Suicide by train

Transcript

The other night I had to wait more than half an hour to catch a train back home from Kyoto, and the train that I took was packed. JR train service had been interrupted because there had been an accident at Tachibana Station between Kobe and Osaka.

Actually, it was not an accident—it was a suicide. At Tachibana Station a man had jumped in front of a JR Express commuter train. He killed himself instantly, of course, as body parts and blood splattered all over the place. Fortunately, nobody else was hurt, even though that train was carrying about 700 passengers.

Suicide by train is an exceptionally selfish and violent act that distresses tens of thousands of people. The other night at least 90,000 people had trouble getting home because of the desperate selfishness of one man, and he conveniently avoided responsibility by murdering himself. I have no sympathy or respect for a person who would escape from his troubles by throwing himself in front of a train full of passengers.

But I do feel sorry for the man's family. Now they face the sorrow of having lost a loved one tragically, and they have to pay JR for repairs and cleaning. Beyond the sorrow and the expenses, though, they have to live with the stigma of being related to a man whose violent selfishness distressed nearly a hundred thousand innocent people. That might be hard to take.