I started travelling to Japan in 2015. I didn’t expect it would change my life. I’d had recently become widowed, and my travel companions were my two young kids. My husband died in July of 2013 by suicide. At the time, if someone told me that Japanese culture would completely change my understanding of suicide, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.
But it did change my understanding of many things. I fell in love with the country absolutely. And on my return, I ate, slept, watched, learned, and read Japanese.
Initially, reading history and Japanese literature started to affect the way I thought about things. The Japanese movies I watched also made me question my understanding of life, in general. Eventually, I was reading a lot about samurai and bushido, the samurai way of living. Japanese ritual suicide, seppuku, intrigued me. Firstly, I believed it to be a way of retaining honour in death. Then I realised there was so much more to it.
It’s a sticky subject, as I don’t want to glorify suicide in anyway. However, the change in my thinking was life changing enough to make me want to write a memoir about it. I’m in the process of editing my memoir, You Can’t Say That: Regarding Suicide. Writing it has pushed my understanding and made me dig deep into the reasons we have stigma around suicide and the cultural and sociological norms that dictate this conditioning.
Western religion views suicide as a sin. Catholics believe people who take their own life will burn in hell for all eternity. Religion influences our attitudes even if we’re not religious. I don’t believe in hell, but I did question if there was a legal ramification of committing suicide. How does the way our society views suicide affect you?
Follow news about my memoir, you can follow me at kylieeklunddenman.com. To read more about suicide, Me, Japan and Suicide, was my first article, and Japan in 2024 also looks at suicide in Japan.