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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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>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.

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