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Abstract
SUSAN
ORPETT LONG
Becoming a Cucumber: Culture, Nature, and the Good Death
in Japan and the United States
Interview
responses of patients, family members, and health care professionals and
observations in health care settings in Japan and the United States are
analyzed to better understand ideas that define a good death. This
article compares how Americans and Japanese classify causes of death, the
timing and place of dying, and questions of pain and burden. Although
people in both countries define a good death in broadly similar ways,
their metaphors are derived from culturally constructed views of “nature”
and of what it means to be human. Such notions do not determine how
people actually die, but are the lens through which people interpret their
own dying and that of others.
Volume 29, Number
1 (Winter 2003)
© 2003 Society for Japanese Studies
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