Depending on one’s perspective, Japan can be seen as a nation filled with people enjoying their lives quite actively. The sheer volume of recreational activities, from bars and restaurants to ski trip buses and package tours around famous historical sites leads one to feel that despite the ever-present context of overtime hours and exam preparations, Japanese people (perhaps more than others globally) appreciate their free time, and assuredly enjoy it. This is in many ways true, however Japan is also home to one of the highest suicide rates worldwide, with suicide being the leading cause of death for persons under 30 nationwide. The ubiquitous and accessible nature of trains in Japan make them a logical and effective choice for those attempting suicide, but it is Aokigahara (青木ヶ原), the forest situated at the base of iconic Mount Fuji that hosts the most suicides of any location in Japan, and is second in the world only to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Why here? This distant and remote (and therefore relatively inconvenient) place must hold some allure beyond being aesthetically pleasing and quiet. It can be argued that Aokigahara serves as a critical support mechanism for many considering suicide; in the likely face of tremendous fear, its socially-affirmed nature as an ideal suicide location can provide comfort, with the ritual nature of such a pilgrimage allowing one’s suicide experience to be imbibed with meaning.
The modern issue
Suicide is considered a major problem by the Japanese government, with a recent effort starting in 2007, the government published a ‘counter-suicide White Paper’, in pursuit of augmenting societal views towards suicide, and curbing the high (and growing) rates. Their plans include putting into place more social support structures such as telephone hotlines and counseling services for those feeling suicidal and for those who have failed in a past attempt. 2007 marked the 10th straight year Japan was facing more than 30,000 annual suicides, perhaps a statistic growing more embarrassing with age to the government, drawing it into action. In 1998, a 34.7% increase was observed in suicides. This massive increase included large spikes in middle-aged men, men in their 20s, and youth between ages 10 and 19. Recent economic downturns may be taking a toll however, as suicides in January 2009 showed a 15% increase from 2008. While Japan does not have the highest rates globally, persistently increasing suicide numbers for nearly the past two decades, despite national economic fluctuations (both up and down) presents a clear social and political issue.
Among modern suicide in Japan, trends can be observed. While by no means exclusively, men constitute the majority of suicide victims, over 70% of annual suicides in recent years. Age demographics have unique distributions as well, with very high rates of suicide among seniors (over 60), and middle-aged males, typically corporate employees. The latter demographic fuels a stereotype about the difficult and overly-stressful lives of corporate workers in Japan, and while making overly broad generalizations is not a productive activity, the hours worked in the offices cannot be disputed.
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Spending so much time on the job allows minimal time for self-actualizing activities, and one’s entire identity can become invariably tied to one’s career. Therefore the inherent impermanence of corporate employment (cut short by layoffs, retirement) cultivates a dangerous formula. Depression can be fuelled by a bleak outlook towards the future. Company employees who work their entire adult lives, doing little in the way of self-actualization (in whatever form that might take), when forced to face a retirement of simply free time may unsurprisingly feel rather hopeless. Corporate layoffs suffer from a similar situation – when their job, their primary focus of attention and effort is taken away from them, their entire life may appear a failure. Financial benefit becomes the sole gratification, and in being intrinsically emotionally unsatisfying, should something change or be taken away (as it very easily can), the impact can be devastating.
A 46-year-old man found still alive in Aokigahara with his wrists slashed was later interviewed by CNN. “My will to live disappeared,” he said, upon the loss of his job in an iron manufacturing company. “You need money to survive. If you have a girlfriend, you need money. If you want to get married, you need it for your life. Money is always necessary for your life,” his sentiments clearly express the state one can be left in following a job loss. His physical recovery did not enable a rapid mental turnaround however, and he remains ashamed of his perceived failures, and battles with suicidal thoughts persistently. Why would he make the long trip to that specific forest for the fairly standard (wrist-slashing) suicide he carried out? The location itself must add some significance, meaning or comfort to the final act.
Norms and historical suicide
Japan is a nation filled with custom and tradition, from well-observed and strictly guided meticulous processes, to unwritten, culturally-reinforced social norms accepted and followed by the majority. Clear examples can be found from the rigid educational formula found in such arts as shodō and ikebana (kadō), to the fact that in large part, most shopkeepers anywhere in Japan will greet you with the same word (with very minor variation), and that even in the family setting, the ‘script’ followed by someone leaving the house and subsequently returning home is highly invariable. For many people, such customs become second nature to them, and involve little formal thought. That said, the pervasiveness, acceptance and wide adherence to such traditions enforces that they cannot be ignored. Actions are carried out with meaning, driven either by the unique motivations one might have to personally perform a tradition properly at will, or by the meaning derived from the context an action is performed in, and in Japan many (if not most) of such actions are socially understood, accepted, and propagated by the population at large. This understanding is crucial in analyzing Aokigahara as a place fulfilling a special role in the Japanese suicide “ritual.”
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Historically, the self-disemboweling seppuku practice was a well known and widely utilized means of bringing about one’s own death, or in some cases as capital punishment (obligatory seppuku) for serious crimes. In times of war, soldiers captured by the enemy might commit seppuku to avoid the shameful process of having their fate decided by their captors. While the importance of a long tradition of recognized (and accepted) suicide practice in Japan cannot be understated, to establish this as the primary catalyst for modern ritualistic suicide is assuredly short-sighted. Students and office workers are not samurai, modern Japanese lives bear little resemblance to those of soldiers and feudal lords hundreds of years ago.
The most important concept to draw from seppuku is its use as a supportive, often remedial process. Those committing seppuku are not leaving the world in a state of complete ease, often their lives have a number of negative elements present. There is likely some pressure, some disgrace, a great lacking or fear weighing in on their decision, and a rash, insipid suicide has no positive element to counteract these negatives, and in many cases leaves a negative memory as the deceased person’s final legacy. Any voluntary suicide offers the person control over their immediate fate, but seppuku provides control over an established process, a socially understood and recognized ritual, that lets them leave the world in an acceptable way, positively counteracting the negatives that in all likelihood led to the final moment.
The sea of trees
Aokigahara, also known colloquially as jukai (樹海), is a thick forest at the northwest base of Mount Fuji, well known colloquially for paranormal activity, and nationwide as Japan’s most popular location to commit suicide. What is the allure of this remote, rugged, and relatively inaccessible forest?
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What sort of location or situation do people wish to end their lives in? In Japan, a largely industrialized nation with population focused around urban metropolitan areas, the pristine nature of Aokigahara is really as stark a polar opposite environment as one is likely to find. Consider a suicidal student or office worker. Typically a large portion of their daily life is spent working in or commuting around busy, crowded urban districts. This will inevitably become psychologically representative of the setting of the basic activities that make up their life. When such a person, for any number of reasons comes to the point of considering suicide, this daily routine can become naturally associated with their feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, or failure – this is the life they are seeking an end to, an escape from. As such, is it not reasonable to assert that suicidal individuals might seek out a setting for their death that bears virtually no resemblance to the setting of their life? This provides some explanation as to why locations such as Aokigahara are utilized, but there are numerous forests and natural environments in Japan that provide an escape from the urban centers, yet it is only Aokigahara to which record-breaking numbers of people journey.
In the early 1830s, Japan was gripped by the Tenpo famine, (tenpo no kikin 天保の飢饉), and poor families in communities near the forest were known to take infants or elderly family members out to the forest, abandoning them and reducing the number of mouths to feed in desperate times. It is little wonder how the forest developed its reputation for paranormal activities. Even from nearly two centuries ago, Aokigahara has had an association with death, and unsurprisingly with ghosts and spirits of those deceased. Those dying unhappily in the forest are likely to have uneasy spirits, and it is this that some say continually propagates the location as Japan’s suicide capital. A Buddhist monk interviewed by UK publication The Independent sought to bring some solace to the post-death forms of those who died in the forest. “The spirits are calling people here to kill themselves, the spirits of the people who have committed suicide before,” he claims, later asserting, “prayers bring them peace, and send them home rather than doing mischief.”
It is difficult to trace the genesis of Aokigahara as an ideal suicide location in the mainstream mindset, however it has been in the public eye for nearly four decades. Every year, starting from 1970, a group of volunteers and police officers scour the forest for the dead which have accumulated in the time since the last search. For around two decades, average annual death tolls were very consistent, at roughly twenty bodies found over the course of each year. The dawn of the 1990s brought change, however, with 1994 having 57 bodies, and 1999 over 70. An aging Japanese population, reaching the aforementioned ages of peak suicide can be noted as an influential factor, however such increases in a single location are quite dramatic, the national suicide rate did not triple in six years, but the number of deaths at Aokigahara did.
With the advent of the internet in the 1990s and exponential rise in online communication and mobile phone usage, communities of people considering suicide were enabled to appear and congregate, protected by the anonymity their online persona affords. Online forums and message boards catering to visitors and contributors of specific interest areas allows for the rapid spread of ideas and opinions, and an activity or piece of media discovered and supported by even a single member of a tight-knit community can be distributed to many more in almost no time at all. The internet as an anonymous forum for people to discuss openly the feelings they would likely otherwise keep as an exclusively internal deliberation is a critical factor in the increased usage of community supported methods (such as the recent usage of hydrogen sulfide) and locations – such as Aokigahara.
In 1993, Wataru Tsurumi published “The Complete Suicide Manual” (完全自殺マニュアル), an unbiased, objective look at practical concerns of the suicide process, and in this book he describes Aokigahara as an ideal place to die. The book sold well over a million copies, and established itself as a well-recognized piece of popular culture in Japan, evidenced by the 2003 film (Suicide Manual) it inspired and the news media attention it received. Controversy always stirs up public recognition, and while the book was only deemed inappropriate for sale to minors in eight prefectures, opponents to its sale were vocal, and resulted in the author publishing a second book, featuring letters of both support and opposition.
While the actual impact of Tsurumi’s book can be argued, one can safely assert that its influence brought Aokigahara into a spotlight, at least for a number of years. As a result, many people thinking about suicide, who were previously unaware of this forest suddenly had a location offered to them. For such people, this was a place that been considered, evaluated, or even utilized by people feeling the same sort of emotions (depression, loneliness, desperation) as them. In a nation with social collectivist tendencies like Japan, this is imperative – as mentioned above, there are certain traits intrinsic to Aokigahara (and other similar locations) that naturally draw suicidal individuals, however it is the social affirmation as a socially “accepted” location which establishes the forest as a critical support mechanism for those facing suicide.
The notion of support, a sort of “suicide crutch” is central to modern usage of Aokigahara. Death is inevitable and fear is natural; many those who want to take their own life, perhaps especially so, are bound to want to have a satisfactory death, considering they probably have given the notion a great deal of thought. As personal motivations for suicide are incredibly varied, so are the ways in which one can achieve a good death. The monk interviewed in the forest may have been on to something – in choosing a location which has been utilized by many others in the past, one can feel the support of those past people, potentially quelling a great deal of fear one might have in approaching death voluntarily. While depression and hopelessness are inarguably influential factors in the minds of those considering suicide, these people are humans, and fear of death is without doubt the most ubiquitous concern, if not the most influential. The seeking out of support to deal with this incomprehensible fear (for most) is absolutely crucial and central to this analysis.
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As introduced above, suicide as a remedial ritual is an important theme as well. People choosing to end their lives are typically leaving the world in a less than ideal state, and many may want to have their final moment be one which is completely self-directed and “positive.” Selecting and carrying out the ideal death can assuredly provide comfort for some people, but for some others might be an absolute necessity – suicide will not be carried out haphazardly and without forethought by such people. In reality, regardless of location and method, mostly only negative repercussions for family and friends come as a result of a suicide, which leads to the conclusion that those deciding to take control of a “good” death are often doing so for chiefly personal reasons. In Japan, participating in publically accepted norms and traditions is a means of showing solidarity with the rest of society, in electing to do certain things in the same way as others, everyone’s collective support can be felt among one another. By choosing to make the trip to Aokigahara, to put the effort forward to have a death that is not decided by convenience or ease, one is engaging in a death that is a methodologically-defined ritual, which whether positive or negative, makes a contribution to the ritual-laden society it was conducted in.
Many considering suicide are doing so due to a sense of failure or hopelessness, and they may also be feeling isolated from the society they were once a part of. Ending one’s life at the foot of the nation’s most well-recognized national symbol (Mount Fuji), and utilizing a specific location which has been recognized as being special and unique (as an ideal location for suicide and also a haunted, paranormal forest), one may be able to feel re-assimilated into a community, and perhaps society as a whole. An understanding of this motivation in death might be truly beneficial in supporting those dealing with such feelings in life, ideally before they decide to journey to Japan’s sea of trees.
