Teen suicides in Japan

The other week our neighbour's son had a girl in his class kill herself. She was only 15. :-(((

I don't think it's the case for most of them. I bet most teen suicide = probably is a problem of perspective, they can't step back and realize the problems they are having now is really small, compared to the boring, complex, slowly debilating ones they'll have at maturity. oh wait

you know well and good suicide solution wasn't really advocating suicide!

Yes it is that bad.

I am not sure if it's worse here than everywhere else, but certainly than where I'm from. Teachers and administrators are also tacitly complicit through turning a blind eye to it.

A girl in my office just finished having a conversation about this topic with 4 Japanese colleagues. They all spoke very frankly about the ubiquity of this phenomenon in Japanese schools. The thing is that most of them didn't view it as anything particularily bad. One of them even described it as being "instructive". Bullying, in many cases, is the manifestation of the Japanese proverb which states that "the nail which stands up should be hammered down". One of the people involved in this conversation mentioned that he had to change schools 3 different times due to being bullied. He reckons that the kids who were tormenting him were "just relieving stress" in many cases.

An article about Native American teenage suicide was in the NYT today. It's strange, Japan's situation is so different-- much of suicide there is about deeply-engrained societal notions of shame, honor, etc, whereas with the Native population it seems as if much of it is due to lack of health/education resources, alcoholism, and...well, poverty.

They're not really commiting suicide, they say there's this video going around.....

xpost I am very intrigued by the Japanese attitude towards the *nails in the coffin* (mentioned upthread). I find their attitude towards, for example, homeless people extremely disheartening. One friend claims a homeless guy invited her to have a party with her, having a bit of wine and eating a bit of cheese, adding he even had a telly. "So they have it quite good!" Also when I mentioned to someone else (Japanese) about how strict they are with the unemployment people - cutting off money after six months unemployment - she seemed unable to understand how bad that is. I mean, I realize that my friends don't represent the whole population but, reading articles, it seems most tend to have that same attitude. :-( I find that extremely odd considering they are buddhist. Maybe I'm contradicting myself or whatever. I don't know enough about the culture to have a good view on it.

Where does a homeless guy plug a telly in?

streetlights and a lot of other public facilities have outlets attached to them. most of the time, they're capped or locked, but breaking these caps or locks is rather easy.

xpost it's not so much the ability (which they have) but why on earth they'd want to watch Japanese telly. ;-) Just kidding. Sort of.

They're not really commiting suicide, they say there's this video going around.....

― JTS, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 12:19 (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's just poor form now