Medicine: Confucius & Suicide

Japan's suicide rate has always been notoriously high (24.2 per 100,000 a year, v. 10.2 in the U.S., by latest figures), but last week a leading Tokyo psychiatrist drew attention to a still more chilling statistic: in the 15-to-24 age group, suicide is the leading cause of death. The rate for these teen-agers and young adults, said Dr. Tsunehisa Takeyama, is 54.8 per 100,000. Accidents are the next commonest cause of death, with a rate of 42.8, and tuberculosis third, at 21.3. No less than 34% of all Japan's 22,000 suicides a year are in this transitional age bracket; suicide drops to third-place killer (after TB and accidents) in the 25-to-34 decade, and declines progressively to tenth place in the 55-to-64 range.

Plumbing the Japanese mentality for the causes of young people's death wishes, Psychiatrist Takeyama argues: the Confucian precept of unquestioning obedience to elders and superiors was deliberately perverted by the Tokugawa Shogunate (which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868) to maintain a rigid caste system. Obedience is still drummed into modern Japanese youth. But, says Dr. Takeyama: "While it remains a basic influence in their unconscious makeup, it conflicts sharply with their conscious striving to behave in accordance with modern Western ways."

Other Takeyama diagnoses: "The higher the educational level among Japanese youth, the more suicides—for education enables them to feel their frustrations more acutely. Of university and high-school students, 40% have contemplated suicide at least once. Juvenile delinquents rarely consider it, because they take out their frustrations in criminal acts against society."