The 8th International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental Health,

June 19-23, 2016, National University of Singapore, Singapore

An Application of Indigenous Japanese Knowledge to

Family Survivors of Suicide: An Intervention Informed by
the Global Deinition of Social Work

Tomofumi Oka, PhD, Sophia University, Tokyo

Key Words

Email: t-oka@sophia.ac.jp

Global Definition of Social Work, Indigenous Knowledge, Family Survivors of Suicide, Self-Help Groups, Social Action, Grief, Bereavement Care,
Pathologisation, Western Scientific Colonialism and Hegemony, Buddhism

Summary

Our 2014 Global Definition of Social Work stresses the importance of indigenous knowledge for social
work practice. However, in their practice few Japanese social workers recognize the significance of
indigenous knowledge. Although most Japanese do not fit the criteria of an indigenous people, due to the
hegemony of Western culture in social work scholarship, Japanese social workers need to review their
local knowledge. This presentation outlines my experiences of working with Japanese family survivors of
suicide as a social worker and describes an application of indigenous knowledge to social work with family
survivors. Due to the increasing numbers of suicides in Japan, the government recently began providing

Background

Cultural Lens
Pathological

Many of the interactions in front of the Buddha

altar are continuations of the bond that was there
before the person died. (Klass, 1996, p. 66)
Maintaining bonds to ancestors remains an
important element in Japanese society. Cultural
differences create very different ways of
experiencing and managing the thoughts and
emotions with which humans respond to
significant deaths. We do not find the idea of grief
as an internal state or process in Japan. Rather,
emotions are an element of social harmony in a
culture that values dependence rather than
autonomy. (Klass, 2001, p. 760, emphasis added)

Psychologism
Pathologisation of grief
Pop psychology

References

Klass, D. (1996). Grief in an Eastern Culture: Japanese Ancestor Worship. In D. Klass, P. R. Silverman,
& S. L. Nickman (Eds.), Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief (pp. 59-70). Washington, DC:
Taylor & Francis.
Klass, D. (2001). Continuing bonds in the resolution of grief in Japan and North America. American
Behavioral Scientist, 44(5), 742-63.
Stroebe, M., Gergen, M. M., Gergen, K. J., & Stroebe, W. (1992). Broken hearts or broken bonds: Love
and death in historical perspective. American Psychologist, 47(10), 1205-1212.

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Self-Help Groups for

Family Survivors

Conlicts over
Legitimacy

The grief care services, being subsidised by local

governments, promote the resolution of grief,
which is foreign to Japanese culture and
traditional spirituality, which is based on
Buddhism and ancestor worship. The grief work
ideology of the grief-care organisations considers
that family survivors who maintain bonds with the
deceased might be acting pathologically. Their
focus on psychology (and often spirituality)
renders the social issues faced by survivors
invisible. Social workers, following the Global
Definition of Social Work, can contribute to the
empowerment and liberation of family survivors
by stressing the significance of their indigenous
knowledge about coping with tragic events such
as a loved ones suicide and by addressing the
social issues that affect the survivors..

Japanese Buddhism

Principles of grief counseling and therapy follow the view that, in the course of time,
bereaved persons need to break their ties with the deceased, give up their attachments,
form a new identity of which the departed person has no part, and reinvest in other
relationships. People who persist in retaining a bond with their deceased loved one are in
need of counseling or therapy. . . . In sharp contrast with Western conventions, the
maintenance of ties with the deceased is accepted and sustained by the religious rituals of
Japan. . . . Offering food at the altar of a loved one would be classified as pathological by
most Westerners, who would fear that the bereaved was fixated in the grief process and
had failed to relinquish the tie to the deceased. However, in the Japanese case, such
practices are fully normal. (Stroebe, et al., 1992, pp. 1206-07, emphasis added)

Grief Care Service

Organisations

In September of 2008 two leaders of

Japanese self-help groups for family
survivors of suicide visited my university
office and asked me to work with them to help
legitimise their self-help groups and to deny
the applicability of the grief work hypothesis to
their situation. I had never met them but I was
known as being an expert on self-help groups.
While researching the effectiveness of grief
care services was beyond my area of expertise,
I agreed that I articulate their alternative
ideology on grief in contrast to grief care
services. I conducted ethnographic interviews
with self-help group members and observed
some of their activities (not including their
sharing sessions that are exclusive to
survivors), and determined the validity of my
interpretations by member checking.

Normal

Grief Work Hypothesis

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Methodology

Results and Discussion

Bonds with the Deceased

Lin

Due to an increasing number of suicide victims in

Japan, the Government enacted the Basic Act on
Suicide Prevention in 2006. The new law treats
family survivors of suicide as people at risk of
suicide themselves, and local governments are
obliged to offer a psychological support service to
them. Because local governments had very few
employees skilled in bereavement care, they
started to outsource such services to non-profit
organisations or asked those organisations to train
government employees.
However, many of these non-profit
organisations have only a few professionally
trained psychologists and are staffed mostly by
amateurs who promote simplified theories of
psychology (pop psychology) and forms of
spirituality. The grief work hypothesis and
Kbler-Ross model (the five-stage model of
recovery from grief) and variations of these are
common features of their services.
Owing to the new law, family survivors of
suicide, who had been very isolated, had the
opportunity to meet with each other but some
have grown disappointed by the services based on
the grief work hypothesis. These survivors have
started their own self-help groups that do not
involve any non-survivors. These self-help groups
have come into conflict with the non-profit
organisations, which claim that any support
service lacking the involvement of experts can be
harmful to survivors. These organisations compete
with self-help groups as to the legitimacy of
support available for family survivors of suicide.

bereavement care for victims families through subsidized professionals and volunteers. However, because
their treatment models are mainly based on the grief work hypothesis, which leads to the severing of the
relationship between victims and survivors, and because therapists consequently tend to pathologize
families ongoing relationships with victims and their accompanying sorrow, bereaved locals, who follow
the traditional Buddhist practice of living with the deceased in their everyday lives, feel disempowered.
Social workers sensitive to survivors beliefs can empower survivors by assuring them that their ways of
grieving are not pathological but normal.

Today 51 self-help groups are operated by members of the National

Association of Family Survivors of Suicide in Japan. They are independent
of non-survivors and the Association has about 3,000 members.

Social Workers

Social Issues

Family survivors of suicide suffer from, or are

concerned with, various social issues: the social
stigma of suicide; compensation for financial loss
caused by a suicide; over-work or bullying in
workplaces or schools; and prescription drug
overdosing.

The Global Definition of the Social Work Profession

Social work is a practice-based profession and an
academic discipline that promotes social change and
development, social cohesion, and the empowerment
and liberation of people. Principles of social justice,
human rights, collective responsibility and respect for
diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by
theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and
indigenous knowledge, social work engages people and
structures to address life challenges and enhance
wellbeing. (emphasis added)

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) # 16K04184 from the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science. We would like to acknowledge and give thanks to The National Association of
Family Survivors of Suicide (Zenkoku Jishi Izoku Renrakukai) for cooperating with my research.