Author: Maurice Pinguet Publisher: Polity ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
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.
Author: Francesca Di Marco Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317384288 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
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.
Author: Alan Stephen Wolfe Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400861004 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) is one of Japan's most famous literary suicides, known as the earliest postwar manifestation of the genuinely alienated writer in Japan. In this first deconstructive reading of a modern Japanese novelist, Alan Wolfe draws on contemporary Western literary and cultural theories and on a knowledge of Dazai's work in the context of Japanese literary history to provide a fresh view of major texts by this important literary figure. In the process, Wolfe revises Japanese as well as Western scholarship on Dazai and discovers new connections among suicide, autobiography, alienation, and modernization. As shown here, Dazai's writings resist narrative and historical closure; while he may be said to serve the Japanese literary establishment as both romantic decadent and representative scapegoat, his texts reveal a deconstructive edge through which his posthumous status as a monument of negativity is already perceived and undone. Wolfe maintains that cultural modernization pits a Western concept of the individual as realized self and coherent subject against an Eastern absent self--and that a felt need to overcome this tension inspires the autobiographical fiction so prevalent in Japanese novels. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan shows that Dazai's texts also resist readings that would resolve the gaps (East/West, self/other, modern/premodern) still prevalent in Japanese intellectual life. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Akira Akabayashi Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 9811535728 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
This open access book addresses a variety of issues relating to bioethics, in order to initiate cross-cultural dialogue. Beginning with the history, it introduces various views on bioethics, based on specific experiences from Japan. It describes how Japan has been confronted with Western bioethics and the ethical issues new to this modern age, and how it has found its foothold as it decides where it stands on these issues. In the last chapter, the author proposes discarding the overarching term ‘Global Bioethics’ in favor of the new term, ‘Bioethics Across the Globe (BAG)’, which carries a more universal connotation. This book serves as an excellent tool to help readers understand a different culture and to initiate deep and genuine global dialogue that incorporates local and global thinking on bioethics. Bioethics Across the Globe is a valuable resource for researchers in the field of bioethics/medical ethics interested in adopting cross-cultural approaches, as well as graduate and undergraduate students of healthcare and philosophy.
Author: Danuta Wasserman Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 934
Book Description
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.
Author: John Keown Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521009331 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 342
Book Description
Whether the law should permit voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is one of the most vital questions facing all modern societies. Internationally, the main obstacle to legalisation has proved to be the objection that, even if they were morally acceptable in certain 'hard cases', voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide could not be effectively controlled; society would slide down a 'slippery slope' to the killing of patients who did not make a free and informed request, or for whom palliative care would have offered an alternative. How cogent is this objection? This book provides the general reader (who need have no expertise in philosophy, law or medicine) with a lucid introduction to this central question in the debate, not least by reviewing the Dutch euthanasia experience. It will interest all in any country whether currently for or against legalisation, who wish to ensure that their opinions are better informed.
Author: Marzio Barbagli Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745681506 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
What drives a person to take his or her own life? Why would an individual be willing to strap a bomb to himself and walk into a crowded marketplace, blowing himself up at the same time as he kills and maims the people around him? Does suicide or ‘voluntary death’ have the same meaning today as it had in earlier centuries, and does it have the same significance in China, India and the Middle East as it has in the West? How should we understand this distressing, often puzzling phenomenon and how can we explain its patterns and variations over time? In this wide-ranging comparative study, Barbagli examines suicide as a socio-cultural, religious and political phenomenon, exploring the reasons that underlie it and the meanings it has acquired in different cultures throughout the world. Drawing on a vast body of research carried out by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and psychologists, Barbagli shows that a satisfactory theory of suicide cannot limit itself to considering the two causes that were highlighted by the great French sociologist Émile Durkheim – namely, social integration and regulation. Barbagli proposes a new account of suicide that links the motives for and significance attributed to individual actions with the people for whom and against whom individuals take their lives. This new study of suicide sheds fresh light on the cultural differences between East and West and greatly increases our understanding of an often-misunderstood act. It will be the definitive history of suicide for many years to come.
Author: Refaʾēl Kōhēn-Almagôr Publisher: ISBN: 9780813529868 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
There are few issues more divisive than what has become known as "the right to die." One camp upholds "death with dignity," regarding the terminally ill as autonomous beings capable of forming their own judgment on the timing and process of dying. The other camp advocates "sanctity of life," regarding life as intrinsically valuable, and that should be sustained as long as possible. Is there a right answer? Raphael Cohen-Almagor takes a balanced approach in analyzing this emotionally charged debate, viewing the dispute from public policy and international perspectives. He offers an interdisciplinary, compelling study in medicine, law, religion, and ethics. It is a comprehensive look at the troubling question of whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed. Cohen-Almagor delineates a distinction between active and passive euthanasia and discusses legal measures that have been invoked in the United States and abroad. He outlines reasons non-blood relatives should be given a role in deciding a patient's last wishes. As he examines euthanasia policies in the Netherlands and the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the author suggests amendments and finally makes a circumscribed plea for voluntary physician-assisted suicide.
Author: Publisher: Tuttle Publishing ISBN: 146291649X Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.
Author: Maurice Pinguet
Author: Francesca Di Marco
Author: Alan Stephen Wolfe
Author: Akira Akabayashi
Author: Danuta Wasserman
Author: John Keown
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Author: Marzio Barbagli
Author: Refaʾēl Kōhēn-Almagôr
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