Aokigahara: Suicide Forest at the Base of Mount Fuji, Japan

And now time for some spooky business...

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The Aokigahara forest in Japan lies northwest of Mt. Fuji, and is known as the second most popular place in the world for people to commit suicide (after San Fran's Golden Gate Bridge). The forest, quiet and dark due to high tree density, is described by travel writer Zack Davisson.

On another note, large iron deposits under the forest mean that standard compasses usually don't work in the forest. I can't figure out why we haven't seen an awesome Japanese horror flick about Aokigahara yet.

Since the year 2000, the number of bodies recovered from the forest climbed from 70+ up to around a hundred a year in the Aokigahara until the government decided to stop releasing the statistics. Aokigahara's long association with darkness and death seems to have been perpetuated with author Seicho Matsumoto's 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai (or "Sea of Trees") in which the forest is a suicide location.

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I found the following podcast, from culture and lifestyle website Studio 360, to be an excellent introduction to the modern culture and folklore regarding Aokigahara forest. There's so much more to this place than I have the space to write and you have the time to read, so if you're at all interested definitely take a listen. You can even download it to your ipod so you feel all smart on your morning bus ride (as a side note, I think this podcast shows the depth and mood that can be conveyed without images when someone knows what they're doing.)



There is also a short documentary about the forest available here. I haven't watched it (not sure if I will yet, I think it depicts some fairly recently deceased individuals and I just don't think I'm cool with that sort of thing for my own purposes...but that could be a whole blog post of its own!), but if you decide to take a look then let me know what you think.

Perhaps Aokigahara bodies would provide a deep look into something that I haven't encountered all that much in archaeology - the archaeology of suicides. I think that these peoples' choices of "grave goods", location, positioning, and method of suicide would speak volumes about them and their personal values. Additionally, I think (and this is totally just my opinion) that both the idea of the Aokigahara, as well as perhaps the bodies that archaeologists would find, speaks volumes about the society that the deceased come from. In a nation that has been subject to rapid globalization over the past century, it it interesting that this is the time period when Aokigahara really became what it is today - a place of pilgrimage for people who intend to end their lives.

That said, I still don't think I would feel right about sending troops of archaeologists into the Aokigahara. These are often very recently deceased people, who likely have living family members and friends. Additionally, I think things become sticky when archaeologists try to do work at sites that are still in use, as Aokigahara clearly is. This area seems to be much more than just a place where people commit suicide, it is a place where people commit suicide because other people committed suicide there. In my opinion it serves the same purpose as a church, graveyard, or other spiritual site. I would argue that it has made something as solitary as suicide into a community action. I don't mean this in the sense that people are doing it together, but in the sense that people are choosing this location to end their lives based on a shared cultural significance.

Aaaaaaanyway, I'm getting depressed and I think I'm going to go bake cupcakes with faces, or use some Hello Kitty motor oil, or do something else to remind me that the Japanese aren't only about horror films and death forests.