Does it really? Do you feel the same way about western society and, say, duels to the death? The many old practices regarding marriage and the church all around?
I don't think suicide as an honorable death is any more of a real thing in Japan nowadays than ninjas are.
Yes, I would. Such societal norms don't just die, they remain in the "ether" so to speak.
For example, americans might not be as religious, or sticking with the church. They might not even be born in the US, or just be first or second generation. But the culture, and this includes immigrants as they integrate, contains all kinds of protestant ideas.
And it's easier for something like a suicide norm to survice that a practice of the duel (which takes two to survice, plus has the law against it, even if you come out alive).
Maybe not so nowadays, but you'd be surprised how often it was a solution to societal shame in Italy up to the 1950s or so...
Considering how common a form of retribution gun violence is in the US nowadays, yes, I'd say yes.
Could there be a case to be made in comparing American school shooters and Japanese student suicides? Maybe we'd find they had similar school experiences prior to their final moments.
The 'suicide for preserving honor' theory has been long abandoned & mostly outlawed, even. No one in the modern generation thinks that way. The causes for suicide are mostly due to economic imbalance & high credit/ loans/ failed businesses (sadly). Children have easy access to credit cards from family, and rack up huge debts by indulging in things as part of peer pressure. I saw several case studies highlighting this when I was part of influencer marketing business.
Ritual suicide was done by seppuku - slashing out your guts, as a final act of bravery. No one does anything remotely similar.
You can’t purge a cultural heritage—everyone in Japan learns Japanese history and ritual suicide is a notable part of that history. The point is not that people commit suicide today for the same reasons or in the same way that they did 500 years ago, but that it is more likely to be accepted as a way out than in a culture that e.g. considers suicide to be a one-way ticket to the spiritual inferno.
Not sure where you get this idea, but this is grossly inaccurate.
Japanese culture is strongly revisionist. People don't talk about the war, much less teach about it. The 'old ways' and 'samurai heroism' was faulted for the mess in '40s. People make a sigh whenever such touchy topics come up. New Japan is a different beast.
As a consequence, we are seeing a generation which is severely confused on why WW2 happened. American pop culture is embraced with open arms, but they can't explain why Hiroshima happened at the hands of US. It's all faulted to grave mistakes on the 'old thinking' which is best left behind. Japan adopted modernism & became America's best buddies, ignoring the blemishes over 3 decades of Imperial japanese horrors. Older generation, who used to teach from experience of pre-war and neo-modern Japan, are dying off due to age. A significant chapter of history is being ignored by looking the other way. Look up the editorials of any Japanese weekly, and on any random week you will find some discussion on how they bemoan the growing dissonance between the post-war values of peace & the cultural change alongside the pseudo-aggression of some political parties, which eventually aims to remilitarize Japan at some point. (That's a story for another time or another thread)
Reinforcing your comment, the fallacy here is in assuming that the factors affecting suicide rates among Western children are identical to the factors for Japanese children, and therefore bullying in Japan must be particularly atrocious to cause the high baseline suicide rate.