"DON’T DIE OF LOVE!”

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 26

"DON’T DIE OF LOVE!”

JAPAN MEETS SUICIDE WAVE Tho Japanese authorities are attempting to check tho appalling devastations wrought by the prevalence of love suicides, and have recently undertaken an intensive campaign of propaganda. This campaign takes the odd form of _ propaganda films and of posters, whicli are paraded through the streets and stuck on walls in public places, with such inspiring adjurations rw “ Don’t die of love!” Until now these efforts have been without any effect, and now that spring has come, when the young man’s fancy proverbially turns to thoughts of love, it is expected that the toll of deaths will be even greater. This extraordinary state of affairs arises from numerous causes. There is first the “ Kazoku soldo,” s kind of family system, which oven to-day is customary among a great number of the Japanese. _ “ Kazoku seido ” forbids tho free choice of a husband or wife, and its tradition imposes that the heads of the family should choose the husband or wife for the aspiring adolescent. A marriage which is childless is annulled after some time, according to the “ Kazoku seido,” even when tho couple happen to lovo one another dearly. This means often a great deal of unhappiness, which, with the emotional Japanese, leads to suicide pacts. In a little town in tho interior of Japan, Myanoshita, there is a celebrated Lovers’ Leap, a high waterfall, which annually receives numbers of lovers into its embrace. Tho Japanese family system recognises only those in the direct line or in tho nest direct line. If a wife is chosen for the eldest sou of a family the young married man remains in tho house of his family, tho young wife takes his family name, and lives in the house of her parents-in-law. One can but assume from this that one’s relations acquired by marriage in Japan arc of a more amenable disposition than is proverbially the case iu the Western World. Although the sexes in Japan were, at any rate formerly, absolutely segregated before they married, so that often the “ zukue ” brides and bridegrooms had never seen one another before their marriage, it happened now and again that they met and fell in love. If a union after the “ Kazoku seido ” was impossible, then nothing remained for then? but to take their lives, a form of suicide which the Japanese call “Shinjn.” The strict old customs have naturally been mitigated by the inroads of Westernisation. For although it is nothing unusual to us that anyone should take his life for love, the imagination ol the Japanese may easily be swayed by emotional experiences, and more readily warped by things calculated to deform the mind like the average run of present-day films. In a word, the Japanese is more spiritual. It is the opinion of the Japanese Government, based on careful and exhaustive inquiry, that the present epidemic of “ Shinju ” is directly attributable to the flood of American films recently loosened on the Japanese, who

have, it appears been in general as strongly influenced by tho cinema as are children below a certain ago with us. Attempts have been made to check the import of films by higher duties. The censor has deleted all scenes dealing with passion and jealousy, and the Japanese have even made their own films with morals pointing to the horror of the things which Hollywoodholds out as tempting plums of diversion to the rest of the world.