"Public Disturbances" in Japan: 「人身事故」 as a Weapon of Mass Delay (WMD)
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 laug