Ok, sounds like this is gonna be another one of those cynical posts criticizing Japanese society....so let me start on a "high note" for this topic. One of my favorite horror movies of all time is a Japanese classic called "Suicide Club" (or 「自殺サークル」 in Japanese). It portrays a modern-day Japan in which large segment of people simply lost the will to continue living. Suicides, in the forms of jumping off buildings, cutting themselves, and what not become so common in everyday life that people, especially the young, started to take life as a joke and suicide as a game.
I recommended the movie to people in the States and got absolutely horrified responses. In a Western culture were the continuation of life is probably the most basic human right there is (well, guess thats true everywhere, but the outer manifestation of that willingness to protect life is just so powerful in the West), the idea that people can possibly take the voluntary destruction of it as a laughing matter is simply insane by any psychological theory.
So as this whole thought randomly flowed into my mind as I waited for my train to go home after hanging out with my colleagues, I was suddenly stopped by a routine-sounding announcement over the station loudspeakers. The train that was going the opposite direction was stopped for the night after a case of 「人身事故」 somewhere up north. The hundreds of people filed through the station with a little grumble, but everyone went along the businesses as usual.
Now, this situation would be unimaginable outside of Japan. 「人身事故」, roughly translated as "physical accident," is an euphemism for people committing suicide by throwing themselves in the train tracks as speeding trains approach station platforms. And yes, in Japan, this is practically an every day event: one Sunday I actually encountered an announcement that three train lines all went down due to 「人身事故」(of course, three separate incidents).
And by the looks for the people reacting to these horrifyingly monotonous announcements, we can easily see that they tend to care just as little about their fellow citizens as "foreign" affairs couple hours away by plane. Listening to the crowds, all I heard were a bit dismayed but otherwise highly indifferent comments about how people should not make themselves source of inconveniences for others with their "public disturbances."
Right, thats exactly what these pesky self-killers are, "public disturbances"? So, while these people are shooting SOS flares for years as their problems in life become more and more unbearable over time, they were simply ignored. And as they send out their last lonely messages to the entire country of Japan by taking that final plunge before the speeding train, no one at the station even considered the personal issues behind these "public disturbances."
I hate to say it but these 「人身事故」 is in essence not any different from a terrorist blowing himself up in a large crowd. These two different WMDs uses the same painful format to let the surroundings know that there is a problem in society. But as people continue to label these "dangerous elements" as motivated by simple "craziness," they will continue to miss opportunities to review and reflect on the social structures that is causing the insuppressible appearances of these WMDs.
At the end, we should realize that the value of human life is universal. And because some people are willing to give theirs up voluntarily to warn us of problems that we really need to take their underlying messages seriously. Yeah, it may be true that a life is worth less somewhere, but issues that prompt people to commit suicide are just as strong everywhere. If we do not examine these issues, perhaps the day we laugh off suicides (like in "Suicide Club") really is not that far away....
I recommended the movie to people in the States and got absolutely horrified responses. In a Western culture were the continuation of life is probably the most basic human right there is (well, guess thats true everywhere, but the outer manifestation of that willingness to protect life is just so powerful in the West), the idea that people can possibly take the voluntary destruction of it as a laughing matter is simply insane by any psychological theory.
So as this whole thought randomly flowed into my mind as I waited for my train to go home after hanging out with my colleagues, I was suddenly stopped by a routine-sounding announcement over the station loudspeakers. The train that was going the opposite direction was stopped for the night after a case of 「人身事故」 somewhere up north. The hundreds of people filed through the station with a little grumble, but everyone went along the businesses as usual.
Now, this situation would be unimaginable outside of Japan. 「人身事故」, roughly translated as "physical accident," is an euphemism for people committing suicide by throwing themselves in the train tracks as speeding trains approach station platforms. And yes, in Japan, this is practically an every day event: one Sunday I actually encountered an announcement that three train lines all went down due to 「人身事故」(of course, three separate incidents).
And by the looks for the people reacting to these horrifyingly monotonous announcements, we can easily see that they tend to care just as little about their fellow citizens as "foreign" affairs couple hours away by plane. Listening to the crowds, all I heard were a bit dismayed but otherwise highly indifferent comments about how people should not make themselves source of inconveniences for others with their "public disturbances."
Right, thats exactly what these pesky self-killers are, "public disturbances"? So, while these people are shooting SOS flares for years as their problems in life become more and more unbearable over time, they were simply ignored. And as they send out their last lonely messages to the entire country of Japan by taking that final plunge before the speeding train, no one at the station even considered the personal issues behind these "public disturbances."
I hate to say it but these 「人身事故」 is in essence not any different from a terrorist blowing himself up in a large crowd. These two different WMDs uses the same painful format to let the surroundings know that there is a problem in society. But as people continue to label these "dangerous elements" as motivated by simple "craziness," they will continue to miss opportunities to review and reflect on the social structures that is causing the insuppressible appearances of these WMDs.
At the end, we should realize that the value of human life is universal. And because some people are willing to give theirs up voluntarily to warn us of problems that we really need to take their underlying messages seriously. Yeah, it may be true that a life is worth less somewhere, but issues that prompt people to commit suicide are just as strong everywhere. If we do not examine these issues, perhaps the day we laugh off suicides (like in "Suicide Club") really is not that far away....
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