Imagine being a samurai in ancient Japan. You have just been captured. What do you do? You would draw out your tanto or short blade, and plunge it into your stomach. Then you would start moving the blade from left to right, slicing open your insides. In Japanese culture, the ritual seppuku was often practiced when captured by an enemy or committing a serious crime. Although this ritual was banned, Seppuku is still practiced today.
Over the years suicide rates in Japan and America have dropped and increased, respectively. A major part of these suicides are the reasons behind it. How does the cause of suicide in Japan differ from America? In America one of the main causes of suicide is bullying. On the other hand, one of Japan’s main cause is economic struggle.
The first person to ever speak of the morality of suicide was Socrates when the suicide rate was so low you can’t find any records of it.. This was 400 years before christ (crouchfoundation). Jumping forward 2414 years, about 800,000 people die each year from suicide. Back in October of 1929, the stock market crashed, resulting in the Great Depression striking the United States. The Great Depression was the longest economic decline in the history of the world. Many civilians lost their jobs creating emotional distress at the time. An obvious emotion was depression, which many times resulted in self destruction. Before the Great Depression, in the Shogun Era, samurai would feel like a disgrace to their own family. Just like the Great Depression, these feelings of disgrace were followed by a ritual suicide. In 2010 there were 33, 687 deaths from motor vehicle accidents and 38,364 were from suicide (NY Times) . Suicide rates have been increasing more and more each year. This ...
... middle of paper ...
...ernment has launched several campaigns in the last few years designed to combat suicide, results have been positive.
In America, suicides will continue to increase until society decides to address the problem of bullying. While laws are passed to increase punishment after the crime was committed, the numbers won’t improve until we proactively address the cause. In Japan, their society has begun to address the cause, laws have been passed to reduced the pressures and research is being conducted that would bring to Japan’s society. The remaining stumbling block in japan continues to be “overwork”, until this practice is brought under control suicide rates will not decrease dramatically. In America bullying will continue to be the number one cause for suicides, a trend that will not change in the foreseeable future. Only a major shift in attitude will change this.
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
"Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention." NIMH RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Suicide due to bullying has been given the name of bullycide. One example of bullycide would be Jon Carmichael from Texas who was bullied so harshly that “one day they stripped him naked, tied him up, and stuck him in a trash can, and they taped it with their cell phones and put it all on You Tube” per his mother’s account (Texas Monthly, Hollandsworth). A few days later Jon was found hanging by a rafter from their barn after committing suicide. The perpetrators of this abuse were his fellow classmates and it is reported that “60% of boys who bullied others in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24; 40% had three or more convictions” (van der Valk, 41). Bullying behavior not only negatively affects the victims that are singled out and tormented, but from a legal perspective can lead to long term criminal
Aguirre, R. P., & Slater, H. (2010). Suicide Postvention as Suicide Prevention: Improvement and Expansion in the United States. Death Studies, 34(6), 529-540. doi:10.1080/07481181003761336
Lee, Kori. "Eastern vs. Western Views of Death and Suicide." HubPages. 15 Jan. 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. Web.
In the past decade, suicide rates have been on the incline; especially among men. According to the New York Times (2013), “From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent… The suicid...
Modern philosophy stipulates that the will to preserve one’s life as long as possible is a fundamental aspect of basic logic and reason. The will to survive as long as possible is described as an innate and natural instinct of being human. Based on this philosophical reasoning, it is inherently illogical and irrational to willingly put an end to one’s life. Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists have also condemned suicide by stating that it is associated with mental, social and physical ill-being and that those who commit suicide are not in a rational state of mind. These scientific and philosophical approaches to suicide have contributed to formally documenting suicide as a wrong, irrational and immoral act. The problem is that these approaches see suicide in a generalized manner and do not take into account sub-types and different kinds of suicide such as euthanasia for example, which is physician-assisted and intentional suicide in the case of a terminally ill patient with no possibility of recovering from his or her medical condition. Technological developments in medicin...
Did you know that the third leading cause of death in America among young people is suicide? In 2010, 38,364 people died from suicide in the U.S. That’s nearly 2% of all deaths in America, which may not seem like a lot, but it can really add up. And, there are at least 25 suicide attempts for every completed suicide in the U.S. Many people, hopefully not in this room, self-harm or have thoughts of suicide. If you are one of these people, please know that there are more options than hurting or killing yourself. No matter how hard you think life can get, there are always positive things in life that make it worth living.
Seattle, WA has a high rate of suicide and depression. Also Korea, which is my home country, is ranked on 2nd place on suicidal rate in the world. According to Korean Governmental Statistical Office, the leading cause of death of teenage group to 30th is a suicide which tells it is a big problem. Unemployment, depression, and social isolation are common reasons of committing suicide. Also in some of the East Asian countries, the hard pressure from studying and getting good grade for the college is one of the biggest reason of the suicide in teenage group, and that’s the reason why a lot of students in Korea committing or thinking about a suicide after the high school senior’s final test. Most of people kill themselves because of environmental factors so most of them think that they are victim who are damaged by social problems but I believe that committing suicide should be a criminal offense.
“Each year, 44,000 Americans, die due to suicide”(AFSP). Suicide is the 10th most leading cause of death in the US. To point out, suicide is the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. People commonly view suicide as an alternate way out of misery. Some view it as weakness, but others view it as the only way out. Although there are two sides to every story, should the suicidal be frowned upon?
Suicide is when someone takes their own life. There are various reasons why someone might end their own life. Most of the time depression has a significant impact towards suicide. For the 2020 measurement, the value we are working toward is to reduce the rate of suicidal deaths. The baseline measurement is 11.3 suicides per 100,000 population occurred in 2007. The target is to bring suicide rates to 10.2 suicides per 100,000 population. The target- setting method is a 10 percent improvement on suicidal deaths. The data that is measured is measured by the numerator representing the number of deaths due to suicide and the denominator representing the number of people per
Suicide has become a critical, national problem and the extent of this is mind-boggling. Suicides have been proven to be one of the leading causes of death among college students. According to Webters dictionary “suicide is the act killing oneself on purpose”. It derived from the Latin sui, meaning “self”, and caedere, which means “to kill”. But this is just a definition, because an actual suicide holds different meanings to people such as tragic, shocking, a relief, a cry for help, a shame, heroic, the right choice, punishment, revenge, protest, anger, a mistake, desperate, hurtful and many more. But why do people, like college students who have their entire future ahead of them, simply give up hope and turn their heads away from life and commit suicide. There are several causes of suicide, recent incidents of suicide on college campuses, warning signs from a suicidal. I blame the Constitution and the United States law for not taking any hard initiative on the subject of suicide. I also impose the choice of the media, which is reflecting and portraying suicide towards a wrong direction. However most important questions remain: can the growing epidemic of suicide be solved, what are communities doing about it and what can they do to help?
It is a hopeful sign that while the incidence of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled from 1965 to 1987, teen suicide rates in the past ten years have actually been declining, possibly due to increased recognition and treatment.
Many live due to the fear of death, many die due to the fear of living. Suicide is the act of ending one’s own life as a result of emotional and spiritual problems. Suicide, to some, is seen as a permanent escape. The Church itself argues against suicide. Life is borrowed and is not for one to just give away, God is the only one who can judge life. Suicide should not be committed because it infringes our relationship with others and ultimately God. Suicide is a selfish act all on its own.
Suicide is one of the most common death around the world. Life is just taking away very easy by someone or yourself. We have study the causes of someone killing themselves, but our human behavior can easy change and eventually make that deciduous. The causes and effects of suicide are depression, the past meaning your life before, and feeling unloved or lonely. The effects are the people that loved you are going to be depress, never reach those goals that you set for yourself, and people that loved you will feel the guilt.