Quote:
Originally Posted by AuraTwilight
Haguruma, could you please stop trying to use Japanese culture to try and justify this sort of thing? I actually am a Japanese citizen and this is complete horseshit. Harakiri has been going out of practice since after WW2, and even then it never justified forced-suicide of other people with you. That's just disgusting for you to insinuate otherwise.
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I'm not insinuating that this is how "the Japanese" are, this is something that is being written about Japan by Japanese people.
Seppuku is a completely different topic that does not even apply here. I'm also not trying to say that suicide was ever a justifiably enforceable method of dealing with problems, but it still was and is a social reality that people do act this way. What I refuse to let stand here is Renall's claim that people act this way out of mere insanity, not social pressure, not historical evaluation of conduct in the face of tragedy, not cultural context but simply claiming "everybody who does this is insane", which is oversimplification.
I am not implying that anybody who is Japanese would thus act in such a way, probably not even 1%, maybe not even 0,1% of Japanese citizens would consider this course of action as reasonable under normal circumstances.
I am also not claiming that this is inherently Japanese. I'd say there have been similar considerations of "avoiding shame" in almost every society, as long as honor is seen as more important than mere survival from an socio-ideological standpoint.