• javi2541997
    5.7k
    Writers, painters, sculptors and other kinds of artists have always expressed their impressions towards death. In this specific context, I see a different perception of death if we look into Western or Japanese artists.
    As an example of suicidal writers from the West I like to mention John Kennedy Toole. He killed himself after writing a confederacy of dunces. But this act was committed as an act caused by depression. He had a lot of misunderstandings with the editors wondering that his book will never be published at all, so he would end up as a loser. Here I perceive the death of Kennedy Toole as dramatic. He wanted to be a writer but all the concerns of not being published and bureaucracy impacted him to not consider life worthy at all to keep living…

    But from a Japanese perspective the issue turns out to be so different. Two good examples:

    Yasunari Kawabata a few years after winning the literature Nobel prize, killed himself without leaving a note or a haiku. Many people debated why he committed such an act. I think the concept of death by Kawabata is aesthetic. If you read Kawabata’s works you would think that suicide is part of a progress. In the book of Snow Country (Yuki no Guni) he shows the perfection of loneliness and death can be understood in a naturalistic view.
    Yukio Mishima. This writer is still famous after 50 years of his suicide. He wrote in his works the reflection of Japanese civilization inside Western culture and their effects (sexuality, the rule of women, family values, politics, etc…). There is a moment where Mishima reflects that only death is what really distinct one culture from the other. He killed himself after a traditional ceremony as an act of purity. Yukio Mishima once said:

    The Japanese have always been a people with a severe awareness of death. But the Japanese concept of death is pure and clear, and in that sense it is different from death as something disgusting and terrible as it is perceived by Westerners.

    Conclusion: Is the concept of death the main difference between Westerners and Japanese? Do you perceive the death as terrible and dramatic?
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    I think we always have to take care not to base our understanding of others and their actions (such as suicide) via books or other people's stories/claims about them. The real answers if they are known are often quite different and more nuanced.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Most interesting. — Ms. Jane Marple

    All that comes to mind is that during WW2, the Japanese had kamikazes but the West did not; of course one has to take into account the fact that the West were never in a situation where they were backed up against a wall/driven into a corner. Worth noting is the Germans didn't have kamikazes though they were in the same do or die situation as the Japanese were. There's a grain of truth in your view then, oui?
  • Angelo Cannata
    354
    I think that, in this context, the Western perception of death is more authentic, more human, because we have the objective witnessing coming from living beings that are not, for sure, conditioned by culture: plants, animals, children: they don’t want to die, they don’t like dying, they hate dying. Why should we superimpose cultural conceptions that make us separated from nature, humanity, authenticity?
  • javi2541997
    5.7k
    I think we always have to take care not to base our understanding of others and their actions (such as suicide) via books or other people's stories/claims about them.Tom Storm

    It is true that we should not follow the same steps of our idols because they had a very different way of life from ours. Nevertheless, I think it is important to at least have a look on them because they tried (Mishima and Kawabata) to give another meaning to suicide and try to be more confident about it
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    It is not necessarily connected to wars. You can feel stressed for whatever reason in our Western cities. I wanted to point out that while in Japanese arts the death is accepted, in the Western is seen as pure dramatic and it looks like you are forced to live
  • javi2541997
    5.7k
    Why should we superimpose cultural conceptions that make us separated from nature, humanity, authenticity?Angelo Cannata

    I do not want to superimpose any culture and contrary from your view, I see the Japanese concept of death more authentic. Remember that in our "world" suicide itself is a legal punishment...
  • SpaceDweller
    520

    death in the west is not necessarily terrible among everyone.
    In western culture there is a thing known as "death tourism", ex. in switzerland you can pay for tourism which will last few days for you to enjoy until you die with the help of assisted suicide.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    It is not necessarily connected to wars. You can feel stressed for whatever reason in our Western cities. I wanted to point out that while in Japanese arts the death is accepted, in the Western is seen as pure dramatic and it looks like you are forced to livejavi2541997

    :ok: I just thought it odd and interesting that the Germans didn't resort to suicide when it seems quite justified to do so, as the Nipponese folks did.
  • javi2541997
    5.7k
    as the Nipponese folks did.Agent Smith

    Completely. I would sound as a crazy boy but for me that specific act was so pure and authentic. At least the Nipponese died defending their thousand years old values and history… beautiful doesn’t it?
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    True. But it not the general opinion. Death is still seeing as terrible or even a taboo topic. Religion ensured during centuries to “refuse” the meaning and significance of death because it is seen as dramatic. I want to turn the side and try to understand and accept the death since the beginning
  • Angelo Cannata
    354
    I see the Japanese concept of death more authenticjavi2541997

    I showed evidence why I see the Western concept more authentic. I would like to understand the reason that make you see the Japanese one more authentic, despite not reflecting what we can see in plants, animals and children.
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    You didn't show any argument but I would put some apart of what I wrote in the OP.
    Japanese see the perception of death more authentic because their culture is not influenced by Westerns. They understand and see the life as a scenario where our souls plays a role in the field. When the play ends the life so. If they have to die, they would do it without doubt or complains because they consider our existence as a beginning and an end. Not as a "live the life at the until of the days" like westerns.
    Secondly, there is a ceremony called "seppuku" where the head of samurai clans committed suicide while composing the last haiku before the end. This act was thought to reach purity.
    These facts sound pretty authentic to me...
  • NOS4A2
    9.2k


    Mishima’s Sun and Steel hints that suicide, or death in battle, was an aesthetic and romantic act. His philosophy on the topic is nebulous but quite profound, in my mind, at least as much as its English translation affords me.

    The subtle contradiction between self-awareness and existence began to trouble me.

    I reasoned that if one wants to identify seeing and existing, the nature of the self-awareness should be made as centripetal as possible. If only one can direct the eye of self-awareness so intently towards the interior and the self that self-awareness forgets the outer forms of existence, then one can “exist” as surely as the “I” in Amiel’s Diary. But this existence is of an odd kind, like a transparent apple whose core is fully visible from the outside; and the only endorsement of such existence lies in words. It is the classical type of existence experienced by the solitary, humanistic man of letters. . . .

    But one also comes across a type of self-awareness that concerns itself exclusively with the form of things. For this type of self-awareness, the antinomy between seeing and existing is decisive, since it involves the question of how the core of the apple can be seen through the ordinary, red, opaque skin, and also how the eye that looks at that glossy red apple from the outside can penetrate into the apple and itself become the core. The apple in this case, moreover, must have a perfectly ordinary existence, its color a healthy red.

    To continue the metaphor, let us picture a single, healthy apple. This apple was not called into existence by words, nor is it possible that the core should be completely visible from the outside like Amiel’s peculiar fruit. The inside of the apple is naturally quite invisible. Thus at the heart of that apple, shut up within the flesh of the fruit, the core lurks in its wan darkness, tremblingly anxious to find some way to reassure itself that it is a perfect apple. The apple certainly exists, but to the core this existence as yet seems inadequate; if words cannot endorse it, then the only way to endorse it is with the eyes. Indeed, for the core the only sure mode of existence is to exist and to see at the same time. There is only one method of solving this contradiction. It is for a knife to be plunged deep into the apple so that it is split open and the core is exposed to the light—to the same light, that is, as the surface skin. Yet then the existence of the cut apple falls into fragments; the core of the apple sacrifices existence for the sake of seeing.

    When I realized that the perfect sense of existence that disintegrated the very next moment could only be endorsed by muscle, and not by words, I was already personally enduring the fate that befell the apple. Admittedly, I could see my own muscles in the mirror. Yet seeing alone was not enough to bring me into contact with the basic roots of my sense of existence, and an immeasurable distance remained between me and the euphoric sense of pure being. Unless I rapidly closed that distance, there was little hope of bringing that sense of existence to life again. In other words, the self-awareness that I staked on muscles could not be satisfied with the darkness of the pallid flesh pressing about it as an endorsement of its existence, but, like the blind core of the apple, was driven to crave certain proof of its existence so fiercely that it was bound, sooner or later, to destroy that existence. Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words!

    The eye of self-awareness, used as it is to keeping a watch on the invisible self in an essentially centripetal fashion and via the good offices of words, does not place sufficient trust in visible things such as muscles. Inevitably, it addresses the muscles as follows:

    “I admit you do not seem to be a illusion. But if so, I would like you to show how you function in order to live and move; show me your proper functions and how you fulfill your proper aims.”

    Thus the muscles start working in accordance with the demands of self-awareness; but in order to make the action exist unequivocally, a hypothetical enemy outside the muscles is necessary, and for the hypothetical enemy to make certain of its existence it must deal a blow to the realm of the senses fierce enough to silence the querulous complaints of self-awareness. That, precisely, is when the knife of the foe must come cutting into the flesh of the apple—or rather, the body. Blood flows, existence is destroyed, and the shattered senses give existence as a whole its first endorsement, closing the logical gap between seeing and existing... And this is death.

    In this way I learned that the momentary, happy sense of existence that I had experienced that summer sunset during my life with the army could be finally endorsed only by death.

    Western conceptions of suicide, I fear, are so much influenced by religion, that the aesthetic, romantic, and interesting qualities have all been stripped away. The Stoics had a better conception of suicide than the ancient Greeks and the Christians, in my mind.
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    Thanks NOS, for understanding what I wanted to share. Exactly, Yukio Mishima saw in a aesthetic view the concept of death. Despite the fact that all the characters of their works suffer of inner pain or depression, they do not see death as a "escape" but at least, a good ending in this complex life. You quoted Sun and Steel. Amazing essay indeed. But I would quote The Temple of the Golden Pavilion:

    And what I envied most about him was that he managed to reach the end of his life without the slightest conscience of being burdened with a special individuality or sense of individual mission like mine. This sense of individuality robbed my life of its symbolism, that is to say, or its power to serve, like Tsurukawa’s, as a metaphor for something outside itself; accordingly it deprived me of the feelings of life’s extensity and solidarity, and it became the source of that sense of solitude which pursued me indefinitely. It was strange. I did not even have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness. – page 122

    In the other hand, it is difficult to foind out Western writers or artistes wondering about this issue, because as you well said, our concept of being dead is so surrounded by religious traditions.
  • NOS4A2
    9.2k


    There is an interesting inversion there. Mishima saw suicide and death in battle as an act of solidarity with the group, a sort of morbid collectivism. I’m not sure how much his views on suicide extend to the culture at large, but retaining or regaining one’s honor through suicide, like Seppuku, similarly implies a primacy towards group dynamics. On the other hand, Western conceptions like those found in Plato or Aquinas regard suicide as unfavorable to the group, bad for the State, and so on.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    :death: :flower:

    "Suicide" is always, psychopathology or hyper-romanticism notwithstanding, both premature and ex post facto because death, for us, is the inevitable irreversible dissolution of meta-cognitive self-continuity – thus, the "aesthetic" of a rain drop in the sea or blown-out candle or sudden lightning flash or a wave crashing on an empty beach – Nature's entropy. Whatever the cultural interpretive particulars, death is also always fundamentally the same, singular horizon (i.e. facticity) of each and every person. Death – ineluctable, inevitable – is the real (fate). :fire:
  • Haglund
    802
    One big difference between Japanese art and Western art is the lack of individuality in the Japanese. The art has to conform to standards, so it seems and a move away from that standard gives entartete art. Entarteteart!
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    Good explanation :100: :fire:

    Despite the fact that, death is the same path to us, we tend to conceive it in many different ways. You wrote that death can be seen as hyper-romanticism. This characteristic reminds me more from Kawabata works rather than Mishima. Yasunari wrote and developed some characters full of loneliness and lack of brisk. Nevertheless, he understood it as an aesthetic figure of the humans this is why he shouted phrases as drinking tea in a empty bowl, etc… I think it is pretty. Being lonely is not as bad as it is seen in other cultures.
    As @NOS4A2 shared previously (I am fully agree with him) our culture is so surrendered by religion in terms of suicide/individual’s problems. I guess this is why it is not so easy to find out some Western books related to this topic.
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    I understand your point but that’s Japan in a economical point of view. I was referring in an art or literature expression. When they write haiku poems they reflect the power of individualism, loneliness and the course of life towards the nature and seasons (this is why they like to express their feelings according if it is fall, winter, spring or summer)
  • Haglund
    802
    Western folks fear death. For the samurai it's nothing to fear and connected with honour. Death and night and blood (Yukio).
  • Haglund
    802
    Death and Night and Blood (Yukio)

  • Tom Storm
    9k
    It is true that we should not follow the same steps of our idols because they had a very different way of life from ours.javi2541997

    That's not what I was saying. I was saying - we don't know why they did what they did. We don't have access to other people's situations or inner life and any narratives made by them (or others) must be treated with caution and possibly as myth building accounts.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Completely. I would sound as a crazy boy but for me that specific act was so pure and authentic. At least the Nipponese died defending their thousand years old values and history… beautiful doesn’t it?javi2541997

    I wouldn't use "beautiful" to describe mortality & morbidity, but I suppose that's one of the ways the Japanese were looking at Thanatos (romanticizing war and all that). My hunch is that for some folks, Japanese or not, there are things worse than death (re spies and their cyanide capsules). Tokyo eventually capitulated post Hiroshima & Nagasaki - pain & death at that scale weren't worth it anymore.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Western folks fear deathHaglund

    I fear that you're not quite right there. World wars have been, by and large, a Western folks thing. What about extreme/dangerous sports, where do they originate?
  • javi2541997
    5.7k


    Mortality can be seen as a "catastrophic" if we understand the life as worthy to live in. I used the adjective "beautiful" to describe the nature of my thread because it surprises me they way they manage to write in a perfect writing or vocabulary something so shocking as death. Instead of being a perpetual sadness they try to understand it and connect some characters related to the same topic
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    The OP is right on the money if one takes into account the fact religions and their popularity. Religions, sensu lato, boil down to treating life as a preparation for an afterlife post-death.

    The leitmotif of the post-mortem spans entire human history - from Egyptian pyramids and mummies on to faiths as part of modern culture.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Instead of being a perpetual sadness they try to understand it and connect some characters related to the same topicjavi2541997

    :fire: Yeah, the point of personifying (Thanatos, Algos, Praxidice, Nemesis, and so on) nature and phenomena part of nature is perhaps a way of trying to make them people-like, a step towards building a healthy relationship as we (attempt to) do with real peeps.
  • javi2541997
    5.7k
    Yeah, the point of personifying (Thanatos, Algos, Praxidice, Nemesis, and so on)Agent Smith

    Yes! :100: :up: these states of mind remember me about an anime I saw a few years ago called "Neon Genesis Evangelion" where the main protagonists wondered about Thanatos and Nemesis and then, how worthy is the human existence itself. Another expression of art of what we are debating about!
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    how worthy is the human existence itselfjavi2541997

    Collectively, take the human race as a whole, what do we deserve? If it weren't for the fact that other creatures & plants are critical to our own survival, would we be making all this racket about conservation and climate change? Selfishness writ large and I haven't yet talked about how we've been an agent of extinction from the moment we set foot in the global ecology. In other words, we're working for Thanatos! I wonder how big our paycheck is?

    First rule of assassination. Kill the assassin! — Captain Kirk

    The Grim Reaper's hitman: Humans.
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