Now that we have examined the roots
of eastern and western thought on suicide, we can proceed on to examine
how specific historical and cultural examples shed light on these differing
ideologies. Perhaps the best place to start is, historically speaking,
at the beginning. From the eastern perspective, one of the earliest historical
references to suicide can be seen in the Seppuku, the ritualistic suicides
of the samurai during the Heian and Kamakura periods of Japanese history
(799-1333 ad.). As noted above, Seppuku took place when a defeated clan
of samurai chose to kill themselves rather than be captured or switch allegiance
to a different shoen. The actual act of ritualistic suicide was carried
out in an extremely gruesome manner, with each samurai taking a small sword
known as a tanto and slicing open his abdomen from side to side. The gruesome
nature of this suicidal act, not to mention the simple fact that suicide
was being committed, would have been thoroughly decried by a westerner
of the times had he known such activities were taking place. The Japanese,
though, viewed Seppuku as an act of extreme honor and selflessness; so
great was the loyalty of a samurai to his master that he would rather die
than pledge allegiance to another lord.
Perhaps the greatest example of
Seppuku in Japanese history occurred in the year 1702 when 47 samurai killed
themselves in order to avenge the death of their lord. In 1663, the ruler
of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, issued a law banning samurai death loyalty,
henceforth preventing a samurai from murdering a master in retaliation
for the death of his own. Some 40 years later, though, the lord of the
above-mentioned samurai was killed, and his warriors, true to samurai form,
tracked down and killed the responsible party. Though this behavior was
consistent with centuries of Japanese samurai tradition, the 47 warriors
in question had committed an act that was now technically unlawful. As
a result, they were given the choice to face the consequences of the law
or kill themselves. All 47 chose Seppuku. All 47 chose to die when faced
with a law they deemed unjust. Thus, in killing themselves, “the 47 Ronin”
made an ideological stand. And, though a westerner might view this act
of self-sacrifice as blasphemous and misguided, easterners saw in "the
47 Ronin" a powerful representation of courage and nobility.
This eastern belief that suicide
is an incredibly noble and selfless act is not seen only in the Seppuku
of the Heian and Kamakura periods of Japanese history. It can also be seen
in some striking instances in the modern periods of Asian history. Consider,
for instance, the Kamikaze pilots of Japan during the Second World War.
In late 1944, as the war in the Pacific was drastically shifting in favor
of the Americans, the Japanese were in desparate need of some type of immediate
advantage that would quell the onslaught of the Allied attack. They found
this edge, at least temporarily, in the person of the Kamikaze, or suicide
pilot. In essence, the Kamikaze pilot sacrificed his own life by steering
his plane directly into American forces and supplies aboard battleships
and other smaller vessels. The best way to understand how this suicide
attack actually took place is to examine a specific instance of Kamikaze
behavior.
On May 11th, 1945, the US Battleship
Bunker
Hill was hit by two Kamikaze planes in a span of less than 30 seconds
(see photo below). The chaos and destruction that resulted killed 346 American
servicemen, wounding and stranding some 300 more (www.airgroup4.com). From
a militaristic staindpoint, this sneak attack was a complete success for
the Japanese; with only two Japanese among the hundreds dead (the two pilots),
the ratio of Americans killed to Japanese killed was an astounding 173:1.
For our purposes, though, the success of this engagement for the Japanese
is less important than  what
the suicidal mode of the attack tells us about the eastern view of self-sacrifice.
Essentially, the Kamikaze attack on the Bunker Hill - as well as
other Kamikaze attacks that took place in the later stages of the war -
can be viewed as a specific example of the over-arching ideology that is
the eastern view of suicide. For the typical Japanese citizen, there was
absolutely no element of shame or dishonor in the actions of the two Japanese
men who crashed their planes into the Bunker Hill. Instead, the
sacrifice of these and other Kamikaze pilots was widely regarded throughout
Japan as the final contribution of truly heroic men to the greater cause
of Japanese hegemony in the South Pacific; these men had made the ultimate
sacrifice for their country and, significantly, they had done it with vigor
and enthusiasm. It was not as if the Kamikaze pilots set out on their missions
believing there was some chance they might return; these men knew they
were going to die and still did so willingly. This foreknowledge of death
sets the actions of the Kamikaze soldier apart from the actions of the
soldier of the west. For instance, an American soldier in the Pacific Theatre
would enter battle knowing he might die, but there was no sense that he
was setting out to kill himself; the task at hand for the western soldier
was inherently dangerous but by no means suicidal. He knew that he might
lose his life in the heat of battle but, significantly, he also knew that
his commanding officer and his fellow westerners back home would never
ask of him the outright, suicidal sacrifice that Japan asked of the Kamikazes.
The ideologies of the two regions in regard to self-sacrifice were simply
too distinct.
Another pertinent, historical example
that helps elucidate the eastern view of suicide can be found during the
Vietnam era. It was during this period of political and social upheaval
that Buddhist monks began protesting the war by burning themselves alive.
The gruesome footage of these suicidal acts was captured by both American
and foreign journalists and, though undeniably horrifying, the footage
is fascinating as well. Why, it must be asked, would any right-minded individual
force himself to endure such torture? The answer to this question typifies
the difference between the western and eastern views of suicide.
When the typical westerner sees the footage of the Buddhist monks burning
themselves alive, he sees only the superficial horror of the act and what
he perceives to be the senselessness and waste of a human life. The typical
easterner, though, is able to look beyond this outward gruesomeness and
see the philosophical and religious underpinnings that drove the monks
in question to such drastic action. For the easterner, in other words,
the suicides take on a heightened level of significance and appropriateness
because they represent the efforts of religious men trying to make a forceful
statement about the societal ills of the times - in this case, the futility
of the war in Vietnam. Though America and the west were no strangers to
the idea of anti-Vietnam protests, never did the west adopt a strategy
of protest as forceful or as irrevocable as that of suicide. From the western
perspective, such a strategy would have been viewed as ineffective and
morally wrong.
So far we have examined how specific
historical instances have shed light on the eastern view of suicide. Now
let us examine how the Judeo-Christian tenets found in the Bible and the
popular culture of the west both contribute to the western perception of
suicide. The root of the western belief that suicide is in all instances
wrong and sinful is, without question, biblical in origin. As we touched
upon in the Historical Background section of our analysis, the Bible clearly
states that God is alone in His ability to give and take away life. Thus,
since any one individual has no authority over life or death, the act of
suicide represents the usurpation of a power that is God's alone. To be
sure, this belief that suicide runs contrary to the will of God is not
found in all currents of religious thought; Hindus, Muslims, and followers
of eastern religions such as Buddhism and Shintoism encounter differing
views on suicide in their religious texts. For the hundreds of millions
of Jews and Christians worldwide, though, the belief that self-sacrifice
is inherently sinful has been engrained in their religious tradition for
nearly four millenia. That said, the question then becomes, how does this
long-standing belief in the wrongness of suicide manifest itself in the
history and culture of the west?
One of the best places to look
for an answer to this question is in the popular cuture of the west, specifically
in the extensive canon of literature found therein. Most of the writings
of William Shakespeare, for instance, deal directly or indirectly with
the topic of suicide: Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet's significant
other Ophelia are just a few of the Shakespearean characters who commit
suicide. In his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, it is Hamlet himself
who utters some of Shakespeare's most noteworthy lines on the topic of
suicide. At one point in the soliloquy, Shakespeare writes that thoughts
of suicide "...must give us pause; there's respect...for long life " (Hamlet,
Act III, Sc. 1, 69-70). Thus we see in a famous passage in a famous 17th
century British play a concrete expression of the western belief that suicide
is wrong; even the powerfully depressed Hamlet "pauses" when the idea of
suicide crosses his mind. He, like any upstanding Christian, must respect
the gift of life and realize that suicide is sinful and wrong.
Perhaps a better expression of
the western view of suicide as seen through western literature can be found
in Arthur Miller's 20th century play Death of a Salesman. This work
of literature tells us volumes about the western perception of suicide
and, significantly, how much this perception differs from that of the east.
In the final moments of Death of a Salesman, the protagonist Willy
Lohman kills himself by driving his car off the road because he believes
that his life insurance policy will support his family in a way he never
could. Though Miller lets the reader determine the relative nobility or
cowardice of this act for himself, the play ends with the distinctly western
feel that Lohman has somehow taken the easy way out. He has, in other words,
committed a shameful act. This observation becomes extremely fascinating
when one considers the fact that the typical Asian reader would interpret
these events in an entirely different manner, viewing the suicide of Willy
Lohman to be an act of extreme honor, not cowardice; killing oneself for
the betterment of one's family would be considered a completely legitimate
and honorable course of action by a man or woman in China or Japan.
Support for this assertion can
be found in other areas of western popular culture, most notably the medium
of television. On a recent episode of the American television program Crossing
Jordan, one of the show's sub-plots involved the mysterious death of
a Chinese businessman in a Boston hotel (NBC.com). The American investigators
on the program assumed that the man had been murdered and treated the investigation
as such; they were unable to believe that a man would turn the gas fireplace
in his hotel room on to the highest setting and simply wait for the fumes
to kill him. Only when the wife of the deceased man arrived from China
did the circumstances surrounding the case become clear. She explained
to the investigators that her husband's business in China was failing and
that she knew of his decision to commit suicide in America, a decision
that would allow his life insurance policy to pay out and support his family
indefinitely (a situation eerily similar to that of Willy Lohman). More
importantly, the woman went on to explain that such behavior was not looked
down upon in China and that the sacrifice her husband had made was both
honorable and relatively commonplace in the city she was from. Though seemingly
a flimsy source from which to derive information on the differences between
eastern and western perceptions of suicide, this simple example from an
American television program effectively highlights the dramatic ideological
difference that exists between east and west in regard to suicide.
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The topic of this research paper is the complex way in which easterners
and westerners differ in their views on suicide and self-sacrifice. From
the eastern perspective the focus will be on the perceived honor and nobility
of the act of self-sacrifice as seen, for instance, in the ritualistic
suicides of the samurai known as seppuku (see photo at right), and Japan’s
Kamikaze pilots during World War II. From the western perspective the focus
will be on the Judeo-Christian belief that suicide is in all instances
sinful and wrong and, more specifically, that the soul of the individual
that has committed suicide will never attain the fruits of the afterlife.
The research paper will examine, then, the differences that exist between
the western and eastern perceptions of suicide and, just as importantly,
when and why these differences emerged. Inherent is this discussion will
be a thorough analysis of the different religions found in the regions
in question and how the oft-conflicting beliefs of these religions have
contributed to the varied perceptions of suicide that we see today.