There's more to life than finding the perfect car, but finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life, like the SUV that handles everything from drop-off to off-road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrader.ca, Canada's This episode was suggested by Tiffany. If you'd like to make a suggestion, you can do so at Facebook and Instagram at Morbid Curiosity Podcast, on Twitter, at Morbid Podcast, and on our website, www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com. If you like this podcast, why not sponsor the MCP by becoming a patron on Patreon?
Over 50,000 people download this podcast every month, but only around 160 people are supporting the MCP on Patreon. We research, write, and produce this podcast all on our own, so we need your support to keep it going. For a mere $2 a month, you get two ad-free episodes a month. That's double the content.
At higher tiers, we offer episode outtakes, a monthly pub quiz, a bibliography for each episode, and more. All tiers also gain access to the MCP Discord server, a microcosm of the creepy community, where we discuss all sorts of things, podcast-related, and not, as a patron, you'll have our eternal gratitude. Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so, the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has grouped millions of people throughout the ages.
I am one of those people. My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast. This episode contains discussions about suicide, genocide, colonialism, war, propaganda, and mental illness. If these topics aren't something you want to hear about, then this is a good episode to skip.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please seek the aid of a mental health professional or call a crisis line. You can find the right helpline for your country at bit.ly slash hope for healing. That's B-I-T dot-L-Y slash H-O-P-E-F-O-R-H-E-A-L-I-N-G. You are not alone in this world, even if it feels like you are.
There is hope. Also, please keep in mind that the people we'll be discussing in this episode left families and friends and pets behind them. Many of these families have no idea where their loved one is, or have been unable to properly tend to their remains. These remains lay exposed, sometimes discovered by curious hikers or other people struggling with mental illness.
Images of those remains have circulated on the internet, and I discourage you from seeking them out. To us, these remains are interesting, but to the families of the dead, they are a constant reminder of someone they have lost. Please keep that loss in mind. Lastly, I'm not a professional historian, nor am I Japanese.
While I have relied on articles and books written by Japanese historians and sociologists, it's impossible for me as a westerner to understand fully the depths of Japanese culture. I'm also limited by my inability to read works on this subject written in Japanese. Effort was made to avoid generalizations and cultural bias, but I'd still like to apologize in case I've made mistakes. At the foot of the tallest mountain in Japan, Mount Fuji, sprawls a sea of shadowy trees known as Aokigahara, or Jukai.
The forest is a place of beauty and serenity. Its trees are ancient, growing up through Pac-Markt-Lava rock that spilled from the volcanic eruption of Mount Fuji in 864 CE. The area is covered with dense thickets of trees, the forest floor coated by spider webs of knotted roots and large rocks. Every so often, a break in the trees gives stunning views of snow-capped Mount Fuji.
Both the evergreens and deciduous trees there stay green all year round, as do the mosses and ferns that cover the ground. The forest is full of wildlife, such as bears, deer, bats, foxes, birds, squirrels, and mice. Part of the beauty of Aokigahara is the gloom and the silence. The trees are so densely packed together that the forest is cloaked in an eerie semi-darkness, even on the sunnyest days.
This provides feelings of awe when beams of sunlight stream through occasional gaps in the canopy. The density of the tree cover results in a carpet of fallen branches and leaves on the ground. Beneath this coating, the stony ground is porous and mossy, deepening the silence provided by the trees and the undergrowth. In the stillness, every breath is audible.
The volcanic nature of Mount Fuji has provided other marvels in addition to the forest. Hiding amongst the trees are several caves carved out by lava that remain cool no matter what temperature it is outside. Narusawa ice cave is a frozen subterranean wonderland, complete with ice pillars, icicles, and ice formations that never melt. Many times, the ice is lit up with colorful lights for tourists.
Nearby, Hugaku wind cave is famous for the intense silence inside. The walls of the cave are coated in moss which absorbs most sounds. Like Narusawa, there are icicles in the cave that never melt. A third cave, the lake-side bat cave, is the largest of these lava tube caves and is home to a colony of bats that leave en masse at sundown.
It's no wonder Aokigahara has caught the poetic imagination of those who have visited over the years. The forest's nickname, jukai, means sea of trees, which is exactly what the forest looks like when viewed from higher up the mountain, a sea of green moving gently in the breeze. The forest is just as dangerous as the sea as well. It's very easy to get lost in the maze of trees, especially at night.
Some say the high iron content of the soil causes compasses to malfunction. This is true, but only if the compass is held close to the ground, held at a normal height, they work fine. The gloom, silence, and ease of getting lost within the forest has inspired tales of yuray, ghosts, and other morbid myths. One of the more popular myths about the forest is that it was a place where ubasite took place, a type of seneside, where elderly or infirm relatives, usually old women, were left to die in the wilderness when their families were unable to care for them any longer.
This practice is featured in Japanese folklore and poetry during times of famine or deepest poverty, and the elderly person was generally willing to go in order to save their family. It's debated by historians whether the practice was actually as common as folklore makes out. Either way, rumors of the practice occurring in Aokigigahara may have attached themselves to the forest based on its eerie atmosphere. At first, the ghosts' visitors claimed they saw in Aokigahara were presumed to be the vengeful spirits of the elderly who had been abandoned to starvation and the mercy of the elements.
It was during the 1960s that the forest's long-tangled history with suicide began. As early as the 1950s, visitors and tourists have reported discovering decomposing bodies in Aokigahara. The cause of death was suicide. The reason the forest was chosen by people to take their own lives was unknown.
In the 1960s, a book by a popular Japanese mystery author depicted a case of suicide in the forest, possibly inspired by these early reports. The book then inspired many who read it, people who were in similar situations to the characters, to do the same. This phenomenon is called suicide contagion or copycat suicide. The rate of suicide in Japan and suicide within Aokigahara rose significantly during the 1990s and has stayed high since.
It's possible this rise occurred due to economic downturn and the rise in popularity of a suicide manual published in the early 90s that named the forest specifically. In the early 2000s, officials stopped publicizing the annual number of deaths, worried they were glorifying the act causing copycat suicides. The last recorded count was in 2004 when around 100 people took their lives in the forest. It's for this reason Aokigahara has gained the ghoulish nickname, Suicide Forest.
The suicide rate in Japan is one of the highest in the developed world. The reasoning behind the sharp rise in the 1960s is unknown, but economic downturn, a change in the employment styles of the country, and stigma surrounding mental health are all thought to be contributing factors. Historically, mental health struggles have been a taboo subject and public sympathy surrounding suicide has been weak. I'll go into why this may be in a bit.
In 2009, government policy changes to strengthen social protections for people in financial stress were instituted with hope of bringing down the rate. While this is happening slowly, the rate of suicide is still quite high in Japan, particularly among middle-aged men. Aokigahara has remained a place where people go to contemplate and complete suicide. Rumors of ghosts in the forest are still prevalent, although instead of victims of Ubasite, the phantoms are now believed to be the people who took their own lives.
Some believe that the reason the forest is a popular spot for death is that these ghosts call out to others who feel without hope to do the same. Because the forest has become the final resting place of so many, authorities have begun taking steps to persuade those who go to the forest with similar intentions to reconsider. The Japanese government has placed signs at most of the entrances that plead to the reader to reconsider and think carefully about their families and friends. Phone numbers of 24-7 debt-relief agencies are also posted along the trails, as are crisis helpline numbers.
Local authorities provide patrols that regularly scout the area, hoping to gently redirect those who look like they don't plan to return from their hike. While camping is allowed, most campers are approached by the patrols who suspect they're weighing their options. This prevention strategy has reportedly lowered the number of suicides in Aokigahara significantly, though as the numbers aren't published, it's not publicly known by how much. Reports from those who work at the debt-relief associations and crisis phone lines posted along the trails do support this statement.
However, the local government still performs its annual search for human remains, a practice that began in 1970. Local police, firefighters, and civilian volunteers search the forest following lines of plastic tape left by those who walked off the paths into the deep woods. The tape was meant to help them find their way back if they decided death was not the solution to their problems. These lines almost always lead to something, be it an abandoned campsite, a note, or a person living or dead.
These searches often recover the remains of those who died long ago. This is more often the case recently, as the rate of death in the forest has dropped. Still, multiple deaths occur in the forest every year. How did Aokigahara come to be a destination for suicide, and why does Japan have such a high suicide rate in general?
To answer these questions, it's important to look at the historical context of suicide in Japan as well as the cultural context. To answer why Aokigahara is a preferred location for suicide, the rate of suicide in Japan must first be understood. While the rate of suicide is correlated with economic variables, and possibly life insurance incentives that pay out even in the case of suicide, correlation does not mean causation. It's much more complicated than that.
It's been suggested that Japan has a tradition of suicide. Certain, long-standing Japanese cultural elements are said to support this theory, such as the samurai practice of seppuku, or self-disembulment, shame culture surrounding mental illness, and intense loyalty during war times, an example of which are kamikaze pilots who flew their airplanes into enemy ships, killing themselves in the process. This is a lot to unpack, so we'll go chronologically. The popular theory as to why the suicide rate is so high in Japan is that it hearkens back to feudal Japan, samurai, and bushito, the so-called way of the samurai.
However, while samurai became part of society in the 8th century, there is no historical basis for a single universal code of ethics amongst the samurai class. Bushito, or at least the modern concept of bushito, came about at the very end of the 19th century. I'll get to that in a moment. Loyalty, however, has been very important in Japanese culture since before the Heian Period, which ran from 794 to 1185 CE.
It was a large part of Japan's 17th article constitution, a document penned by Prince Shotoku in 604 CE, and adopted by Empress Suiko, the first officially Buddhist ruler of Japan. The document is less about laws and governance, and more focused on the Buddhist and Confucian morals and virtues that were expected of government officials and the emperor's subjects to ensure a smooth running of the state. The emperor was the highest authority, and all others must remain loyal. Sapuku doesn't appear in any written documents until the Heian Period.
This period is noted for the rise of the warrior or samurai class. The emperor was sovereign, but the real power was held by the nobility. To protect their interests, noble families required guards and personal armies, the samurai. The samurai class made steady political gains throughout the Heian Period.
At the time, Sapuku, or Harakiri, as it was called among samurai, was not a widespread custom, limited to situations when a warrior faced certain death or defeat at the hands of enemies. Suicide was preferable to capture or execution, as it was dying on ones own terms rather than being humiliated in death by the enemy. During the Kamakura period, which began around 1192, the samurai class ruled Japan. Zen Buddhism became popular amongst samurai in the 13th century and helped to shape their standards of conduct, particularly overcoming the fear of death and killing.
Between 1467 and the mid to late 1500s, the samurai class became a bit more fluid. People born into other social levels could make a name for themselves as warriors, becoming samurai themselves. Despite the rampant romanticism of the 20th century, samurai were human. They could be overly loyal or disloyal, cowardly or brave.
Samurai were usually loyal to their immediate superiors, feudal lords called Daimyo, who in turn had loyalties with higher lords. Samurai loyalties often shifted with those of their lords. However, there were some instances where samurai would betray their lord if he went against the emperor. Samurai often served more than one master, with lords lending their samurai to allies occasionally.
The relationship was very contractual. The Tokugawa shogunate, their shogun means military dictator, also known as the Edo period, began in 1603. Leadership became centralized. A more rigid social stratification limited upward mobility.
Samurai were limited to one master, and masterless samurai, called Ronin, could not market themselves. Unconditional loyalty became required, but it was highly impersonal. Samurai often had to be reminded to remain loyal, hence all the writing about loyalty during this time. Obligations to lords were strongly emphasized by the teachings of Confucius, which became required reading for the educated samurai class.
The samurai were expected to internalize Confucius and Buddhist values and act as role models for other social classes. However, there was still no single code of samurai ethics. The Edo period was one of relative peace, and Harakiri and Sepuku was seen as quite anachronistic. It was seen as stupid to throw one's life away at the drop of a hat.
It showed no concern for one's family or duty. Harakiri actually became a form of formalized and ritualized punishment, with proper procedures that included what the victim wore and who witnessed the act. Near the end of the Edo period, Sepuku and Junchi, suicide following the death of one's lord, was banned. However, in some Buddhist traditions, suicide was still seen as acceptable under certain specific conditions, such as altruistic sacrifice or religious offering.
By this point in history, samurai had become aristocratic bureaucrats, serving the Daimyo's. Their Daishou, the paired long and short swords that marked them as samurai class, which became popular in the 1340s and required in 1629, became a symbolic emblem of rank rather than a daily use weapon. As modern militaries emerged in the 19th century, the samurai became increasingly obsolete and were more expensive to maintain compared to soldiers. The Meiji Restoration, which came to power in the mid-1800s, ended the samurai's peacekeeping roles, and they moved into professional and entrepreneurial roles.
During the 20th century, Japan began a quest to westernize, to avoid colonization by western countries. The previous social class structure broke down, with samurai losing nearly all their privileges. All lords had to return their lands to the emperor. The famous book that many cite as the law of Bushido was written by Nitobe Inazo in 1899, right at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration.
Inazo was the Christian son of a samurai class family. He was educated in English from the age of 9, and well-versed in western classics. His book, Bushido the Soul of Japan, was an international bestseller. According to Dr.
GC Hurst, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas, Inazo didn't have a good understanding of Japanese history or literature, as he was educated in the western fashion. The wider world, however, took his book at his word because he was Japanese. If we think critically about Bushido, it's highly inaccurate to imagine that there was a system of ethical thought, a code of behavior, that was universal among samurai, and then the wider Japanese people. Generalized statements like this are untrue and often racist.
There is no historical support for Inazo's form of Bushido. It's likely he was inspired by western tales of Shivalric knights, another concept that's highly romanticized. If you'd like to know more about the history of Bushido, seek out the article Death, Honor, and Loyalty, the Bushido Ideal, from the Journal of Philosophy, East, and West, Volume 40, Issue 4, Page 511-527. It's available for free through most libraries.
Medicalization of suicide was part of westernization, and unfortunately there was some debate among Japanese psychologists about whether it was caused by mental illness or a disturbed personality type. At the time, suicide was used by extremists as an act of free will against western influence, the results of the extreme social changes required by so-called modernity. Suicide was deemed abnormal and criminalized by the government, it was also linked to social unrest. Backlash against westernization eventually caused a revival in conservative and nationalistic beliefs.
Bushido, Soul of Japan, soon served as the cornerstone of the ultra-nationalism movement that led Japan into World War II. Nationalistic emphasis began after Japan's victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. Inazo's Bushido was touted as an ancient tradition of samurai warriors, the epitome of Japanese fighters. In the 1920s, Japanese psychological discourse became caught up in the eugenics movement, a movement that became the hallmark of Nazi Germany, where scientists under the thumb of nationalist governments attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding and sometimes eliminating groups of people judged to be inferior.
In Japan, suicide was believed to be hereditary, and those who attempted it were considered for sterilization in order to stop the trade from being passed on. This made it so families of suicidal people or people with mental illnesses were shunned as well, which created a culture of shame surrounding mental health issues. In 1936, the death of a prominent military official and his wife by suicide brought the practice of seppuku back into the spotlight, giving voice to a cult of quote traditional suicide and quote inspired by Inazo's Bushido. It was seen as an act of national identity.
During World War II, pilots and soldiers were encouraged to sacrifice their lives for their emperor and nation, resulting in kamikaze pilots, Xinyo boat crashed suicides and banzai human wave suicide charges. The medical community, controlled by the government, responded by stating that suicide was a form of patriotism unique to Japan, a quote noble expression of Japanese national identity, end quote. However, there was good traditional suicide done for the good of the nation and bad rebellious suicide done for selfish and cowardly reasons. Female suicide was linked with madness and seen as selfish.
On the other hand, soldiers who died by suicide were tapping into their heroic samurai ethos. As possible, this good and bad version of suicide was an attempt to legitimize the previous viewpoint that it was abnormal. Either way, Japanese media consistently covered news stories of high-profile suicides during the 20th century as heroic and representative of traditional Japanese values. The population was so taken in by this nationalistic rhetoric that when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II in 1945, many military personnel and civilians took their own lives rather than surrender.
This nationalistic fervor, the war rhetoric and propaganda that emphasized death and made light of life is likely the origin of the modern acceptance of seppuku, the view that killing oneself is taking responsibility and preserving honor. The samurai and their Buddhist Confucian ethics were twisted, used by a war-bend government to inspire their soldiers. This is not the first time a government has used distorted history to do such a thing and it won't be the last. Forty years of propaganda had lasting effects on the entire population of Japan.
The last very public seppuku was in 1970 after an attempted coup. The man who did so had grown up during World War II. Around 30 years later in 1997, the Asian financial crisis hit and rates of suicide increased by nearly 35% and remained high until around 2003. This is thought to be due to the dramatic shift in the employment system in Japan, where traditional Japanese company employment guaranteed positions for life and promotions based on age.
The new system presented high unemployment and high unreliable employment. Those who were fully employed experienced a sharp rise in workload with an average of 50-plus hours per week. There was also a rise in cases of kiroshi or death from overwork. The tradition of loyalty to the company who treats you well was still expected, despite the companies not holding up their end of the bargain.
In September of 2009, a more liberal regime was voted into power. Policies were passed to strengthen social protection for employees, unemployment insurance, regulations for overtime, and safety nets for poverty-stricken people. The suicide numbers have gradually begun to decline, falling to their lowest on record since 1978 in 2019. The prefecture, or area with the highest overall suicide rate in 2019, was Yamanashi prefecture, where Aokigahara is located.
This brings us back to the question why Aokigahara. The answer is we don't know for sure. There are many theories, and it's likely a complex combination of some or all of them. The trees are dense, and it's easy to become lost, so discovery and prevention of suicide is limited as is body recovery.
The forest is beautiful and quiet as well. Perhaps some imagine their bodies will lie in that beauty forever, isolated and secluded. However, this is not true. Because of its beauty, hikers and families trek through the forest all the time, imagine a child finding the body of someone who has ended their life.
That child, or adult for that matter, would be scarred for life. More troubling, some visitors to the forest are there for the express purpose of seeing a body. They follow the lines of tape, seeking a glimpse of death. In 2018, a YouTuber filmed and posted video of a corpse found in the forest online, causing massive controversy.
It's possible those who want to end their lives believe that if they do so in the forest, they will inconvenience no one. This is also untrue. Local police, firefighters and civilians must shoulder the burden of clean up costs. They search the forest, remove the bodies, try to identify them and locate their families.
Many resources and much time goes into patrolling the forest to dissuade people or clean up after them. Many suicides leave behind a large amount of litter. The plastic tape hangs like spider webs becoming an eyesore and the cause of ecological harm to the forest. Scavengers scatter the bodies, including clothing and other items, further polluting the forest.
Again, local forest workers bear the burden of the cleanup. This cost is deepened by the forest's reputation, deterring tourists and climbers from the area. Would-be visitors worry they'll come upon a body unexpectedly, so hike and climb somewhere else. The reputation is difficult for locals in other ways as well.
It's quite traumatic to live so close to a place where people go to end their lives. Taxi drivers are often left wondering if the person they've dropped off at the forest will ever walk out again. Statistics show that on average, there are five bereaved family members left behind per suicide. In 2006, there were 90,000 children in Japan left without a parent due to suicide, and three million people who lost a family member to suicide.
These families sometimes go to Aokigahara, looking for their loved ones, following the lines of tape, leaving flowers and other mementos. A Buddhist monk often sits in a car park, tending to a temporary altar, praying for the repose of the troubled spirits of those who died and those who are considering death. The monk, the forest workers, the volunteers who search the forest all have hope that they won't find any corpses. They have hope for those who camp in the forest weighing their options.
Though they are strangers, they care about the struggling people they meet. They remind them that there is still hope, that there are still options other than death. You can walk the trails of Aokigahara on Google Maps. It's a beautiful forest.
You won't see any lines of tape leading off the trail or any human remains. You will see signs encouraging people who may be thinking about dying to choose life instead, offering hope and help, a way out of whatever troubles they may be in. That hope in the midst of the darkness is why Aokigahara draws out our curiosity. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please seek the aid of a mental health professional or call a crisis line.
You can find the right helpline for your country at bit.ly slash hope for healing. That's B-I-T dot-L-Y slash H-O-P-E-F-O-R-H-E-A-L-I-N-G. You are not alone in this world, even if it feels like you are. You are not.
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