It is not often you are confronted in real life by what is virtually symbolic imagery. I’m sure I’m not alone in having witnessed death on a variety of scales. In my own case, I’ve seen the devastation of an entire city during the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake, where 6,500 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were left injured and homeless from the devastation. I’ve also, courtesy of living in Japan, seen a man leap to his death on a train platform, which I must admit is far more creepy than anything else I can imagine seeing. And of course like others I’m sure that I’ve seen my fair share of odd videos online of people dying in horrific ways and whatnot, from people leaping to their deaths from the burning Twin Towers to Saddam Hussein being hung. I’m someone who is rarely affected for very long, and I am sure many other horror fans are equally hardened by the sheer quantity of fake blood and gore that we witness on screen so often, that somewhere along the way we’ve lost a bit of that true ‘respect’ for the acts of violence and what they mean. Obviously it varies to different degrees, some are still reasonably squeamish whilst others are not. But there is still, I am almost morbidly delighted to say, a part of me that still knows that whilst graphic violence need not affect me, a sense of tragedy does. And I was confronted by this very real tragedy the other day in the most unusual way. I only recently returned from a trip to Japan to get some dental surgery done and visit my family. It was whilst I was travelling in Tokyo that this odd sense of tragedy struck me. I was heading for dinner with my sister, having just been to see our dad at the hospital. We decided that rather than pay for a pricey cab we would go down to the subway and just take the train to Iidabashi and get the train to Akihabara. As we emerged from the subway and went towards the stairs up to the JR lines, we were greeted by a site that profoundly altered both our moods, and which reminded us somehow of the tragic state of affairs in the world. In one corner, was a pair of perfectly lined up mens shoes on a small hankerchief, pointing with their toes toward the wall. My sister, Ophelia, said that was random. I then had to remind her just why they were there and why actually it was one of the sad things you could see in life.

In Japan, being employed and staying with a company is one of those noble things to do, to not quit or to keep jumping ship. Many executives are there simply through persistant dedication to a company, it is a matter of social pride and societal pressures. Often when a man is fired or let go, especially during an economic crisis such as the one we are currently facing, he thinks his only recourse is to commit suicide. Long gone are the days when this was a true ritual that involved friends and family, but still present is this pride of not being able to live down a shame upon oneself or ones family, and though the ritual self-disembowelment died with Yukio Mishima, there is still a fairly ritualistic way of doing things. Most common now is the suicide by throwing oneself off a building or onto train tracks. The latter has become one of the more published phenomenon in modern times.

Japanese train companies have in fact instuted a number of measures to make sure that ritual suicide by train is not prevalent, going as far as playing bird calls and other natural noises on frequently affected platforms and train lines, which is intended to soothe and remind potential jumpers of the brilliance of life. Equally true, more and more high-speed trains have an aggressive horn on them which they can sound off, which often startles a person away from the train. In addition to this, the JR line has instuted a system of fines whereby anyone who jumps into the path of a train, thus causing fairly substantial delays, will be fined posthumously and the family will have to foot the often very substantial bill. Considering the complexity of Tokyo’s railways it is no surprise to find a 10 minute delay capable of costing a million yen. It is a problem, and it is also a tragic symptom of the times.

Getting back to the image I was presented with, Ophelia and I saw these perfectly lined up shoes, and I was reminded of the fact that Japanese people quite often remove their shoes and line them up before committing suicide. Especially true of people jumping from the top of buildings, even in the case of train suicides there are often pairs of shoes found somewhere in the station or on the platform. It is a heavy and sad reminder of a tragic end to someones life. It made me more saddened than when one sees tragedy first hand, as one is abstracted from the graphic horror of it and is submerged into the psychological and emotional drama of it all, something which it seems still can affect even the most seemingly unaffected people. I personally found this to be one of those moments in life where a symbolic image somehow trumped the supposedly more ‘real’ images and graphic viewings that films, news organizations, and even real life tragedy could somehow afford me. It is an image which somehow symbolically encapsulates a social problem and a personal disaster for some poor person. I thought it only right to share such an experience, and to remind everyone that sometimes we are affected by the strangest things, but it’s nice to feel human too.