Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck. Jerry's here, Dave's here, you know how Dave's
here and this is short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right. This is a shorty from Dave Bruce, still
a contributor to houstie works dot com, which is great.
And this one everyone, we want to issue a big
trigger warning. It is about the Aoki Gahara Forest in Japan.
It has another name that people have called it the
suicide forest, and we're going to be talking about that
(00:33):
in this episode. And obviously that's a very touchy subject.
We don't want anyone to be unnecessarily triggered by it,
So don't listen if it's not your jam. And obviously,
if you have some deep seated issues going on in
your life and you've had these kinds of thoughts, you
should call nine to eight eight, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, good, good call, Chuck, get a good call.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So one of the other names for the Aoki Gahara
Forest is the Jukai, which means the sea of trees,
and it's because it's a huge swath of forest just
in the uniformous forest. Yeah, that's that flanks Mount Fuji,
has beautiful views of Mount Fuji. It's about a couple
hours drive from Tokyo, and I think it built up
(01:24):
over like a lava flow, that from an eruption in
eight sixty four. And one of the reasons that it's
it's famous not just for its views of Mount Fuji,
but because, like you said, it's come to be known
as the suicide Forest, because so many people travel to
Aoki Gihara and never come out on purpose.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That's right. There are no statistics anymore, and I think
this is great that the government of Japan has stopped.
I don't know if they stopped counting, but they at
the very least stopped listing out statistic sticks on the
number of suicides there. I think there were. They stopped
that in sort of the mid twenty teens, but needless
(02:08):
to say, it had happened a lot, and so they said,
we're not going to, you know, publish these numbers anymore,
which is I think the right thing to do. But
where this all came from is sort of an interesting
story because no one knows exactly what it is. We
have some decent ideas. It's probably from these two books.
That came along much later. But for a while people
(02:30):
said it might have been this practice from like when
was this actually.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
The show kusimbutsu.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, Adka had a date on that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I don't know, Chuck, but it said that it's been
going on for at least a thousand years, or that
it went on for a thousand years, so it went
back quite quite a while.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, but what we're talking about is a certain sect
of Buddhist monks, aescetic Buddhist monks who would go to
forrests to meditate eventually until they died. They would supposedly
go for like a thousand days. They would subsist on
leaves and bark, and then they would bury themselves alive
(03:15):
and scare quotes to continue that meditation in an underground
crypt in order to sort of mummify themselves while still alive.
And this is something that really happened. They have some
of these mummies on display around Japan, even though scientists
now think that they were mummified after they had passed away.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, and it wasn't just a process of I'm going
to go bury myself in an underground crypt and stop
eating and drinking like this went on like you said,
for a thousand days, like almost three years. Yeah, and
they would purposely, like eat very little amounts and drink
very little amounts to mummify themselves, right, rather than just die.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah. And so this idea, some people for a while said,
maybe is where people got the idea that this forest
is where you might want to go to do this.
I don't think that's probably true, but maybe we should
take a break and we'll talk about these couple of
books that are probably where this idea came from. All right,
(04:36):
nineteen sixty there's a short story written by a gentleman name.
How would you pronounce that first name? Say, Echo Matsumoto, Yeah, yeah,
all right, and it was called Tower of Waves. Always
depend on you for Japanese pronunciation.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, then technically it's Matsumoto. What I say, I'm just
saying if you're depending No, I don't want to misguide you.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
No, no, no, no, that's fine. Why are you hitting me with
the ruler right now? It was called Tower of Waves,
and it's basically like a Romeo and Juliet esque plot,
and that there are these young kids in love who
are kept apart by something they can't control, and in
the last scene, the woman writes a farewell letter it's
(05:23):
very clearly Romeo and Juliet and takes a bottle of
pills and goes into that very forest to die. And
so a lot of people say, well, this is the
actual you know, for the first time that forest has
been linked to a suicide, at least in literature.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, and that's probably part of it for sure. But
I mean in the same way that the so kushimbutsu
maybe gave people the idea of going off to the
woods to die, and this story gave them the idea
of going specifically the Aokigahara forest to die. There was
(05:59):
so we just have to say real quick, the West,
in particular uses the Japanese approach to suicide is kind
of like a Pureian lens to like look through and
be like, wow, this is like, can we can shed
our own baggage or morality about suicide, because to us,
Japanese people are like, sure, kill yourself, that's your own
(06:20):
that's your jam, right, and that's not fair. That's not
how Japanese culture actually views suicide, and in particular, modern
Japanese culture abhors suicide and takes pains to prevent it's
it's a scar on the national psyche. But back in
the day, we would kind of look in on Japan
and see that they had like actual rashes of like
(06:45):
mass hysteria that would lead teenage girls to go jump
in volcanoes, which happened from the twenties to the thirties.
There was one girl in particular whose name was Kiyoko,
and she threw herself into a volcano, an active volcan
know Mount Mahara that wasn't in Ioka Gahara forests, but
it was another example of people going to nature to
(07:09):
take their own lives. And there was an article in
Time from nineteen thirty five that basically almost tongue in cheek,
covered this strange phenomenon in Japan. It really it's not
very kind at all, especially if you step back and
consider the material. But it's a good example of how
(07:31):
we just kind of misunderstand the Japanese approach to suicide.
They care about people taking their lives, there's just there's
not the like religious morality attached to it. It's still tragic,
it's just not you know, a slap in the face
of God if you do that.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In their culture, Yeah, and the government has really come
a long way and messaging this stuff out. They have
their own, of course, prevention in crisis hotlines and things
like that. In this forest. They have trained the employees
that work there and the volunteers who work there to
look out for people who maybe be by themselves or
(08:09):
look troubled. They have security cameras and stuff like that.
They have messages in this park which we'll get to
at the end, like the sign at the end. But
another book that came along that probably had a lot
to do with it as well, was written in nineteen
ninety three in Japanese only called The Complete Suicide Manual
by Wataru Serami Sarumimi Sarumimi.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
When I'm not doing very well, well, it's like su
right yeah, but that are really trips you up, so
you're like tou rumy, but you have to say it
like suui, and it just comes out like you're like
blowing a raspberry.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Right, I gotcha. This is from nineteen ninety three, like
I said, and it is, you know, there's no other
way to say it than it is a sort of
step by step ins and out manual of suicide. Whether
it has merit what the drawbacks might be, different ways
that that can happen in order to be successful. And
(09:14):
there is a portion of that book that talks about
this forest and as the perfect place to die, and
some of these manuals apparently have been found with people
who have gone to this forest to do just that.
And you know, like, here's this beautiful, quiet forest. Your
family's not going to stumble upon you, right, You'll just
(09:35):
go on this trip and not come back.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And that's the thing. I think a lot of people
who do this consider like they're considering their families or
their friends. They're sparing them having to find them. But
somebody else is going to probably find you, and they're
going to be scarred by it. So it's not like
this is this doesn't affect anybody, you know, Like it
definitely affects the people who live near the forest, the
(09:58):
people who volunteer to go clean up the forest, and
the police who have to process these bodies too.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So you know, that's sort of the long and short
of it. There we mentioned a sign because they've taken
great measures now to have more awareness on suicide in
Japan and especially around the forest, but there are signs
in the forest and as you enter the forests that
say your life is a precious gift from your parents.
(10:26):
Please think about your parents, siblings and children. Don't keep
it to yourself, talk about your troubles, and then has
their suicide helpline number included, which.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Is great, It really is. So. Yeah, that's the Ioki
Gahada Forest, one of the most unusual places in Japan
and also one of the most beautiful I've heard.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, the pictures are amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, and I guess that's it, right, That's right, okay, everybody, Well,
then short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
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