It isn't like me to post something creepy and sad with pretty much no hint of "cool" or "funny." But this is bizarrely riveting, and, initially, scary enough to make "The Blair Witch Project" look like the silly little joke that it is. As the clip's info explains: "The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan. After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year."
Yikes.
So. These are two segments of a short Japanese TV documentary, each about 10 minutes. (Warning: not highly graphic, but certainly disturbing content.)
When I watched the first section -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CK1KdAha78
- I was mostly just creeped out.
But after moving on and watching the second section -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1eXOXYI3bc
- I settled down to a general sadness, and a great fondness for the kindly geologist with this strange and vital job of sweeping the forest to prevent suicides when he can, and find the ones he couldn't prevent.
Since we're on the subject, I'd like to share the wise words of Ed Chigliak from "Northern Exposure":
"Suicide's not the Indian way. Don't go where you're not invited. Know what I mean?"
A good rule. Make it yours too, my friends.
Edit: For further reading, this blogger traveled to Aokigahara and wrote a detailed account of his journey, complete with some photos and videos. A very chilling and sobering place indeed, and a brave traveler.
Yikes.
So. These are two segments of a short Japanese TV documentary, each about 10 minutes. (Warning: not highly graphic, but certainly disturbing content.)
When I watched the first section -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CK1KdAha78
- I was mostly just creeped out.
But after moving on and watching the second section -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1eXOXYI3bc
- I settled down to a general sadness, and a great fondness for the kindly geologist with this strange and vital job of sweeping the forest to prevent suicides when he can, and find the ones he couldn't prevent.
Since we're on the subject, I'd like to share the wise words of Ed Chigliak from "Northern Exposure":
"Suicide's not the Indian way. Don't go where you're not invited. Know what I mean?"
A good rule. Make it yours too, my friends.
Edit: For further reading, this blogger traveled to Aokigahara and wrote a detailed account of his journey, complete with some photos and videos. A very chilling and sobering place indeed, and a brave traveler.
Page Summary
travels_in_time : (no subject) [+1] - shusu : (no subject) [+0]
- teenybuffalo : (no subject) [+3]
- (Anonymous) : Aokigahara [+1]
- (Anonymous) : update [+0]
Comments
I like it because it conveys the sense of sorrow and loss, the waste of time that was gifted to the person, all the things that they could have been and weren't; but it never doubts that they will, indeed, be back in the Presence.
Ah, powerful quote. I agree with it, and yeah, I never liked the idea of assigning suicides straight to hell (whether or not one believes in the existence of hell). That doesn't seem fair, for although suicide is definitely a bad policy, it's an act that calls for some compassion.
Everything in these documentary snippets breathes of otherworldliness to me. I am a huge pushover for the trope of the forest that is the bridge between this world and the afterlife/Otherworld (the Narnia books, the dark wood in the Divine Comedy, the cedar forest of Humbaba in the Epic of Gilgamesh) and this is more unsettling than any of those places.
Every single detail is so much like a ghost story writer's invention that you couldn't put it in fiction without people saying, "Oh come now, surely that wouldn't happen?" The crucified doll, the strips of plastic tape leading off into the woods, the nooses dangling from the trees. The sheer fact that the place exists at all. Even allowing for sensationalism on the part of the documentary makers, it's pretty extreme.
I may have to link to these myself, with the same warnings, of course.
And yeah, the mythology fan and spooky-story-writer in me couldn't help thinking, "The forest is making them do it!!" But that isn't true, of course; and the truth is much sadder and more disturbing.
As I was remarking to someone on Facebook, I've sensed beautiful nature's flip side of uncaring death before, and have marveled at it before (deep, dense, gorgeous forests in which you could get lost and starve are a great example), but this is the first I've heard of an actual freaking suicide forest. Yikes. I hope that particular activity loses its popularity there, to be replaced by something healthier like, I don't know, hiking.
It's like the physical-location equivalent of "Gloomy Sunday", which became known as the Suicide Song because of a legend that people who listened to it would become suicidal. I think that became a self-fulfilling prophecy, where people would seek it out before killing themselves.
You know the little calculating part of a writer's brain which stands back, even from the most horrible events, and goes, "I could use this in a story"? That's happening to me; I'm looking at all that atmosphere and thinking about stories I could set in the suicide forest. It's a cold-blooded thing but that's what's running through my mind.
http://endofthegame.net/2012/02/20/aokigahara/