Just another suicide? - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 25: After the Crisis
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Mark Chou
THAT WASN'T THE LAST time I heard from her; it just felt like it. Two years passed. At the time, I was researching for a project on Japanese law when some data I came across abruptly reopened a chapter I thought had shut two years back. Ever since that day at Ikebukuro station, the issue of suicide in Japan had etched itself onto my mind. And later it etched deeper still. There would be no resolution on that front, I already knew that. didn't realise just how much I needed an opportunity that would let me say to her – as much as to myself – ‘I understand', and mean it.
While I was trawling through Japanese legal texts in a Canberra library one day, a random passage in book by Mark D West caught my eye. The excerpt was from a note left by a president of an unnamed Japanese company: ‘My financial debts are simply more than I can bear...I wish I could pay it back but I cannot, and I do not want to shame my family...a man does not live in shame...I will end my life with dignity.'
The following chapters of that book, Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes, put this statement into perspective. In Japan, it said, the financial trauma of debt, the shame associated with bankruptcy and the inadequate legal resources available have been an immediate cause of thousands of suicides each year. Participants of a bankruptcy survey corroborated this, indicating in the majority of instances that suicide is an acceptable resolution to debt and bankruptcy. And the numbers confirm this, with 3,654 suicides in 2003 committed solely for economic reasons. Economic downturns, recessions and now the global financial crisis: the severity of this trend may yet worsen.
At issue, the book seemed to suggest, was Japan's complicated, lengthy and stigmatised bankruptcy system. Such sentiments were, and still are, evident at all levels – from the Japanese Minister of Economy, who blamed ‘the system for the high number of debt-caused suicides in Japan', to the daughter of a random suicide victim, who felt that ‘better law would have kept Father from losing his life.' How is it that these laws failed to keep this woman's father, among so many others, alive?
West proffers six main reasons. The first relates to the delays associated with bankruptcy proceedings. In Japan, these proceedings typically do not commence upon the matter being filed. They are contingent on a number of factors being fulfilled first, a process which may take anywhere from two weeks to six months in court. Second, the assets of debtors are only protected once a ‘preservation measure' is granted, and even this is only specific, not blanket, protection. The third reason is that discharge under Article 366 of Japan's Bankruptcy Act is not automatic. Fourth, strict limitations are applied to how the bankrupt conducts his or her life once discharged. For example, a discharged bankrupt cannot subsequently pursue employment as a lawyer, guardian, executor of wills, certified public accountant, corporate director, and so on. Fifth are the high legal fees involved and the systemic complexities of the bankruptcy proceedings itself. The final reason, then, can seem like a good one if you want to avoid all of this: the prospect of a life-insurance payout upon the death of the bankrupted individual. While Article 680 of Japan's Commercial Code exempts insurance payouts for suicides, most life-insurance contracts now maintain a no-exclusion-of-benefits clause for suicides if policies have been held for the minimum period of time. In other words, voluntary death can seem like the easiest and most honourable way out of a situation in which little, if anything, is easy or honourable.
These legal dead-ends were recognised and partially rectified by the Japanese legislature in 2000. Coming into effect in April 2001, the law of Civil Rehabilitation was created to give debtors another option to the two they already have: filing proceedings under the bankruptcy system or committing suicide. The net effect of the law has been to broaden the avenues for negotiation about the debtor's options in an informal, non-judicial setting. Doing so also reduces the stigma associated with being bankrupt. Because the law of Civil Rehabilitation is, according to one Japanese bankruptcy lawyer, ‘much cheaper [and] easier' than bankruptcy proceedings, the choice between life and death has been made ‘easier as well'.
Civil Rehabilitation has given many individuals another chance to make another choice. Obviously, that's not always enough. It wasn't enough on that day in 2004. And it probably hasn't been enough too many times since. But sometimes, when another chance and another choice are all one wants, enough can mean a lot. In a country where ‘the stigma of suicide is low and the stigma of insolvency is high', one prominent commentator says, ‘for some people, some of the time, and for reasons that are often varied and ambiguous, law appears to make a difference in the ultimate decision.'
IF JAPANESE SUICIDES are an indictment of justice denied, in this life, then lawmakers and reformers have not only a lot to answer for but a lot to do. Their collective failure to take suicide seriously in legislating the laws of their nation is a compounding factor that leads to the avoidable deaths of many. As such, their collective effort to analyse suicide data and rationales, in conjunction with personal, social and legal contexts, may provide a unique opening to pinpoint the deficiencies and injustices of existing norms and institutions, and to determine how and where they can be rectified.
A government 2007 White Paper on suicide prevention was a step in this direction. Outlined in a nine-step plan was an initiative that seeks to better understand the phenomenon of suicide in the first instance. In the second instance its aims are to drastically alter the way suicide is esteemed and treated in Japanese society. Attitudes must change. And they are, slowly. Indeed, more and more people are beginning to realise that if they don't – that if they continue to turn a blind eye to suicide and continue to see it as ‘the honourable way out' – then this tradition will continue to make tomorrow's history.
Governmental programs like these are needed to buck this pernicious trend. And while such a suggestion may seem unremarkable, I would put it another way. I'd suggest that an approach like this actually deviates from the majority of current suicide-related laws and legal approaches. This is because, at present, most legal approaches and solutions are only band-aid solutions, ones which treat, punish and control suicide. However, by merely criminalising and stigmatising suicide, only its symptoms are addressed. In this respect a methodology which uses suicide as a means to, not the end of, law reform is very different: it favours laws and methods that tackle the deep-seated causes of voluntary death in Japan.
I say this as much for her as for me, though I hope that what I've said has also spoken to others. By seeing voluntary deaths in Japan as just another suicide we fail to see things deeply enough. We miss the allegory it leaves behind and the cry for help which goes unheard. In doing so we also miss possible instances where vindication, empowerment and justice were denied in life, instances where vindication, empowerment and justice was all that separated life from death. For law reformers in Japan then, no suicide should ever be taken lightly, for they may provide that all-important peek into crevices of society where law reform is not only necessary but can make that ultimate difference.
Of course, what I've said here has not been about the construction of definitive understandings and answers to the phenomenon of suicide in Japan, that much stands reiterating. Neither is it a proclamation of the law's ability to genuinely engage, critique and transform entrenched social and personal conditions. But for those nearing or at the end of their life's wick perhaps all this, bar that momentary reprieve and some tangible incentive to live, is superfluous.
What I don't understand still far outweighs what I do. But that part of me – still searching for answers; still grappling with what these answers might mean – knows this at least: I am not alone. Like her, ‘I don't think I can understand everything now, but at least I understand.' That was what she said then. Now, maybe, I can say that too. ♦
