Journal 7 - Natalie Linder

Part One: Miss Sasaki is the character that has interested me the most. When the bomb hit Hiroshima she was trapped under many books and bookcases. She believed that her leg was cut off and so she would not move. Even though all this was happening, she remained mostly calm. In the book it says, “But Miss Sasaki could not move, and she just waited in the rain”. They say that so nonchalant, as if all she had to do was simply wait. But her leg was badly broken and she must have been in excruciating pain. Later in the book she is believed to have gangrene and that still doesn’t make her freak out. It just seems interesting to me that she kept calm in a very jarring situation.

Part Two: In Hiroshima it talks about a member of the Navy committing suicide. They claim that it is an honorable death. In the Japanese culture it was once considered that suicide was a way to keep your dignity intact when enduring hard times. Ruth Benedict stated that, “The most extreme aggressive action a modern Japanese takes against himself is suicide. Suicide, properly done, will, according to their tenets, clear his name and reinstate his memory. American condemnation of suicide makes self-destruction only a desperate submission to despair, but the Japanese respect for it allows it to be an honorable and purposeful act. In certain situations it is the most honorable course to take in giri to one's name” (Takahashi) (Giri is a duty or obligation). Yoshitomo Takahashi would gladly disagree with that belief. He believes that honorable suicide is a common misconception from those that do not fully understand the Japanese culture. A form of suicide is Hara-kiri. This is “a ritual suicide by disembowelment practiced by the Japanese samurai or formerly decreed by a court in lieu of the death penalty”. Disembowelment is removing of the organs, by cutting the person open. People often hear about Hara-kiri because it is such an unusual form of death. This helps keep the misconception of honorable death alive. This may have been common in the past but in today’s Japanese society suicide is treated differently. “In contemporary Japanese society, suicidal people often consider that death is the only way of resolving a desperate situation, being neither an honorable form of behavior nor a tradition condoned by society. In fact, there is a strong stigma against suicide and intense prejudice toward the mental disorders related to it, and this makes ordinary Japanese individuals reluctant to seek help from mental health professionals. They fear that they might be ostracized if they are diagnosed as suffering from psychiatric disorder, which is a shame for them and their families” (Takahashi).Although the contemporary culture in japan does not treat suicide as honorable, most people are buried by a common ritual, Kamidana-fuji. This is performed by the love ones of someone that has passed in the japanese culture. The person who has died has their lips dampened with water,this is called Matsugo-no-mizu. In english this means “water of the last moment”. After this is done then the person is most likely cremated. They cover the urn with a piece of white paper to keep out impure spirits. When Hiroshima was written it was most likely a time when suicide was treated differently, although today there has been a large shift in the feelings Japanese people have towards suicide.

An example of Matsugo-no-mizu

Sources:

http://www.funerals-and-flowers.com/death-and-funeral-customs.html#japanese

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/03/japan-honourable-suicide-rate

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1943-278X.1997.tb00510.x/full