Friends, have you ever heard of the "Aokigahara" forest in Japan? Console yourselves, until a few days ago this forest was completely unknown to me. By chance, I stumbled across a report entitled "Aokigahara - The Suicide Forest", a forest in Japan where over a hundred people commit suicide every year. And no friends, I don't want to go into suicide per se in this posting, but rather a beautiful forest that leaves a bitter aftertaste.

Aoikigahara Jukai translates roughly as "The Sea of ​​Trees" and is an approximately 3.500 hectare large forest, which is located north at the foot of Mount Fuji (best known for the volcano Fujiyama, which is also the highest mountain in Japan), west of Saiko and south-east from Lake Shoji between Fujikawaguchiko and Narusawa townships of Yamanashi Prefecture. When Mount Fuji last erupted in 864, a forest formed on the dried lava, which over the years has grown into a huge forest that is unmanageable today. In this there are also many caves in which there is an icy cold even in summer. The most famous cave is the popular tourist attraction «Narusawa Ice Cave». It doesn't bear its name for nothing... In some places the forest is so densely overgrown that for miles you can hear nothing but the sounds that the forest itself produces.

Even before the forest became known for its high suicide rate, it was already feared and cursed by the Japanese because spirits called Yurei are said to be up to mischief there, most strongly between 2 and 3 a.m., when the bond between our world and the world of the dead should be thinnest. The Japanese believe that people who do not receive proper burial after death or who die suddenly of unnatural causes become yurei. Some nights, even some days, you're supposed to hear them screaming, crying, and wailing. Even the trees of the forest are said to be full of malevolent energy. This may be a myth, but the bitter fact is that the forest was also made famous by Ubasute: a kind of "tradition" during which it was normal during the 19th century to take old, weak and sick family members up a mountain or into a forest and leave them there to their fate. Fortunately, this is now illegal.

Nevertheless, around 100 people die in this forest every year, because it has the second highest suicide rate in the world, right after the Golden Gate Bridge. But what is it that draws so many desperate souls to this forest? Two books are probably partly to blame for this. The first book, Kuroi Jukai, was written by Seicho Matsumoto. In this book, "The Tower of Waves," a couple commits suicide in front of the panorama of snow-dusted Mount Fuji in Aokigahara Forest. The second book bears the ominous name "The Complete Manual Of Suicide" and contains exactly what the title already suggests: various techniques to take your own life. In this book, Aokigahara Forest is touted as "the perfect place to die" because the odds of never being found in the vast forest are very high, and it's not uncommon for that to happen this book is found next to a corpse.

But not only books can be found when you walk through the Aokigahara forest ... - tapes are stretched everywhere through the forest, which people have attached who may not have been conclusive about their deed and might want to find their way out again. If you follow these ribbons, you rarely find anything good at the other end: waste from meals, drinks bottles, clothing, umbrellas, ropes on the branches of the trees, personal items such as photos, make-up utensils, cut-up ID cards, keys, but also farewell letters or, in the worst case, one Corpse, or at least its remains.

Even if you decide against your act, you will only get out of the forest safely in very few cases. The forest is too densely overgrown so that after a few meters you lose any overview and mercilessly get lost. In addition, cell phones and other GPS-enabled devices, which could be helpful, become unusable in the depths of the forest. This is due to the high iron deposits in the lava rock, which disrupts the signals. Even a classic compass would be useless here. Allegedly there is also a mysterious magnetic field that makes compasses and electronics unusable. However, there is no evidence to support these claims. The Japanese and US armed forces regularly conduct joint maneuvers in the area and have not seen any signs of unusual activity. But many residents say that even people who were not suicidal would go crazy in this forest and therefore kill themselves.

In 1971, the authorities decided to have the police search the forest for corpses once a year in order to dispose of them. Right at the «beginning» of the forest there is also a huge sign with the following inscription: «Your life is a valuable gift that your parents gave you. Think of your parents, siblings and children. Don't keep your worries to yourself and talk about them». Among them the number of a telephone counseling service, patrols are supposed to dissuade those who are tired of life from their plans and there are also many smaller signs everywhere, which warn against leaving the beaten track, as otherwise it is easy to get lost.

For many Japanese, suicide is nothing unusual as an option to "honorably get over" the pain of a lost job, a deceased family member, an abandoned partner or the like forever. In general, Japan holds a sad record when it comes to the number of suicides. In 2010 alone, more than 34.400 people killed themselves. From people who wanted to experience the magic of this forest live, you hear one thing above all: once you are in the Aokigahara forest, you hear nothing more, it is - in the truest sense of the word - dead quiet. In addition, it should literally pull you further and further into the forest, even if you didn't want to enter it at first. In addition, one should always be surrounded by a very oppressive feeling, fear and terrible sadness.

I found this report on YouTube, in which a geologist leads the camera team through the forest and tells many details about the Aokigahara Jukai and today's society in Japan without dramatizing. He also meets a man in a tent in the middle of the forest and speaks to him ...

Suicide Forest in Japan (Full Documentary)