(..)For this, I find Georgio Agamben’s distinction between bios and zo∑ useful. Agamben states: The Greeks had no single term to express what we mean by the word “life.” . . .: zo∑, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings . . . and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group.26
In this understanding, only those that have a political existence, or membership if you like, of a proper society, have life—bios. Thus, bios exists among citizens of polis, not among slaves. The same principle, it should be added emphatically, applies to death. For a life or a death to be socially meaningful, the human that bears (executes or fulfills) it needs to be a politico-civic being, whose membership of a society is both accountable and recognizable.

(Sonia Ryang "Love in Modern Japan: Its Estrangement from Self, Sex and Society")