Places to Die: Mt. Mihara, Oshima, Japan

Mt. Mihara on Oshima Island in Japan is an active volcano in Japan which last erupted in 1986, but it is best known for a series of suicides which took place there in the 1930s. Although knowledge of this place & its suicides have been documented in the West, I believe that the story has not been told to enough people within its proper context. In 1933, while China & Japan were already waging war in the Second Sino-Japanese War a young student, aged twenty-four, named Meiko Ukei from Tokyo went with her friend Masako Tomita to the island of Oshima. When Meiko & Masako reached the island, they climbed to the top of Mt. Mihara. Meiko turned to her friend & stated that she would commit suicide there, as her body would be cremated & her ashes sent to the heavens. The volcano was active at the time, so in the extreme heat (1,200 - 2,200 F) Meiko's plans were successful, she was probably liquidated immediately upon contact. (Perhaps a friendly geologist would like to comment.)

Meiko made her friend promise to not tell another person of the events that would transpire, but poor Masako, who cannot be blamed for her indiscretion had to confide in another. Soon afterward, the suicide of Meiko was in the newspapers & talked about on the radio. The suicidal & the curious came to Mt. Mihara in droves, leading the government to eventually create barriers to deter further deaths. Before they were erected, upwards of 600 people took their lives by jumping into the lava & 1,200 attempted suicide but were (fortunately?) restrained. Speaking of the curious, the ferries to Oshima were packed with people wishing to witness the deaths. The ferry companies, although profitted large sums, did their part to thwart further suicide by denying one-way tickets. (I don't know how this would stop anyone who wanted to die though. Think about it.)

Was it a beautiful death that people wanted? Was it stress from the war or mere unhappiness in life? Mental disease? No one possesses definite answers, only subjective opinions about the events & what lures people to certain places to die.* However, suicide within the context of Japanese culture, which differs greatly from the Western perspective, does offer a clue as to why people would be more inclined to die. In most Western societies, suicide is seen as a deplorable act where one would pity or even despise the person for what they perceive as a self-indulgent act. In contrast in Japan, suicide was seen as beautiful, because the act of self-sacrifice is held as a worthy pursuit. That is not meant to distort the view that suicide was gleaned with happy smiles & celebrations, but the act of an individual doing this was not seen as harshly nor as negative as a typical Western audience would interpret it.+



*I will be featuring other 'Places to Die' at a later period.

+If I can find enough research that will adequately explain the differences, in depth, between Eastern & Western views of death, I will update this page with new material.


Sources:

1. Jamison, Kay Redfield. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Vintage, New York: 2000, pp. 146-148.
   
2. Young, Jerome. Morals, Suicide, and Psychiatry: A View from Japan. Bioethics, Vol. 16, pp. 412-424, 2002. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=324646
3. http://wikitravel.org/en/Izu_Oshima