Download or read book Suicide in Twentieth Century Japan written by Francesca Di Marco and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan’s suicide phenomenon has fascinated both the media and academics, although many questions and paradoxes embedded in the debate on suicide have remained unaddressed in the existing literature, including the assumption that Japan is a "Suicide Nation". This tendency causes common misconceptions about the suicide phenomenon and its features. Aiming to redress the situation, this book explores how the idea of suicide in Japan was shaped, reinterpreted and reinvented from the 1900s to the 1980s. Providing a timely contribution to the underexplored history of suicide, it also adds to the current heated debates on the contemporary way we organize our thoughts on life and death, health and wealth, on the value of the individual, and on gender. The book explores the genealogy and development of modern suicide in Japan by examining the ways in which beliefs about the nation’s character, historical views of suicide, and the cultural legitimation of voluntary death acted to influence even the scientific conceptualization of suicide in Japan. It thus unveils the way in which the language on suicide was transformed throughout the century according to the fluctuating relationship between suicide and the discourse on national identity, and pathological and cultural narratives. In doing so, it proposes a new path to understanding the norms and mechanisms of the process of the conceptualization of suicide itself. Filling in a critical gap in three particular fields of historical study: the history of suicide, the history of death, and the cultural history of twentieth century Japan, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese Studies and Japanese History.
Download or read book Seppuku written by Andrew Rankin and published by Kodansha USA. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of seppuku—Japanese ritual suicide by cutting the stomach, sometimes referred to as hara-kiri—spans a millennium, and came to be favored by samurai as an honorable form of death. Here, for the first time in English, is a book that charts the history of seppuku from ancient times to the twentieth century through a collection of swashbuckling tales from history and literature. Author Andrew Rankin takes us from the first recorded incident of seppuku, by the goddess Aomi in the eighth century, through the "golden age" of seppuku in the sixteenth century that includes the suicides of Shibata Katsuie, Sen no Rikyū and Toyotomi Hidetsugu, up to the seppuku of General Nogi Maresuke in 1912. Drawing on never-before-translated medieval war tales, samurai clan documents, and execution handbooks, Rankin also provides a fascinating look at the seppuku ritual itself, explaining the correct protocol and etiquette for seppuku, different stomach-cutting procedures, types of swords, attire, location, even what kinds of refreshment should be served at the seppuku ceremony. The book ends with a collection of quotations from authors and commentators down through the centuries, summing up both the Japanese attitude toward seppuku and foreigners’ reactions: "As for when to die, make sure you are one step ahead of everyone else. Never pull back from the brink. But be aware that there are times when you should die, and times when you should not. Die at the right moment, and you will be a hero. Die at the wrong moment, and you will die like a dog." — Izawa Nagahide, The Warrior’s Code, 1725 "We all thought, ‘These guys are some kind of nutcakes.’" — Jim Verdolini, USS Randolph, describing "Kamikaze" attack of March 11, 1945
Download or read book Voluntary Death in Japan written by Maurice Pinguet and published by Polity. This book was released on 1993-06-14 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most Western observers, the Japanese practice of voluntary death, whether the self-inflicted sword-stroke of a warrior or the simultaneous suicide of lovers, is shocking and difficult to understand. The practice of voluntary death is deeply alien to Western Culture and to the Christian view that God alone is entrusted with power over life and death. In Japan, however,a tradition of voluntary death has existed for more than a millenium. The suicides of samurai warriors, of kamikaze fighter pilots, of artists and lovers are part of a tradition which stretches back over many centuries and which expresses a distinctive way of relating to death. In this profound and sensitive study, Maurice Pinguet carefully reconstructs this tradition of voluntary death and relates it to other aspects of Japanese culture and society. He shows that, in early Japanese myths and legends, acts of self-immolation were often exalted as an ideal. A self-effacing suicide was viewed as an ethical act: a way of restoring order in a world disrupted by conflict or marred by failure. Pinguet examines in detail the customs and elaborate rituals which surrounded the practice of voluntary death in different times and among different groups, from the seppuka practised by warriors in the thirteenth century to the suicide of Mishima in the twentieth. The result is a brilliant and absorbing analysis of Japanese culture and society - an analysis which, by focusing on a practice that is radically different from our own, tells us something about Western civilization as well.
Download or read book Depression in Japan written by Junko Kitanaka and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring how depression has become a national disease in Japan, this work shows how psychiatry has responded to the nation's ailing social order & how, in a remarkable transformation, the discipline has begun to overcome longstanding resistance to its intrusion in Japanese life.
Download or read book The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima written by Henry Scott Stokes and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2000-08-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years."
Download or read book Histories of Suicide written by John C. Weaver and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection of essays assembles historians, health economists, anthropologists, and sociologists, who examine the history of suicide from a variety of approaches to provide crucial insight into how suicide differs across nations, cultures, and time periods.
Download or read book Naomi written by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and published by ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع. This book was released on 2024-03-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious story of one man’s obsession and a brilliant reckoning of a nation’s cultural confusion—from a master Japanese novelist. When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.
Download or read book Scripting Suicide in Japan written by Kirsten Cather and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Japan is a nation saddled with centuries of accumulated stereotypes and loaded assumptions about suicide. Many pronouncements have been made about those who have died by their own hand, without careful attention to the words of the dead themselves. Drawing upon far-ranging creations by famous twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japanese writers and little-known amateurs alike—such as death poems, suicide notes, memorials, suicide maps and manuals, works of literature, photography, film, and manga—Kirsten Cather interrogates how suicide is scripted and to what end. Entering the orbit of suicidal writers and readers with care, she shows that through close readings these works can reveal fundamental beliefs about suicide and, just as crucially, about acts of writing. These are not scripts set in stone but graven images and words nonetheless that serve to mourn the dead, straddling two impulses: to put the dead to rest and to keep them alive forever. These words reach out to us to initiate a dialogue with the dead, one that can reveal why it matters to write into and from the void.
Download or read book Decadent Literature in Twentieth Century Japan written by I. Amano and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decadence is a concept that designates a given historical moment as a phase of decay and valorizes the past as an irretrievable golden age. This study offers an innovative examination of a century of Japanese fiction through the analytical prism of decadence.
Download or read book Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention written by Danuta Wasserman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-08 with total page 857 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the authoritative Oxford Textbooks in Psychiatry series, the new edition of the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention remains a key text in the field of suicidology, fully updated with new chapters devoted to major psychiatric disorders and their relation to suicide.
Download or read book A Shameful Life written by Osamu Dazai and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of one of the greatest works of postwar Japanese literature, acutely capturing modern anxiety and alienation
Download or read book Suicide and the Gothic written by William Hughes and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suicide and the Gothic is the first study of the representation of suicide in Gothic texts from the eighteenth century to the present. Poems, short stories, novels, films and video games are covered from European, American and Asian contexts.
Download or read book No Longer Human written by 太宰治 and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1958 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young man describes his torment as he struggles to reconcile the diverse influences of Western culture and the traditions of his own Japanese heritage.
Download or read book Suicide Century written by Andrew Bennett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suicide Century investigates suicide as an increasingly 'normalised' but still deeply traumatic and profoundly baffling act in twentieth-century writing.
Download or read book Suicide and Homicide in the Twentieth Century written by David Lester and published by Nova Biomedical Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the social correlates of suicide and homicide rates within 36 nations from 1950 to 1985, and attempts to explain the predictors of changes in these rates and the differences in those predictors from those of cross-sectional studies. Appendices contain suicide and homicide rates for the time periods researched. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention written by Danuta Wasserman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 934 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Texbook of Suicidology is the most comprehensive textbook on suicidology and suicide prevention that has ever been published. It is written by world-leading specialists and describes all aspects of suicidal behaviour and suicide prevention, including psychological, cultural, biological, and sociological factors.
Download or read book Kamikaze written by Lamont-Brown and published by Orion. This book was released on 1997-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
