Japan in 2009 was a busy place — for the Grim Reaper. A National Police Agency report revealed that there were 32,753 suicides in the country last year, exceeding 30,000 for the 12th consecutive year and accounting for 3% of all deaths. Current World Health Organization figures show that of OECD countries, Japan has the second highest suicide rate, at 24.7 per 100,000 people. Only Russians kill themselves at a greater rate.
Unfortunately, in a country of 135 million people, such statistics lend themselves to abstraction, so let’s put a human face on things. Imagine standing at your local train station from morning to night and having to choose six people an hour to take their own lives. Who will it be? The salaryman? The young mother? The high school student?
Last year, the government set up a task force to address the suicide crisis, but there have been a number of such efforts made over the past decade, and the rate shows no sign of declining. This is because the task forces deal not in cures but in treatments, like the latest action of assigning mental health professionals to “Hello Work” employment offices. The rationale is that unemployment is a factor in suicide, but other countries with greater economic woes have much lower suicide rates. Why? Because a perpetually high suicide rate doesn’t just reflect a set of temporary circumstances — it’s a symptom of a dysfunctional society.
In his novel “A Long Way Down,” Nick Hornby offers a striking insight: people commit suicide not because they hate life, but because they love it and can’t endure separation from it. I take this to mean that we all want to lead lives as we choose but are constrained from doing so. The stronger the constraints, the wider and more painful the separation.
1 comment:
A culture of Honour and Rejection, so true to the identity that springs from one's own nature, merits and choices. Kaizen only to reach the limitations of our human grasp. The beyond that seems to exist outside of ourselves so far away, to become honourable enough to maybe, hopefully get to one day. This is a deceit where seemingly in deference to our very cells pride can be sought through what you accomplished.
But the pride is in the little spaces that hold all of those cells, functioning in symphony as they should. Therein already in the details of all that vibrates within us is the driving force hungering for what is missing.
Knowing this force that pours out of you, that fills you is something that cannot be quantified on a list of accolades. It has everything to do with Honour, and more than one could ever achieve by their own means.
How do ritual and cultural tradition, where this force is not present; a relic of the past to tribute ancestry, serve to surpass this? How does that missing piece that is actually massive get completed in temporarily retail image identity therapy. The inside is hollow.
Where the need is the most, there will be the greatest harvest
<3
i have some writings, if you feel interested/bored
https://divineinheritance.wordpress.com/
bless
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