups, but by taking legal actions. It may seem kind of harsh, but penalizing a person’s family for a member killing themselves may just be enough to urge the person to not kill themselves.
While it is unsurprising that Japan’s suicide rate seems to be traced back to its cultural and social values, its implementation of “fake funerals†as a treatment program is quite unexpected and almost surreal. I can see how such an experience could, in fact, shock or scare an individual into second-guessing about his or her suicidal ideals, but it also may account for many different and unfavorable behaviors. While the time spent in a dark coffin may allow a person to think through their intended actions, it also allows time for rumination. This period of rumination, occurring in a dark and small space, could elicit more negative thinking and feeling in a person than before he or she began the procedure.
I found it very interesting that the Japanese see suicide as an honorable thing to do when life is going nowhere. In America, we view suicide as a sad thing and for some of us, it is something that brings anger to us. I feel like a fake funeral is a good idea to allow those to hopefully gain an appreciation for the life they are living now. However, I see how it could also be hard to breakthrough when one is raised their whole life believing it is honorable.
This article is very educational. I didn’t know that suicide was a way to honor ones family if their life didn’t turn out how it was supposed to. Cultural relativism comes into play in this situation. US culture always views suicide as negative, whereas Japanese culture considers it honorable. I was unaware of the massive suicide rates in South Korea. A fake funeral is an extreme attempt at lowering suicide rates, yet proven to work. It makes sense that some mental health professionals don’t approve of fake funerals because it puts the “patient” through so much mental stress.
If it is honorable to commit suicide to clears one’s name, what is the reason for children committing suicide? Are they committing suicide due to bullying in school? The stress of trying to make their parents happy?
The idea of changing someone’s mind about suicide through a sort of “scared-straight” method is interesting. However, as someone wanting to commit suicide usually has underlying mental health factors, I wonder what kind of mental health services are offered in Japan and Korea?
I actually agree with the fake funeral idea. It makes the perfect sense because in too many cases we are not giving the dead their flowers while they are alive. This particular idea can come to do that with a little bit of expansion. I think they they should invite friends or family of the person in the coffin to read off how that person impacted their life. Now don’t get me wrong this idea comes with the negatives such, as if nobody shows up to the “fake funeral” it will probably depression the individual more. If done right I think it could be a great idea to really make a person think it through before they make that decision.
In the article, it states that a lot of people in Japan are okay with committing suicide when life gets hard because they feel its the right thing to do. why is Japan’s culture okay with Suicide?
When it’s honorable to commit suicide when something is wrong, is that what the excuse is to society for people who kill themselves for unhonorable reasons as well? This leads to the endless cycle of more and more suicides because it has become a “fad”
Honor yourself and family by living
The fake funeral is a good idea (in its own way an unconventional form of therapy to get you to not kill yourself). To find value and know how killing yourself affects the people around you.