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The "Japan is no different from any other country" trope is just as inaccurate as the "wacky Japan" trope and in my experience has actually overtaken the original in online discussions (though news articles clearly still focus on the original).

Making a generalized story from cherry-picked anecdotes is an incredibly common strategy for journalists writing about anything. Sometimes it might actually match more general trends and sometimes not; you can't say without real statistics, which in most cases don't exist or aren't accurate anyway.

No one's tracking it carefully, so who knows if bullying in Japan is actually worse or just picked up in the zeitgeist more. But it's ridiculous to pretend like Japanese school culture isn't drastically different from that of most western countries.

In Japanese society, historically, ritual suicide was accepted as an "honorable" way to die under otherwise shameful circumstances. It seems pretty natural that, with such a cultural legacy, Japanese people (including children) would be more willing to resort to suicide.

Reinforcing your comment, the fallacy here is in assuming that the factors affecting suicide rates among Western children are identical to the factors for Japanese children, and therefore bullying in Japan must be particularly atrocious to cause the high baseline suicide rate.

>In Japanese society, historically, ritual suicide was accepted as an "honorable" way to die under otherwise shameful circumstances. It seems pretty natural that, with such a cultural legacy, Japanese people (including children) would be more willing to resort to suicide.

Does it really? Do you feel the same way about western society and, say, duels to the death? The many old practices regarding marriage and the church all around?

I don't think suicide as an honorable death is any more of a real thing in Japan nowadays than ninjas are.

>Does it really? Do you feel the same way about western society and, say, duels to the death? The many old practices regarding marriage and the church all around?

Yes, I would. Such societal norms don't just die, they remain in the "ether" so to speak.

For example, americans might not be as religious, or sticking with the church. They might not even be born in the US, or just be first or second generation. But the culture, and this includes immigrants as they integrate, contains all kinds of protestant ideas.

And it's easier for something like a suicide norm to survice that a practice of the duel (which takes two to survice, plus has the law against it, even if you come out alive).

Suicide was also an honorable way to go out in the Roman empire, but I'm not sure it's a societal norm in Italy nowadays. Definitely in the ether though, I think suicide after disgrace is something everyone can relate to.

>Suicide was also an honorable way to go out in the Roman empire, but I'm not sure it's a societal norm in Italy nowadays.

Maybe not so nowadays, but you'd be surprised how often it was a solution to societal shame in Italy up to the 1950s or so...

The ether of American "death by duel" is part of the more general protestant idea that suicide is an act against god, but there's no rule against finding someone/something to kill yourself with. Drink yourself to death, get yourself killed by a cop, join the army and find a place to sacrifice yourself: all are related to why duels to the death were part of our culture. To what extent that ether still effects the way we act I couldn't say, but it's definitely still around.

>Do you feel the same way about western society and, say, duels to the death?

Considering how common a form of retribution gun violence is in the US nowadays, yes, I'd say yes.

Could there be a case to be made in comparing American school shooters and Japanese student suicides? Maybe we'd find they had similar school experiences prior to their final moments.

Do you want to reframe duels to the death as gun violence and then consider America, which is the most clear comparison?

American gun violence is on a different scale to most of the rest of Western society. I don't think it's a particularly useful comparison.

The relics of European honour culture, which includes duelling etc., being preserved in parts of the USA, particularly in the West and South, due to the delayed roleout of the centralised state, is a real argument made about why men from those parts can be so quick on the draw (perhaps literally) at the slightest interpersonal offence. Dunno if it's true but it doesn't seem preposterous.

Japan expat resident here.

The 'suicide for preserving honor' theory has been long abandoned & mostly outlawed, even. No one in the modern generation thinks that way. The causes for suicide are mostly due to economic imbalance & high credit/ loans/ failed businesses (sadly). Children have easy access to credit cards from family, and rack up huge debts by indulging in things as part of peer pressure. I saw several case studies highlighting this when I was part of influencer marketing business.

Ritual suicide was done by seppuku - slashing out your guts, as a final act of bravery. No one does anything remotely similar.

How do you “outlaw” a theory?

You can’t purge a cultural heritage—everyone in Japan learns Japanese history and ritual suicide is a notable part of that history. The point is not that people commit suicide today for the same reasons or in the same way that they did 500 years ago, but that it is more likely to be accepted as a way out than in a culture that e.g. considers suicide to be a one-way ticket to the spiritual inferno.

> You can’t purge a cultural heritage—everyone in Japan learns Japanese history and ritual suicide is a notable part of that history.

Not sure where you get this idea, but this is grossly inaccurate.

Japanese culture is strongly revisionist. People don't talk about the war, much less teach about it. The 'old ways' and 'samurai heroism' was faulted for the mess in '40s. People make a sigh whenever such touchy topics come up. New Japan is a different beast.

As a consequence, we are seeing a generation which is severely confused on why WW2 happened. American pop culture is embraced with open arms, but they can't explain why Hiroshima happened at the hands of US. It's all faulted to grave mistakes on the 'old thinking' which is best left behind. Japan adopted modernism & became America's best buddies, ignoring the blemishes over 3 decades of Imperial japanese horrors. Older generation, who used to teach from experience of pre-war and neo-modern Japan, are dying off due to age. A significant chapter of history is being ignored by looking the other way. Look up the editorials of any Japanese weekly, and on any random week you will find some discussion on how they bemoan the growing dissonance between the post-war values of peace & the cultural change alongside the pseudo-aggression of some political parties, which eventually aims to remilitarize Japan at some point. (That's a story for another time or another thread)

I have to assume that WWII history is still being taught. I'm not sure if they are censoring kamikaze tactics in Japan, but they are still well documented in US WWII media.

Funnily enough, WW2 is taught in a very sanitized way. Its more along the lines of "we had disagreement, we had a war, we were all somewhat wrong. let's move on and be peaceful". People take offense if you prod along the topic further. They don't want to talk about it anymore.

You are right, even asking people from a country directly can give a really false impression due to the pattern you describe. As someone who has lived both in the US as well as two european countries for equal parts of my life I know very well how easily views can become distorted by listening to single cases that are not representative.

Yeah having moved to China from France, I was expecting to meet aliens honestly, and ended up concluding like you there are no essential differences between cultures.

Everything is essetially the same with some limited number of levers being pulled a bit further: girls want to marry a little bit earlier, parents are a little bit more worried abt kids, politicians a bit more corrupt, racism is targeted at different colors in a different hierarchy, all that jazz, but all the patterns I was used to in France simply fit China very well and I didnt find it so difficult to just brush off the odd difference and adapt.

My Chinese parents in law also discovered I have the same strengths and flaws any other Chinese guy their daughter could have found :D

It took me about 10 years to really understand the enormous differences between my native culture and my current culture. And those differences are staggering. And they are both western.

You're assuming you can "see" the cultural differences.

Sometimes you can easily see it, but often it's really hard to figure out, because they are going to express themselves in edge cases that you have to run into, which takes time and then it takes time to run into enough of them to be able to see a pattern.

The modern media landscape is sub-optimal.

Seeing all these surveys that show that the more you consume media the less you know is extremely sad. I don’t think there are any short term solutions.