Role of Suicide in Bullying Student suicides in Japan can be conceptualized in terms of Durkheim’s (1951) theory of both altruistic and fatalistic suicides. Shikagawa wrote, “I don’t want to die yet, but this is living hell. I am going to kill myself, but I don’t want somebody else to become the victim after I die or the whole thing would be meaningless. Please stop this stupidity; that is my dying wish” (Nishiyama: 1996: 52). Stories such as Shikagawa’s reveal clearly that discrimination or victimization has nothing to do with race, sex, or ethnicity. It is rather a manifestation or a consequence of struggle for power and competition for scarce resources. A homogeneous society like Japan is not any more immune than the United States to power games particularly by individuals who in their pursuit of domination and control show little tolerance for anything that they may perceive as different.