Seppuku (colloquially harakiri "belly-slitting")

Seppuku is a Japanese ritual method of suicide, practiced mostly in the medieval era, though some isolated cases appear in modern times. For example, Yukio Mishima committed seppuku in 1970 after a failed coup d'etat intended to restore full power to the Japanese Emperor.

Unlike other methods of suicide, this was regarded as a way of preserving one's honor. The ritual is part of bushido, the code of the Samurai. As originally performed solely by an individual it was an extremely painful method by which to die. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloth, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem. The samurai would open his kimono, take up his wakizashi (short sword), fan, or a tanto (knife) and plunge it into his abdomen, making first a left-to-right cut and then a second slightly upward stroke. As the custom evolved a selected attendant (kaishakunin, his second) standing by who, on the second stroke, would perform daki-kubi, when the warrior is all but decapitated, leaving a slight band of flesh attaching the head to the body, so as to not let the head fall off the body and roll on the floor/ground; which was considered dishonorable in feudal Japan. The act eventually became so highly ritualistic that the samurai would only have to reach for his sword and his kaishakunin would execute the killing stroke. Still later, there would be no sword but something like a fan for which the samurai would reach.

Chuicide

The Chuo Line, one of Tokyo's major train lines, is so infamous for people committing suicide that many English editorials in Japan have taken to using the word Chuicide to refer to the means. Its relative popularity is partly due to its practical ease, and to avoid causing a nuisance to one's family, though families are often charged or sued by the railway companies to compensate for the trouble caused by the accident. A typical suicide may cause delays between one and a few hours on one or more lines and is certainly unpleasant for onlookers who may be present.

Another interesting trend related to train suicide is to wear a brightly colored cap (orange) to help shield your face. This is done out of concern for the train conductors, so that they may not be caused any trauma by seeing the face of the person about to be hit. It is also useful as a sign that the person is indeed intending to commit suicide, and that no one should risk their life in order to save them.

The costs to the surviving families by the railway companies' "delay fee" is often in the 100 million yen (approx. 850 thousand U.S. Dollars) range.

Hikikomori ('bedroom hermits')

In Japan’s ailing society, depression is just one of many symptoms that have gone largely unacknowledged (alarming suicide rates and the prevalence of bedroom hermits known as hikikomori are two more). The Japanese are a people in deep denial. They prefer to insist that each phenomenon is nothing more than a failure of individual will, rather than any reflection of wider social dysfunction.

Prozac and Zoloft remain illegal there, despite Japan's suicide rate being higher than the States’ (and their population half as large). Every week in Japan, a nation that prides itself on its wealth and stability, more than 660 people kill themselves. Jumping in front of trains has become so popular that guardrails — and, more poignantly, mirrors — have been installed in the subway system to keep desperate men and women from taking the plunge.

Truth be told, it's more of a man's problem – far fewer Japanese females choose to take their own lives. This same gender imbalance applies to many of the country's most worrisome trends: alcoholism, overwork, and rampant bullying at the job, to name three.

But perhaps the most disturbing pattern of all is the self-imposed isolation now practiced by a growing legion of malcontents called hikikomori. Shacking up with their parents and then locking themselves in their shuttered bedrooms, where they do little more than sleep and eat as their muscles go limp and their hair grows long, these sad, misunderstood cases seem, as the title of this book implies, a perfect embodiment of the anomie that has descended on modern Japan. And 80 percent of them are men.

The hikikomori phenomenon is in part a product of economic decline. It is easy to see why this extreme response to the "insularity, homogeneity, [and] lockstep conformity" of Japanese society might be more common now that the market can no longer guarantee dutiful, self-immolating students the financial success other generations took for granted. But why are men shutting out the sun while women, who make up a comparable proportion of the workforce, aren't? Some believe that it is partly the amae, or dependence, that binds Japanese boys to their mothers and keeps them from developing the self-possession to go forth in the world. The role of the mother may in fact be stronger today than it has ever been: in the infamously demanding corporate culture of modern Japan, it is not uncommon for fathers to go weeks at a time without seeing their own children. On top of that, the idea of the working mom hardly exists. A Japanese woman is expected to give up her job or not have kids. And many these days are opting for the latter. "Parasite singles" – women who live rent-free at home and use their salaries to travel and go shopping with their girlfriends – are the unfulfilled offspring of a society in which consumer fetishes become substitutes for marriage. It's not the fault of females. Some Japanese women say they find Japanese men immature and stubbornly pre-feminist in their attitudes, and want nothing to do with them.

In some villages, the men sit around in bars and play pinball all day. All the young women have left for the city.