The Kabuki Effect (IN: Suicide and the Creative Arts, edited by S Stack & D Lester)

The phenomenon in which a creative work provokes a number of people to die by suicide is commonly known as the Werther Effect, in recognition of imitative suicides said to have been induced by the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (1774). This chapter examines a Japanese suicide epidemic in the early 1700s that was associated with kabuki plays. A possible epidemic that happened after the publication of Weininger’s dissertation “Sex and Character” is also discussed. (7 refs.)