Aokigahara, the suicide forest in Japan.

Gonzalez

Gonzalez

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
They have found over 500 bodies since the 50's, lately it has increased to almost 100 bodies from suicides each year. This is the forest where people come to die.



A forest guard on suicide watch, he makes some really valid critiques about today's society, and explains that this kind of suicide is a modern pehnomenom.

EDIT:

After seeing the first video watching the next one is particularly sad. What whould have happened to her?

 
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I've read about this. Such a weird place. I wonder if there are any other places like it elsewhere? If I ever kill myself I want to do it there. :look:
 
I have also read a little bit about this forest, and watched a vidoe at one point - it may have been a VICE video on it. They interviewed one forest guard on suicide watch, and he regaled the interviewer with different stories of him finding bodies.

This may sound funny, but I'd like to visit the place - not in the hopes of seeing bodies or anything of that nature, I just feel it would be a very...hmm, for lack of better words I will say energy laden spot, though that doesn't quite get across what I mean.
 
Dirk Magirk said:
I have also read a little bit about this forest, and watched a vidoe at one point - it may have been a VICE video on it. They interviewed one forest guard on suicide watch, and he regaled the interviewer with different stories of him finding bodies.

This may sound funny, but I'd like to visit the place - not in the hopes of seeing bodies or anything of that nature, I just feel it would be a very...hmm, for lack of better words I will say energy laden spot, though that doesn't quite get across what I mean.
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I know what you mean. I was thinking the same thing.
 
Wtf? How could that guy have just LEFT her? She was in those woods for a reason. Maybe he could have saved a life that day. Now we'll never know.
 
That's the way it is in Japan. They've grown to become a social avoidance culture. As the first video mentioned, the generations are increasingly detached from normal human interaction, and there are unusual modern phenomenon that are either unique to Japan or just more prevalent there than anywhere else. The Japanese Shinkansen (bullet train) Groping genre of porn isn't mere fantasy but a very real public phenomenon, because people would rather avoid acknowledging rape in a public place than make some form of human social contact. It's not that far removed from a guy with a camera in a known suicide hotspot catching sight of some woman alone and wandering off in the restricted area to simply decide not to say anything and just walk away.

South Park makes mention of the unusually high suicide statistics in Japan many times. Many anime focus on these as their subject matter. One series very dear to my heart, N.H.K. ni Youkoso! (Welcome to the N.H.K.!) revolves very intimately around the subject matter of individuals unable to cope with their surroundings and resort to suicide in a variety of ways, though it ends on very affirming lessons. While much of the story focused on the main character overcoming his social phobias through some form of therapy and counseling treatment, in the end he no-nonsense narrated that the true solution to his problem was wanting to live and not being provided for; that if he didn't want to starve he would have to overcome his fears and venture into the world. In the final episode, a suicide hotspot was adorned with those same signs urging people to turn back as shown in that video above. As the video also pointed out, though there was a culture of suicide and sacrifice in Japan ages past, it was a very different kind of suicide. But I'd wager that the existence of that culture provided some groundwork for the development of the current modern suicide epidemic.
 
Thankfully people like this are fighting back against these negatives that have appeared in Japanese/World culture.


 
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Has a study been conducted on what causes this place to attract suicide-minded folk so much? Or is it simply a case of copycat suicide: After a coincidental string of suicides, people started flocking to it due to the media attention it receives, in a kind of pilgrimage of sorts?
 
Such a study would be completely pointless, because the reason is already clear. The studies they care about (and ARE conducting) are on WHY their culturally unique phenomenon actually exist. They are studying WHY their birthrates are declining, WHY hikikomori exist, WHY their suicide rates are so astronomically high. Not why certain locations are picked to hang oneself.

You already hit the nail on the head that they go there because the place is already famous for it, with the obvious exception that these are not "copycat suicides". It's a forest where you can get lost in, and so your corpse can equally get lost and never found just as easily. It's a place for people to ruminate on their decision and decide to follow through and "disappear" or change their mind after a "camping trip" of sorts. It's a place that they know about, so of course others would choose to go there. Asking why they would choose Jukai is like asking why go to Yellowstone to see geyser eruptions: because they know about it.
 
The only somewhat hardcore band I know from Japan is Shikabane. And they're more Crust than Hardcore, anyway.
 
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Dirk Magirk said:
This may sound funny, but I'd like to visit the place - not in the hopes of seeing bodies or anything of that nature, I just feel it would be a very...hmm, for lack of better words I will say energy laden spot, though that doesn't quite get across what I mean.
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I know what you mean. I know what you mean. *nudge nudge wink wink*
 
So much garbage. I cant believe they just leave the possessions lying around when they come for the corpse.
 
Or they simply just can't be bothered by it. In many crime scenes the police doesn't clean up the mess. They take pictures, evidence, but most times later is the poor family of the deceased who has to clean up the mess, this is why there are some cleaning companies that offer their services cleaning up blood stains and the such. I supose they do the same in the forest, they just take care of the body, not the garbage.
 
Clearly there is some sort of spiritual nexus there leading the lost souls to their doom.
 
Why hang yourself? that sounds like a painful way to go, not to mention the long set up time. There are places like that here but they are usually long jumps down rivers and stuff like that, you could just down some pills to be numb and high while you just plummet down, but hanging yourself? I guess it's a step up from cutting your wrists to slowly bleed to death.
 
Walpknut said:
Why hang yourself? that sounds like a painful way to go, not to mention the long set up time. There are places like that here but they are usually long jumps down rivers and stuff like that, you could just down some pills to be numb and high while you just plummet down, but hanging yourself? I guess it's a step up from cutting your wrists to slowly bleed to death.
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Why hang when you can go out in a blaze of fiery glory?
 
Barbiturates, the most painless peaceful way to go, you just fall asleep to your death.
 
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