Sex and Suicide

Serious Talk

On Friday, Boy Wonder tells me that he has to talk with me seriously. I sit down and he asks me if I have depression. I ask what he means and he explains that he is reading a book that says that many Americans “have depression.” I ask about Japanese. He says it’s becoming a problem in Japan. We talk about the reasons why and I ask about suicide.

I am American and so my idea of suicide almost involuntarily includes firearms as the means to the end. Boy Wonder tells me that people use their cars or they step in front of trains or they go into the forest around the base of Mt. Fuji. I think the last is a strange option, so I ask him to elaborate. He’s an innocent soul and consequently not sure of the methods by which one might kill oneself. In response ot my question, he shrugs a bit helplessly and suggests that the people go into the forest, get lost, and starve to death.

Again

I have a dream a couple of nights later. The dream is really about ghosts. I have been talking to students about the ghosts I see in the subways. Maybe, one student suggests, those are the ghosts of people who killed themselves by jumping in front of trains. (The Brain, wondering later why we only see ghosts in the stations but never actually on the subway, suggests in the dream that the ghosts ride on top of the subway cars.) Suicide by train is not popular in Japan, but it does happen. As a statement, it’s powerful. For someone’s final act to be the monkey wrench in what is normally an exceedingly well ordered society is powerful. The group must take note of the decision of a single person to use their life to disrupt the workings of group. This is a very strong stand to take and in a society in which the group is the most important thing, it must necessarily be one’s last act.

And Again

On Monday, the student sits down and I ask her how her day has gone and she starts to cry. She tells me that she just found out that a friend of hers, a man who she used to be in love with, killed himself on May 5th, Children’s Day. They found his body ten days later. He hung himself. She went to his funeral. His mother, she says, cried and cried. She begged her son to wake up. We spend the hour talking about the suicide. He did not leave a note. I ask why she thinks he did it. “He just lost his hope,” she says.

And Again

On Tuesday, I have a lesson with an older woman who never studies. Last week she had to give a speech in another class. I ask her how it went and she tells me it went okay. She had to write about her most frightening moment and she wrote about being trapped for an hour and a half in an elevator in a hotel in Hawaii. I ask about the other students, what did they write about? She tells me that two other students had written about ghosts. One student saw a ghost in a hotel room. Hotel ghosts are very common, the woman assures me. I ask why. She explains that many people kill themselves in hotel rooms. In a society where privacy is a rare quantity, where people live and work in very crowded conditions, this makes sense and I don’t ask her to elaborate. Instead, I ask about the societal penchant for commiting suicide in the forest around Mt. Fuji. She is not so innocent as the boy wonder and she explains that people walk into the forest and take a drug overdose or slit their wrists. She assures me that the forests around Mt. Fuji are full of bodies.

Later, I read on the internet that in 2003, 78 bodies were found hanging in the trees of the forest, which is called Aokigahara in Japanese.

Grim Figuring

Every year, per 100,000 people, nearly 27 Japanese will commit suicide. That rate is almost three times higher than that in America. There are about 127,000,000 people in Japan. 38,100 of them will have killed themselves by this time next year.

An internet search also pulls up the fact that, in Japan, there are “suicide clubs” where people can meet others who want to die. The Japanese do things in groups and they are comfortable doing things this way. People write that they have cars, charcoal briquettes, drugs enough to die. All they lack is company.

Maturity

Several times over the past week, I have had conversations with men and women who tell me that Americans and other Westerners are admired because they are mature. Japanese think that Westerners are mature for many reasons. One reason is our independence. We think and do things on our own and Japanese, I am told, lack this ability. They follow the group and when they don’t, they feel ashamed or embarrassed. I am told that Westerners find mature things sexy. What does that mean, I ask. A woman explains to me that in Japan, cute is sexy. In one fell swoop, this explains the women in pink, the high-heels and pigeon-toed walk. (I ask Masashi if he finds the pigeon-toed walk sexy. He says, “If the woman is sexy, then it’s sexy. If the woman is not sexy, then it’s not sexy.” I stick my finger in my nose and ask, “How about this? Is this sexy if the woman is sexy?” New Guy laughs.) This explains the “assisted dating”--that is, the places set up where older (usually well-off businessmen) can meet very young women (usually junior high or high school girls) for dating. If that relationship involves sex and money, well, that is no one’s business. Recently in Tokyo, the news reported that a young woman was expelled from her high school, which had a policy forbidding assisted dating. (There was no mention of what happened to her “date.”)

On Sunday, I went to Shinjuku Ni-chome with one of my friends. We are there to drink in the gay area of Tokyo, at his usual hangout, a bar called Arty Farty. There is a 1000 yen nomihodai (a ten-dollar all-you-can-drink) night. My friend tells me that he needs a “triangle” before we start drinking. (“Triangle” is his word for onigiri, which are often this shape.) We step into a conbini and while he sounds out the katakana on the packages to find a “tsuna-mayo” triangle, I peruse the porn section on the magazine rack.

Porn is pixelated here to get around the censorship laws. The depiction of pubic hair is illegal in Japn, so anywhere there is pubic hair, there is pixelation. However, despite the pixelation, several things are clear: One is that the depicted sex acts are very explicit. The other is that the women are very young. Well, they either are very young or they seem very young. They are in a combination of lingerie and what appear to be schoolgirl uniforms.

Not A Christian Country

Japan, as I have said, is not a Western country. (I say this despite the fact that the woman with whom I had talked about suicide and sex tells me that since Japan lost WWII to the Americans, Japanese consider Japan to be part of America. I say this despite the fact that she is not the first to suggest that Japan is part of the West, is not an Asian country.)

Japanese ideas about suicide and sex are not Western ideas about suicide and sex. Suicide is a societal, not a personal problem in Japan. What does that mean? In part, it means that the problem and the solution are not related to religion. It means that there are no religious sanctions for resisting suicide. It also means that to the Japanese experts, the solution to the sky-high suicide rate is secular. Some of the current reasons for the rise in the rates of suicide is the unemployment rate and corporate restructuring in Japan. The solution? Decrease unemployment and suicide will no longer be as prevalent.

That's suicide. What about sex?

Well, remember: This is not a Christian country. This is not a "mature" country. What does that mean?

It means that sex is often a solely pleasure-based pursuit. That means that Japanese indulge in sexual activities that would make many Americans very uncomfortable. For example, in Japan cute is sexy, so the younger the woman, the better the sex. (The Handsome Married businessman married a seventeen year old--after dating her for a year.) Another example? Well, consider that fidelity in marriage is a Christian construct and this is not a Christian country, so what Americans would see as cheating is relatively open. Married men in Tokyo date with as much frequency as do single men. (I asked the Ex-Student once if it was the same in his hometown and he said no--married men don’t cheat because his town is small and everyone would know it. It’s not because cheating itself is considered “wrong,” it’s that it might bring shame on the man or on his family. That is why they don’t cheat in his hometown.

It's not that I stand in judgment of this place. This is not my home, not my country, and it is not my place to judge. I listen and I observe and I am not here to change things. I'm not here to prosletyze my beliefs, so I don't get uptight about what I see happening. But. But. But. I am sometimes put in a peculiar position because my belief system is so dissimilar to the prevailing belief system. I believe in fidelity in marriage, but all around me are perfectly nice, perfectly unfaithful men and women. (This is not always true, of course, but those who are unfaithful are almost unfailingly honest about their lack of fidelity.) Ah, and it sometimes fidelity is a hard sell...

It's time to work now, so I'll finish up later perhaps.

Confidentional To Those Who Love Me

Sorry--but this posting is probably not going to make you feel any better about my being in Japan...Take heart, though: I will be home soon!