| Anomic Suicide and Japan |
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At the base of Mt. Fuji, Japan, the black forest (Aokigahara-jukai) is famously known as the largest suicide site in all of Japan. Here suicide victims are known to walk into the forest and never return. Suicide notes are often left at the entrance of the forest accompanied by the victim's shoes.
The Shinkansen, (Bullet Train) has an ordinance with requiring the families of suicide victims who throw themselves in front of the speeding trains to pay for the clean up costs.
A young Japanese girl recalls the time she convinced her best friend out of killing himself by self-drowning; he had started to walk into the ocean until the water depth rose above his head with the intention that he would force himself to drown. Suicide in Japan has a long and unique history, from the first western documented case of seppuku (Self-disembowelment) to the kamikaze pilots in the pacific battles of WWII, the fascination of suicide and Japanese culture creates a unique model to study in the institution. The west has known the Japanese people almost to the point of stigmatization as being a fanatical, crazy people when it comes to the topic of suicide. However intuition would argue against this, the simply and somewhat foolhardy assumption that the Japanese people are simply born with the passion and obsession for suicide is a racist and lazy assumption. Sociology would argue instead that people's actions are more of a result of their culture then their biological makings, thus suicide in Japan can be explained following similar theories used to explain suicide in the West. Using the theories of Durkheim and his followers on suicide, there is strong evidence present that supports the aside from the more famed image of fanatical suicide seen in the proud Samurai and that of the passionate Japanese warrior. Instead, it seems as if the majority of suicides in Japan are caused by a condition imposed on the individual by a societal imbalance in regulation and integration, a goal-means discrepancy that sometimes manifests itself in the form of extreme role conflict, otherwise known as anomie. In Le Suicide Emile Durkheim (1897) defines anomie as being a state of chaotic internal turmoil due to the lack of an imbalance in societal regulation of an individual's goals and the level of integration into society. "Disturbance of equilibrium….leads to impulse to voluntary death" (Durkheim 1897). Merton (1937) describes this condition as a state of normlessness, a word that Durkheim himself never used, yet in many ways articulates the theory in a broader sense. Anomie is the failure of society to adequately regulate and integrate the individual's aspirations and goals, thus affecting the one's self-identity, expectations, and role in society. Role conflict is a common result of this imbalance. An example of the effects of this imbalance manifests in times of economic crisis by an increase in the numbers of suicides. Specifically, Durkheim uses examples of the increase of suicides during times of economic crisis in Vienna and Paris at the end of the 19th century. However this sudden increase in suicide rate was not due to the state of poverty, Durkheim suggested, as it has been observed in the example of 1850s Prussia, and Italy in 1870s, that suicides also increase in times of extreme economic prosperity as well (Durkheim 1897). Instead, this surge of suicides associated with the extreme swings in economic prosperity or crisis was a result of sudden class change, a direct shift in the equilibrium of society, extreme role conflict resulting in a state of disillusion, normlessness, namely, a state of anomie. Durkheim found that rates of suicide from an economic standpoint were extremely bimodal; anomic suicide takes place at the very low, or the very high levels of prosperity. Suicide rate increased in approximately the same magnitude in both economic depression and prosperity. Another example of this imbalance can be seen in extreme role conflict, in the case of economic crisis and prosperity, the lack of a firm identity and knowledge of society's expectations and limits is an example of anomie. Anomie can also be explained as a state of helplessness stemming from an almost kafkaesque situation when an individual holds outrageous, unregulated personal goals, but realizes that society prevents the individual from ever accomplishing them. This occurrence corresponds with the state of normlessness, as the lack of society defining the limits of personal accomplishments for an individual is the failure of society to adequately regulate the individual, thus leading to the potential for anomie, in some cases, to the point of suicide. Anomic suicide puts a heavy burden on society, as anomie results from the failure of society to regulate the goals and aspirations of its members as to what the limits of their potential of achievement is. Disturbance in the scale of regulation and integration, in society, positive or negative on either end will result in extreme societal strain, which effects will be seen on the individual. To explain more in depth the importance in the balance of regulation and integration in society, Durkheim focuses on needs and living beings. In terms of the importance of regulation, Durkheim argues that we as humans are all bound to our biological needs: food, shelter, and clothing. Logically, the numerical trend of suicide rates significantly increasing as the financial situation worsened. In addition to these primal needs comes societal and psychosocial needs, belonging to a community, identity, interaction, family. It is important to note human needs are limited to the individual alone. Human desires are endless, cannot be quenched. "To pursue an unattainable goal is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness" (Durkheim 1897). Satisfaction received only stimulates more desires instead of filling needs. Thus, humans must be regulated in their desires by some form of medium, some form of morals: Society. Integration, according to Durkheim is the amount to which an individual conforms to society and its norms. In fact, it appears that integration is another form of regulation, adding to the overall power to which society keeps the individual in check. The movement from a highly integrated, authoritarian society to a freer, more industrialized society should undoubtedly tip the balance, and while society adjusts to the shift, suicide rates increase due to anomie. Durkheim gives an example of this in the modernization of European cities in their movement from a birthright, or heredity society to a more merit-based, competitive society. This entails more freedom and social mobility, coupled with the potential of failure and increased pressure on the commoner. There ceases to exist a suppressed mass of people to bow down to a feudal lord or king, individual freedoms and upward mobility resulted, also, a risk for anomie. There are several responses that society gives to this need for of adequate regulation and integration. One of the oldest and most established forms of social integration Durkheim mentions is the institution of religion. In more recent time, religion has been assisted and in some ways replaced as a form of regulation by the establishment of new forms of government, and especially in this century, by the form of capitalism and an increased social value of money. Durkheim theorized that with globalization of economic/capitalistic growth would lead to increase in desires, which will in turn lead to an increase in anomie. Durkheim also noted that any change in this equilibrium would result in an increase in anomie, and anomic suicides. The amount of regulation expressed by these institutions of society onto the individual will protect from suicide. With this basic understanding of anomic suicide, let us now turn our attention to the application of these theories to Japan. Japan itself serves as a unique society to attempt an application of these theories of anomie and suicide. Durkheim's theory on anomic suicide that come into great focus in a study of anomic suicide in Japan in the form of an imbalance of integration and regulation in Japanese society and its manifestation in the form of role conflict. Japan experienced a huge increase in the rates of suicide for industrial nations following its defeat in WWII. During the post-war years of American occupation, the Japanese people went through rapid change in political, economic and social structures. In addition to the understandable feelings of loss and defeat in the war, the entire Japanese society was thrown upside-down and in many ways the Japanese people had to reinvent their way of life, their way of thinking, reinvent themselves. These in addition to countless other religious, and cultural factors resulted in a large increase in suicide rates in Japan especially in the post-war years of 1950-1960. In response, a great deal of research in the field of suicide and Japan has been done by Dr. Mamuro Iga, from California State University at Northridge in the 1970s seeking for an explanation of this increase in suicide rates. His research has ranged from studies on suicide of Japanese females, college students, suicide notes, as well as studies of famous Japanese authors that have committed suicide. Two of his articles, "The Vulnerability of Young Japanese Women and Suicide" (1975) and "A Concept of Anomie and Suicide of Japanese College Students" (1971) argue that to a large extent, the high rate of suicide in Japan is due to anomie. In a more recent study highly citing Iga's work, Charles R. Chandler and Yung-Mei Tsai's "Suicide in Japan and the West" (1993) attempts to find evidence in Durkheim's theories on suicide in statistical analysis of suicide rates in Japan, and in comparison to the west. All three of these articles deal with a Durkheimian explanation for suicide in Japan. All three focus on measuring the levels of social regulation and integration in Japanese society in addition to social strains brought onto the Japanese people especially in the form of role conflict. Article #1 Suicide in Japan and the West Using evidence from past studies, Chandler and Tsai argue that contemporary Japan displays high levels of all three types of the types of suicide as defined by Durkheim, anomic suicide being just one of them. In their research, they also make cross-cultural comparisons between the east and west following Durkheim's model of suicide to predict trends as it has been predicted in the west. Much of their research is a follow up to work to a previous study done by Iga. Chandler and Tsai refer to Iga's analysis of suicide in Japan, making notes to the overall conforming nature of Japanese society as highly integrated and organized society to which every member is a part of and thus carries a responsibility to.
This highly integrated society has a high potential for imbalance and inconsistency with other facets of societal regulation, as any extreme force usually does. Chandler and Tsai continue on to address the results of such a highly integrated society when it is combined with unregulated standards for goals of an individual, with the unavailability of the means to feasibly achieve them. Although individual Japanese may be closely regulated by the norms of the groups to which they belong, they are at the same time encouraged by Japanese culture to cultivate extremely high goals of individual achievement, chiefly in education and business.
There are three main forms of integration that are measured in this study, two of which that directly correspond to Durkheim's institutions that he mentioned in Le Suicide. These include religious integration and family integration. As Durkheim has argued, religion plays a strong part as a societal integrating power, and thus is a factor that protects the individual against suicide in general, but more specifically anomic suicide. The same follows for family integration, it also plays a factor in protection against suicide. The third form of integration focused on in this study, population turnover stands for an indirect indication of social integration, as Stark, Doyle and Rushing (1983), found a positive correlation between population change and suicide rates. Religious integration was measured and compared by different types of religious affiliations. Family integration was measured by analyzing the married percentages in the population, and the divorce rate. Economic integration and control was studied by looking at the independent and control variables were per capita income, as well as percentages of population unemployed, and of the female labor force. Chandler and Tsai's study come up with some very interesting findings in these three major forms of integration which include:
This is an interesting find to note, as Durkheim (1897) asserts that religion and family both serve as regulating forces for society, setting limits as to what an individual is to aspire to and to perform. In Japan however, it seems that due the dominance of Bhuddism and the patriarchal structure of the family, both institutions are not effective enough as far as regulatory forces in Japanese society. In addition, from a strictly economic standpoint, there is strong evidence of similar trends in suicide rate in relation to unemployment rates, and per capita income levels, according to Chandler and Tsai, a direct indication of anomic suicide.
To this notion Chandler and Tsai agree in their study, the failure in reaching unrealistically high goals is the result of an unbalanced society, in the case of Japan, high integration and low regulation of goals, thus creating the perfect environment for anomie. Article #2 the Vulnerability of Young Japanese Women and Suicide The second and third articles were written by Iga, seemingly appropriate as Chandler and Tsai use much of his previous work in their own study. Due to many factors, in large part from the extreme hardships in a devastated post-war Japan, suicide for the Japanese female was the highest among the modern nations until the end of the 1960s. In fact, women's suicide rates today are still among the highest in the world. (Chandler, Tsai 1993) A uniquely bimodal distribution of female suicides by age groups in the 1960s, focusing mainly on the ages 20-24 and 85+ (Iga 1975). Iga's study seeks to find the reasoning specifically behind anomic suicides, an increasing trend in Japan, from which Iga hypothesizes is a result of role conflict in Japanese women that came directly from modernization during the Meiji (Restoration) period as well as in post WWII Japan. The most interesting part of Iga's study on the vulnerability of the Japanese female to suicide (1971) is in reference of the difference rates of modernization experienced in Japanese women during the Meiji period. Here is a specific example of the anomic lack of societal regulation combined with a highly integrated society is manifested in the form of extreme role conflict. There has been much sociological study done on the samurai culture in Japan to create the picture of traditional Japanese society being highly patriarchal and authoritarian. Iga mentions the differences in dominant class structure of the Kyoto-Osaka area verses the Tokyo area in the modernization process. Pre-Meiji era, the status of women in Japan was sub-standard, oppressed, quiet, docile, women in Japan had basically no power in class or duty, living in a largely partriarchal society. The Tokyo area was known to have been lead by large Samurai-class leaders, who were more traditional in their views on gender roles and class standing. Thus, modernization in Tokyo came at a much slower pace in terms of women's role change. In contrast, the Kyoto-Osaka area was dominated by the more of the mercantile class, in which women were given much more responsibility in business and financial roles in the commercial sector. As a result, women in the Kyoto-Osaka area found themselves in a position of sudden unregulated power and responsibility much sooner then those in the samurai-dominated Tokyo. The women In the Kyoto-Osaka district found themselves in a more drastic shift in social status, strikingly similar to Durkheim's definition of anomie. Not surprising, the rates of suicides among females in the Kyoto-Osaka district at the time were higher then those in other districts, especially those in Tokyo. Article #3 A concept of Anomie and Suicide of Japanese College Students In another of Mamuro Iga's studies, the specifics of anomie and Japanese college students' suicides are analyzed. Much focus is given to the more individualized instances of anomic suicide, into the anomic personality type of suicide victims in Japan. This study involved 72 male student suicides at Kyoto University in Japan. They were compared with 68 non-suicidal male students to make comparisons. The description used of anomic suicide follows Durkheim's definition of anomie.
For this study, family history, suicide notes, counseling records, peer opinions, grades were researched. Like the other two articles mentioned earlier, it was found that a large percentage (53/72) of the suicides in this study were found to be a result of anomie-related causes, largely from an anomic-prone personality.
Iga elaborates in his study outside factors that contribute to the Japanese individual's tendency towards anomic suicide, including references to oedipal attachment and inconsistencies in the establishment of heterosexual relationships of the Japanese male in a patriarchal society. Nonetheless, Iga gives strong evidence towards the personal identity conflict of the suicidal individual that makes them prone to anomie. In many ways a person's identity is prescribed by the social system in place, a large part is social class, a strong economic factor that must also be addressed in a discussion of anomie. The economical structure of Japan that was brought about by the restoration in post-WWII invited government-guided investments into sectors that were desired to be developed. Banks and investors followed the government's intentions in zoned development, thus creating a steady influx of capital and jobs for the people. In a lecture on the future of politics in Japan, Dr. David Leheny, Professor of Political Science at UW-Madison (1999) mentioned a brief history to the development of labor force in Japan as stemming from a reduction in worker's union rights towards making a better national economy. This emphasis on industrial progress served as a weak and ineffective form of societal regulation, one that has followed religion and government and is lacking in regulation just enough for anomie. This reduction of worker's rights lead to a massive unified labor force that could be employed at lower wages, but also with greater job security. Along with this initiative of regulated investment, industry and corporations began to introduce a long-term employment policy aimed to lowering the unemployment rate in the interests of the national economy, thus resulting in a large, steady, lower-middle class in Japan. It is the development of this steady lower-middle class that created an overall feeling of stability that is mistaken as a means for easy upward mobility. Thus resulting upon realization of such movement extremely difficult, if not impossible, a state of anomie, unregulated aspirations for the individual emergent from their lower-middle class upbringing from a highly integrated society.
In the course of reading these articles, I got into a conversation with my study partner at the time, a 19-yr. old Japanese exchange student who has been in America for about 3 years. When asked about suicide in Japan, she echoed similar opinions to the findings of these studies I have been reading, namely, that everyone in Japan tends to be about the same in class, everyone is about equal in ability, and potential. This leads to the desire for achievement, in education, or in business, and status. According to this student, famous people in Japan are not so viewed as being special people, but instead lucky ones, ones that made it big for being in the right place at the right time. Famous people, in fact are not that much different then the average Japanese citizen. This attitude leads the potential for a drive for unlimited and unregulated desires, according to Durkheim, a deadly formula for Anomie. The average Japanese person is instilled with the belief that they can accomplish outrageously high goals despite the highly integrated social system of Japan. Eventually they find themselves realizing that they cannot achieve these goals, thus resulting of anomie, and in some cases, to the point of suicide. I found this random conversation with this student a convincing informal argument towards the external validity of Durkheim's theories on anomic suicide. Although she is not an expert on anomie nor suicide in Japan, in simple words she had indirectly explained the in full the theory and argument of each of the three articles mentioned in the paper without reading them. There is conclusive evidence that Durkheim's theory applies to the high rates of suicide in Japan. Focusing on the specific occurrence of poor societal regulation and integration of Japanese society onto the individual along with extreme cases of role conflict, provides a strong case for validity in the theory of anomic suicides in Japan. As the majority of suicides in Japan follow closely Durkheim's theory of anomic suicide as they do in the west, while other forms of suicide mentioned by Durkheim (fatalistic, altruistic, egoistic) do not, this adds evidence to the theory of anomic suicide as a cross-cultural social occurrence. The letter and a pair of shoes at the entrance forest, the splattered remains of a young suicide victim on the front of a train, the drowned body a student, all perhaps not simply the product of a fanatical, irrational people and culture. Instead they are very likely the result of a human condition of inner conflict, role conflict, failure of dreams, the bitter realization of mediocrity among an extremely integrated society with unregulated desires, put into simple words to me in broken English in a coffee shop with utmost clarity, anomie. Bibliography Araki, Shunichi, Murata, Katsuyuki, "Social Life Factors Affecting Suicide in Japanese Men and Women" Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Vol 16(4) Winter 1986, pg 458-468 Chandler, Charles R., Tsai, Yung-Mei, "Suicide In Japan and in the West: Evidence for Durkheim's Theory", International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol 34(3-4) 1993 Durkheim, Emile, Le Suicide (A study in Sociology) 1897 Translation by Spaulding, John, Simpson, George, The Free Press, © 1957 Iga, Mamoru, "A Concept of Anomie and Suicide of Japanese College Students", Life- Threatening Behavior, Vol 1(4), Winter 1971 Iga, Mamoru, Yamamoto, Joe, Noguchi, Thomas, Koshinaga, Jushiro, "Suicide In Japan" Social Science and Medicine, Vol 12A, 1978 pp 507-516 Iga, Mamoru, "Suicide of Japanese Youth", Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Vol 11(1) Spring 1981 pg 17-30 Iga, Mamoru, "The Vulnerablility of Young Japanese Women and Suicide" Suicide, Vol 5(4) Winter 1975 pg 207-222 Maull, Hanns W., "Germany and Japan: the New Civillian powers" Foreign Affairs Winter 1990/1991 © 1990 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. pg 100 Orru, Marco, Anomie History and Meanings Allen & Unwin, Inc., Winchester, Mass © 1987 Parsons, Anne, Belief,Magic, and Anomie Essays in Psychosocial Anthropology, Collier - MacMillan Limited, London © 1969 Thom, Gary B. The Human Nature of Social Discontent Alienation, Anomie, Ambivalence, Rowman & Allanheld, New Jersey © 1983 Thorlindsson, Thorolfur, Bjarnason, Thoroddur, "Modeling Durkheim on the micro level: A study of Youth Suicidality", American Sociological Review, Vol 63, pg 94-110, 1998 |