1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910880001203321

Autore

Cather Kirsten

Titolo

Scripting Suicide in Japan

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley : , : University of California Press, , 2024

©2024

ISBN

9780520400276

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (352 pages)

Collana

New Interventions in Japanese Studies ; ; v.5

Disciplina

895.6

Soggetti

Authors, Japanese - Suicidal behavior - 20th century

Authors, Japanese - Suicidal behavior - 21st century

Suicide and literature - Japan - 20th century

Suicide and literature - Japan - 21st century

Suicide in literature

Suicide - Social aspects - Japan - 20th century

Suicide - Social aspects - Japan - 21st century

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Cover -- Lilienthal Imprint -- Subvention -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Note on Names, Romanization, and Translation -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Thoughts at the Precipice -- Part One. Mapping Suicide: Jisatsu Meisho, the Poetic Places of Suicide -- 2. Mount Mihara's Same-Sex Suicides and Flippant Flips -- 3. Suicide Maps and Manuals -- 4. Aokigahara Jukai, Sea of Trees -- Part Two. Noting Suicide: Isho, the Writings Left Behind -- 5. A Note to an Old Friend, or Two -- 6. A Note for Oneself -- 7. A Note to the Nation -- 8. Autothanatography, or the Exorbitant Call to Write One's Own Death -- Part Three. Mourning in Multimedia -- 9. Copycat Poets and Suicides -- 10. Death in Mixed Media -- Epilogue: Dialoguing with the Dead -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit



www.luminosoa.org to learn more.    Japan is a nation saddled with centuries of accumulated stereotypes and loaded assumptions about suicide. Many pronouncements have been made about those who have died by their own hand, without careful attention to the words of the dead themselves. Drawing upon far-ranging creations by famous twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japanese writers and little-known amateurs alike--such as death poems, suicide notes, memorials, suicide maps and manuals, works of literature, photography, film, and manga--Kirsten Cather interrogates how suicide is scripted and to what end. Entering the orbit of suicidal writers and readers with care, she shows that through close readings these works can reveal fundamental beliefs about suicide and, just as crucially, about acts of writing. These are not scripts set in stone but graven images and words nonetheless that serve to mourn the dead, straddling two impulses: to put the dead to rest and to keep them alive forever. These words reach out to us to initiate a dialogue with the dead, one that can reveal why it matters to write into and from the void.