A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

Not sure if cultural relativism here should take precedence and just say "ok it is their culture, who am I to judge it". On the other hand, it is kind of dreadful that this was so common, it got to be a cultural tradition.

There is something dreadful about it. You know "you bow before the elders", "take your shoes before you enter someone's home", "slaughter your children before you kill yourself".

I guess, like the article says, suicide is one of those "unknown knowns" that is ingrained in the social subconsciousness. They mention samurai and sepuku and how certain people were "praised" in a way for committing an honorable suicide.

I've had combat explained to me like this. Imagine you're out in the world one day, grocery shopping, and a guy starts threatening you in the parking lot. In the normal world, you call the police or defend yourself if you need to, or get in your car and drive away. But your options are significantly limited. This problem or situation has other possible outcomes, but society has put artificial constraints the eliminates several effective resolutions.

A soldier in war has far fewer constraints. If some guy is bothering them, they can simply kill that person and resolve the issue. Or they can run them over in their armored vehicle, or bayonet them, or beat them with their rifle until they stop moving. An entire world of options opens up that allows you to simply resolve conflicts -- even if these resolutions are frowned upon in the normal society. Society sets up all these lines you can't cross, except in war you can cross all over them.

There's thousands of these kinds of issues in warfare, where normally impossible issues suddenly become trivial. Need to get from point A to point B? Steal a car. Need to get information from a guy? Beat him till he talks. Building in the way? Blow it up.

When a solider returns home, suddenly these societal restraints are locked back on them. You're suddenly told that you can't cross these lines anymore. But as anybody who's engaged in any kind of social line crossing can talk about, it's hard to roll that back once you've done it. As a result they feel trapped and disempowered. Having previously had literal power over life and death, you're suddenly trying to figure out how to fight with a soccer mom and her kids over a parking spot at the mall -- and you're trying to keep yourself blocked in by lines you now know aren't really there.

In combat you could just declare the minivan a threat and open up the 30 cal. Here you might have to go find another spot.

Charming attitude.

I doubt that many suicidal people have anything much to atone for, more likely they had some horrible things done to them or are just wired in a way that makes them deeply unhappy.

I don't see suicide as brave or cowardly. Depending on the situation, suicide can be in an individual's best interest -- a terminally ill patient in extreme pain who chooses to undergo a painless physician-assisted suicide would be a good example.

Even beyond terminal illness, I imagine that there are some people who have either been through such massive trauma, or are wired so badly, that suicide is a better option than living in misery. Granted, depressed individuals may not be capable of making decisions in their long-term self-interest, but I still wouldn't condemn every suicide as a "bad" decision, let alone "cowardly", "shameful", or any of the other pejoratives that come up around this topic.

As far as mockers and fools, you only have to look as far as the comment section of YouTube to find a whole plethora of them. If the Internet had been around when I was growing up, I would have been right there among them.