Essay On Durkheim's Suicide

For the last couple of decades, the Japanese suicide rate has consistently been higher than the majority of countries in the world. Not only that, but since the 1990’s a new phenomenon began to occur in the Japanese society - the hikikomori, the modern version of being a hermit. These people who ostracize themselves from society, are committing what could be called a social suicide, by almost never leaving their safe space, which the majority of the time is their parents house or flat. The government now believe that about 1 percent of its population are hikikomori - an alarming number, when one consideres the country's aging population and low birthrate.

In this chapter, this paper will try to examine precisely, what kind of suicide which is prevalent in contemporary Japan today. Is there only one kind of suicide which is representative in modern Japan? Or are there several different kinds at play at once? By analyzing Durkheim’s different kinds of self-destruction, defined in his book titled

In 1897 Emile Durkheim wrote the book Suicide, where he tried to find the different causes that compel people to commit suicide. He remarked that it can be hard to find the causes for suicide, since they (people who commit suicide) can think of themselves acting with a sound mind, when in fact they are experiencing some kind of a breakdown (Durkheim, 1897, p. 146).

Durkheim believed that regulation, integration and the different cultural institutions in society, affected the suicide rate of a country. This he argues, by analyzing statistics of different european countries, and implements his own theory upon it - some might say his theory of how social control affects the suicide rate, is dated, but his reasoning is sound and this paper will try to show it as such.

Definition of Durkheims