Aokigahara – The Suicide Forest

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Happy Halloween boys and gores. To celebrate Samhain, how about a little ghost story? This is Aokigahara, also known as Jukai (the Sea of Trees). It is a dense forest set at the base of Mt. Fuji less then 100 miles from Tokyo, Japan. The beauty of the forest and of two caves there in particular have drawn wilderness lovers and explorers from all over the world for many, many years…but, there is another reason Aokigahara is well known to the outside world, one that has forever branded it as the “Suicide Forest”.

One of the first things a visitor to Aokigahara will notice is the silence. Despite the richness of the woods, it is eerily quiet. Very little wildlife is ever seen or heard here because the forest belongs to the dead.

As recent as the late nineteenth century, the people of japan practiced Ubasute, an ancient tradition in which the old and sick were brought into the forest to die of exposure or starvation. The isolation had made it a common place for one to come to end their own lives as well, although it seems that it didn’t become as popular until a book called Kuroi Jukai (The Black Sea of Trees) about a jilted lover committing suicide in the forest.

Just how popular a site? Well, 78 people killed themselves there in 2002. In 2003, 105 bodies were removed from the forest. In 2004, 108 people committed suicide. In 2010, 54 were recovered. Japanese authorities hate to release the official yearly tally of bodies out of fear of creating some kind of suicide competition, to see how many people can kill themselves there. Nobody knows just what it is that draws so many people here to kill themselves. It can’t just be a novel romanticizing the idea of suicide.

Some have speculated that it’s location is a “magic” spot like the Bermuda Triangle that just attracts depressed people to it. The most popular method is by hanging and drug overdose. The person will even go out and buy all brand new hiking boots and camping gear, head on out to the woods and go camping while they reflect on their life and their troubles before gaining the courage to go through with the deed. Possible suicides become apparent when cars have been in the parking lot for days on end, becoming covered in leaves.

It’s a big job trekking through the woods for these potential suicides so there are volunteers who regularly comb the forest looking for bodies. Signs have been placed around the entrances to the forest telling suicidal people to reconsider and to seek help. But it seems to be an unlikely deterrent as people who are in that mindset are not going to be swayed by a sign outside a forest.

The average suicide in Aokigahara is typically middle aged men. The reason for this is speculated that the culture and psychology of the Japanese put much pressure on both men and women to succeed and when they feel that they have failed, especially men who have wives and families, they have no other choice but to off themselves as a way to atone. Suicide is prevalent in Asian countries as an honorable alternative to living as a pariah. This practice goes back centuries in Japan with the Samurai practice of Seppuku.

The cold mists rolling along the paths, the litter and abandoned camps, the random noose still hanging from a moss-covered tree. It is a candidate for the most haunted place on the planet. If you believe in that sort of thing, that is. I prefer to take the side of science and look at things logically. I mean there’s no such thing as…wait, did you hear something?

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