University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM UVM Honors College Senior Theses Undergraduate Theses 2014 The orP trayal of Suicide in Postmodern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture Media Pedro M. Teixeira Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses Recommended Citation Teixeira, Pedro M., "The orP trayal of Suicide in Postmodern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture Media" (2014). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 15. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/15 This Honors College Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in UVM Honors College Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE PORTRAYAL OF SUICIDE IN POSTMODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE MEDIA Pedro Manço Teixeira Honors Thesis Final Draft, Spring 2014 Thesis Advisor: Kyle Keoni Ikeda INTRODUCTION Within Japanese society, suicide has been a recurring cultural and social concern explored extensively in various literary and artistic forms, and has evolved into a serious societal epidemic by the end of the 20 th century. This project investigates contemporary Japan’s suicide epidemic through an analysis of the portrayal of suicide in post-1970s Japanese literature, films, and popular culture media of manga 1 and anime 2, and in comparison to empirical data on suicide in Japan as presented in peer-reviewed psychology articles. In the analysis of these contemporary works, particular attention was given to their targeted demographic, the profiles of the suicide victims in the stories, the justifications for suicide, and the relevance of suicide to the plot of each work.