Japanese Suicide Apartments

Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by avar on Saturday December 12, 2015 @04:37PM (#10724260)

I'd also really like an answer to this. I've read a few articles about the subject that allude to there being such a thing as "clan liability" in Japan but they've never actually gone into any detail on the subject.

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?

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Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by shiro on Saturday December 12, 2015 @05:09PM (#10724355)

As patio11 mentioned in the sibling response, it is likely that family members had signed as guarantors. It is very common that the landlord demands that, even for short-term lease.

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.

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Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by avar on Sunday December 13, 2015 @02:08AM (#10725662)

This just raises more questions. If the transfer of liability to family members isn't a thing wouldn't this just be thrown out at first hearing as a frivolous lawsuit?

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?

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Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by shiro on Sunday December 13, 2015 @02:33AM (#10725697)

Assuming the family members aren't a guarantor, I think it's highly likely that they can win if they go to the court. But even if they're not liable legally, they tend to feel morally responsible and reluctant to fight in court.

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.

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Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by avar on Sunday December 13, 2015 @04:34AM (#10725896)

Right, for direct guarantors it makes sense. But there's also occasionally news from Japan of "Japan Rail [..] charg[ing] families of suicide victims more than US $2 million" e.g. covered in this reddit thread:

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.

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Re:Japanese Suicide Apartments by shiro on Sunday December 13, 2015 @02:22PM (#10727500)

I dug a bit. The legal ground of charging families of victim is this: When a person dies, his legal heir inherits all the rights and duties associated to his property (NOT his property itself. Civil Code, article 896.) The company asks damages from the deceased's property, which is a duty to be fulfilled by whoever inherited the property. In case the family members declared to abandon inheritance when the victim deceased, however, they are not liable.

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