Death by the sword: japanese ritualistic suicide analyzed in the light of Émile Durkheim’s theory

Abstract

Seppuku was a form of traditional feudal suicide in Japan and throughout history it was used by the Japanese warrior class (samurais) as a way to honorably die and serve their master. Considering that Japanese suicide can be interpreted as an imposition of the social environment and the rules which permeated the Japanese society of the time, this article aims to analyze samurai suicide as a social fact and in order to do so, the theoretical framework of Émile Durkheim’s theory of suicide is used. From Durkheim’s conceptions of the four typologies of suicide (selfish, altruistic, fatalistic, or anomic), the central hypothesis of this paper is that Seppuku can be categorized as a form of altruistic suicide which is closely related to the social environment and the Japanese culture. Therefore, we move away from psychological interpretations of suicide and recover the understanding that the act of committing suicide, when analyzing feudal Japan, must be studied in the light of the society of that time.