I've lived in Japan for almost a decade and heard about these "cheap suicide apartments" exclusively from foreigners or Japanese people who "learned" about it from foreigners; whenever I looked around for Japanese sites for this kind of thing, the "discounted rent" would be the same or around $5 to $40 cheaper per month, well within the normal variation for apartments in the same building (due to facilities, size, shape, location, time since renovation, etc.).

Additionally, the "cited" articles talk about the extortionate practices of individual landlords who seem to be taking advantage of the families' grief to send them through the wringer for more money, rather than "cheap suicide apartments."

The real story here is the minority of shady landlords who indulge in those practices -- no doubt they would also be the ones who keep your deposit and additionally try to charge thousands of dollars for "cleaning" fees after you move out. This kind of scum exists in every country.

Can families that fight back recoup legal costs potentially getting a judgement against some or all of the landlord's property?

The post raises more questions than answers. Seems like a "proper" legal system should deal with this soon enough without any extra legislation. Granted it's Japan.

It is highly likely that the parents were "guarantors" (保証人) for their children, which is standard practice here. This is similar to the US concept of co-signing. Also, socially speaking, "my adult child caused trouble for you implies I have a responsibility to you" is something that more than 90% of Japanese people would strongly agree to.

I know that in feudal Japan personhood effectively didn't exist in the form that it does today. You were part of a clan, if you killed someone and died in the process the clan of that someone could extract revenge on your clan. They were the actor, not you.

I understand that much of this survives today in the form of shaming, you don't just bring shame to yourself, but to your family (clan).

But is there actually any legal system in Japan that treats a family or clan as a collective? Can the liabilities of adults that kill themselves be transferred to their family?

If family members aren't guarantors, then there's technically no legal ground for landlords to sue the family members. But just being sued is a big stigma in Japan. If the family member has certain social position there's a strong incentive to avoid being sued, or to settle it asap if they are actually sued.

And it's shameful to be sued but not shameful to file obviously frivolous lawsuits, or at the very least being the subject of a frivolous lawsuit would imply no shaming?

Note that I'm not sure what the actual contract terms were in those cases in the article. I suspect it's a guarantor thing. It's very very common to have parents or relatives signed, even if you're an adult.

And I also assume that who actually filed a lawsuit was the property managing company, and some of those companies doesn't care much about reputation. When the issue is between individuals, it's not as common to take it to the court as in US.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1khj2n/til_i...

So I can definitely see how this makes perfect sense when it comes to doing "damage" to apartments (even if only due to reputation / superstition) if there are direct guarantors, but as the news about JR show there must be something deeper going on here.

It is standard practice in Japan, and works pretty well. There is the implicit belief that you have to respect others first."You" is not you as individual, but includes "your social group", your family, your boss, your company.

In the US they can sue you for all kinds of stupid reasons and ask you millions(if you have them).

In the US it is about the individual first, you and only you.

It is the US the one who is different. Most of the world operates under a mixture of social responsibility for your actions and personal responsibility.

And, of course, as the article identifies, you have families who do not fight it, in which case no legal justification is necessary.

So they can sue the estate, but they can't sue the family. They have no claim on assets that are not part of the estate.

Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/10/our-lives/b...

This way, families can grieve in peace and the landlords can't bully their way to get "repairs" done.

I would probably seek them out, as they seem to be much cheaper.

Not only would you have to believe in ghosts, but some of these apartments are in cities that were firebombed by the US in living memory, you'd have to believe in ghosts that couldn't move around and were local to specific apartments to care about this more than "were there firebombings in this area?" or "was this house constructed before WWII?".

In the instance of cremation, you are saying goodbye to a person and not using them as a means to an end, it is a form of respect. The individual isn't commodified on a practical level (though the funeral industry has something to say about that).

I have a feeling people are only unconcerned about ex-urine water because they are unaware and trying to improve awareness is not likely to help.

Because the earth is no longer remotely close to where the person died, not around the sun, not in the solar system, and given the universe is constantly expanding, millions of miles from where they died.

So somehow ghosts are both non-corporeal yet affected by gravity.

So you think ghosts have mass? Or rather near zero mass?

Because it takes massive amounts of gravity to affect photons, you won't see the gravity of earth keeping photons in place like say a person.

But anything with near zero mass like a photon pretty much ignores anything but massive amounts of gravity.

I can respect big foot hunters, they believe in him and thus devote their time to finding him. I can't on the other hand understand some friends of mine who thought, again casually, that there were dinosaurs in Africa. If I thought that I'd be looking for them right now.

Over time, though, I've talked to and read about people who view ghosts much in the same way that they view living people. Mostly benign, but possibly harmful if you piss them off. So people live in homes where they believe that there's a ghost around, but they don't mind. They chat with them, etc.

I come from an evangelical Christian background, so this mindset was really surprising to me.

How many people want to be reminded of that every time they come home, or when they see their family resting or playing in their apartment, or when guests come over and the subject of their apartment comes up, or when they just reminisce about its history?

Many people actually know someone who's committed suicide themselves. How many of them want to be constantly reminded of that?

Such reluctance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with believing in ghosts.

On the other hand, there is something known as the "contagion heuristic"[1], which is "a psychological heuristic leading people to avoid contact with people or objects viewed as "contaminated" by previous contact with someone or something viewed as bad". There's also the "law of contagion"[2] which is "a folk belief axiom found in magical thinking which suggests that, once two people or objects have been in contact, a magical link persists between them"

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_heuristic

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_contagion

Using such a view, past deaths on the same land in a different configuration are less "ghosty" as they no longer share as much in common with the suspect environment.

But by that argument, the landlord and/or builder should be paying up for their negligent design!

  $ ping localghost

    ping: cannot resolve localghost: Unknown ghost

If I lived in one, would that have significant negative impact on my social life? Loss of status? Prejudices transfering to me as the tenant? People avoiding contact? Would it be unproblematic to invite people over?

A superstitious person's plight is another person's delight.

And given how old civilization is, I bet someone probably died within 1000 feet of where you live right now.

Certainly hundreds of animals have died around you for sure, many within your lifetime.

In fact you probably ate a dead creature today.

WTF is with people and "ghosts" ?

It's weird to me how so many people's approach to mythbusting is "if ghosts were real, they would behave according to this set of rules I just made up, and they clearly don't, therefore ghosts aren't real." A much better argument would be "There is no evidence whatsoever of ghosts existing, therefore ghosts aren't real." There's no need to try to define ghosts as elementary particles or whatever.

Unless you live at the top of a tall skyscraper. Civilization is old, but people living in mid-air isn't!

And they all forget to count ghosts from microorganisms and insects.

Also bear in mind that, if one believes in reincarnation and animism, "ghosts" on earth may be considered a special case, when the expectation is that most spirits rejoin the karmic cycle (or whatever.)

Any Japanese people here to comment on this specific point that there are "exorcists" who dedicate their time and effort for this economic activity and that's well established phenomenon there?

Eh, I think it's a different perspective. Simplifying things greatly, Japanese society is a collective one, and one could argue that suicide is a selfish decision that damages the collective by removing any possible utility you may be giving it for the sake of yourself. As even small transgressions of this nature are frowned upon in Japanese culture, it's not surprising to me that the bigger transgressions have these reactions.

$0.

But that was an interesting read.