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>The tradition of lovers ending their lives together, called shinjū

Lover suicides we're not a tradition.

Wiki suggests otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjū
The only instance of tradition on that page says it is contained within plays and literature. This is different than saying that the actual act itself, in real life, was a tradition.
The reasonable thing to do is look up the ja.wiki

Here's one citation (14-15 double suicides a year Taisho era in some fashionable district)

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14094/0100275627

I agree that suicide ideation is not exactly prosocial, but I think being tolerant of misinformation is a worse look on HN?

I never heard of it before today so know nothing about it. Wikipedia has an extensive discussion of it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinj%C5%AB.

Is this page false with bad references maybe, or was it just a literary tradition and not happening in the real world?

There is a difference between something happening in the real world and it being a tradition.
Erm?

You should be made aware of the fact that unspeakable horror, Japan is more awesome and actually great and traditional.

Double suicides happen all the time around the world and are extensively documented in literature (Romeo and Juliet being the prototypical example). That doesn't mean it is a "tradition".
TL;DR: The author of a popular serialized murder mystery story was always late to deliver installments. Eventually, the publisher figured out a plane flight of his, and had him arrested, to make a point. TFA draws a tenuous parallel between the story's transportation-schedule detective work, and this tracking down of its author.

I skimmed TFA over dinner, and was thrown by how it was going on, and by this paragraph:

> They also knew Matsumoto loved railway timetables. Coordinating local and long-distance travel for millions of people is a logistical marvel, and Matsumoto found the tables fascinating. Plus, he was a stickler for hands-on research.

I thought TFA might reveal that the murder mystery author researched the story by riding the train, and offing a hapless couple, but was implicated because that caused him to miss a manuscript deadline, hence why he was arrested.

The title screams of LLM. For some reason LLMs love `manuscript`
Because 'manuscript' means hand-written. LLMs think if they write it enough times, it'll become true. Then they'll grow hands and then not only will RAM be in short supply but keyboards too.
I would love to read this article.

I did not read this article.