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Short Stuff: Suicide Forest · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck. Jerry's here, Dave's here, you know how Dave's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: here and this is short stuff.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: That's right. This is a shorty from Dave Bruce, still
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: a contributor to houstie works dot com, which is great.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: And this one everyone, we want to issue a big
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: trigger warning. It is about the Aoki Gahara Forest in Japan.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It has another name that people have called it the
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: suicide forest, and we're going to be talking about that
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: in this episode. And obviously that's a very touchy subject.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: We don't want anyone to be unnecessarily triggered by it,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: So don't listen if it's not your jam. And obviously,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: if you have some deep seated issues going on in
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: your life and you've had these kinds of thoughts, you
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: should call nine to eight eight, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good, good call, Chuck, get a good call.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So one of the other names for the Aoki Gahara
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Forest is the Jukai, which means the sea of trees,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and it's because it's a huge swath of forest just
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in the uniformous forest. Yeah, that's that flanks Mount Fuji,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: has beautiful views of Mount Fuji. It's about a couple
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: hours drive from Tokyo, and I think it built up
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: over like a lava flow, that from an eruption in
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: eight sixty four. And one of the reasons that it's
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: it's famous not just for its views of Mount Fuji,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: but because, like you said, it's come to be known
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: as the suicide Forest, because so many people travel to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Aoki Gihara and never come out on purpose.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: That's right. There are no statistics anymore, and I think
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: this is great that the government of Japan has stopped.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they stopped counting, but they at
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: the very least stopped listing out statistic sticks on the
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: number of suicides there. I think there were. They stopped
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: that in sort of the mid twenty teens, but needless
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: to say, it had happened a lot, and so they said,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: we're not going to, you know, publish these numbers anymore,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: which is I think the right thing to do. But
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: where this all came from is sort of an interesting
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: story because no one knows exactly what it is. We
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: have some decent ideas. It's probably from these two books.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: That came along much later. But for a while people
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: said it might have been this practice from like when
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: was this actually.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: The show kusimbutsu.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Adka had a date on that.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Chuck, but it said that it's been
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: going on for at least a thousand years, or that
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it went on for a thousand years, so it went
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: back quite quite a while.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but what we're talking about is a certain sect
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: of Buddhist monks, aescetic Buddhist monks who would go to
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: forrests to meditate eventually until they died. They would supposedly
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: go for like a thousand days. They would subsist on
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: leaves and bark, and then they would bury themselves alive
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and scare quotes to continue that meditation in an underground
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: crypt in order to sort of mummify themselves while still alive.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: And this is something that really happened. They have some
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: of these mummies on display around Japan, even though scientists
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: now think that they were mummified after they had passed away.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wasn't just a process of I'm going
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to go bury myself in an underground crypt and stop
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: eating and drinking like this went on like you said,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for a thousand days, like almost three years. Yeah, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: they would purposely, like eat very little amounts and drink
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: very little amounts to mummify themselves, right, rather than just die.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so this idea, some people for a while said,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: maybe is where people got the idea that this forest
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: is where you might want to go to do this.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's probably true, but maybe we should
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: take a break and we'll talk about these couple of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: books that are probably where this idea came from. All right,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty there's a short story written by a gentleman name.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: How would you pronounce that first name? Say, Echo Matsumoto, Yeah, yeah,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: all right, and it was called Tower of Waves. Always
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: depend on you for Japanese pronunciation.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Well, then technically it's Matsumoto. What I say, I'm just
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: saying if you're depending No, I don't want to misguide you.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, that's fine. Why are you hitting me with
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the ruler right now? It was called Tower of Waves,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: and it's basically like a Romeo and Juliet esque plot,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: and that there are these young kids in love who
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: are kept apart by something they can't control, and in
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: the last scene, the woman writes a farewell letter it's
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: very clearly Romeo and Juliet and takes a bottle of
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: pills and goes into that very forest to die. And
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  Speaker 2: so a lot of people say, well, this is the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: actual you know, for the first time that forest has
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: been linked to a suicide, at least in literature.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's probably part of it for sure. But
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I mean in the same way that the so kushimbutsu
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: maybe gave people the idea of going off to the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: woods to die, and this story gave them the idea
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: of going specifically the Aokigahara forest to die. There was
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: so we just have to say real quick, the West,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: in particular uses the Japanese approach to suicide is kind
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of like a Pureian lens to like look through and
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: be like, wow, this is like, can we can shed
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: our own baggage or morality about suicide, because to us,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Japanese people are like, sure, kill yourself, that's your own
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: that's your jam, right, and that's not fair. That's not
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: how Japanese culture actually views suicide, and in particular, modern
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Japanese culture abhors suicide and takes pains to prevent it's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: it's a scar on the national psyche. But back in
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the day, we would kind of look in on Japan
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and see that they had like actual rashes of like
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: mass hysteria that would lead teenage girls to go jump
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in volcanoes, which happened from the twenties to the thirties.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: There was one girl in particular whose name was Kiyoko,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and she threw herself into a volcano, an active volcan
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: know Mount Mahara that wasn't in Ioka Gahara forests, but
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: it was another example of people going to nature to
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: take their own lives. And there was an article in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Time from nineteen thirty five that basically almost tongue in cheek,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: covered this strange phenomenon in Japan. It really it's not
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: very kind at all, especially if you step back and
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: consider the material. But it's a good example of how
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we just kind of misunderstand the Japanese approach to suicide.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: They care about people taking their lives, there's just there's
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: not the like religious morality attached to it. It's still tragic,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: it's just not you know, a slap in the face
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: of God if you do that.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: In their culture, Yeah, and the government has really come
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: a long way and messaging this stuff out. They have
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: their own, of course, prevention in crisis hotlines and things
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: like that. In this forest. They have trained the employees
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: that work there and the volunteers who work there to
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: look out for people who maybe be by themselves or
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: look troubled. They have security cameras and stuff like that.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: They have messages in this park which we'll get to
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: at the end, like the sign at the end. But
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: another book that came along that probably had a lot
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: to do with it as well, was written in nineteen
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: ninety three in Japanese only called The Complete Suicide Manual
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: by Wataru Serami Sarumimi Sarumimi.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: When I'm not doing very well, well, it's like su
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: right yeah, but that are really trips you up, so
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: you're like tou rumy, but you have to say it
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: like suui, and it just comes out like you're like
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: blowing a raspberry.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right, I gotcha. This is from nineteen ninety three, like
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: I said, and it is, you know, there's no other
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: way to say it than it is a sort of
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: step by step ins and out manual of suicide. Whether
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: it has merit what the drawbacks might be, different ways
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: that that can happen in order to be successful. And
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: there is a portion of that book that talks about
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: this forest and as the perfect place to die, and
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: some of these manuals apparently have been found with people
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: who have gone to this forest to do just that.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And you know, like, here's this beautiful, quiet forest. Your
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: family's not going to stumble upon you, right, You'll just
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: go on this trip and not come back.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing. I think a lot of people
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: who do this consider like they're considering their families or
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: their friends. They're sparing them having to find them. But
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: somebody else is going to probably find you, and they're
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: going to be scarred by it. So it's not like
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: this is this doesn't affect anybody, you know, Like it
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: definitely affects the people who live near the forest, the
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: people who volunteer to go clean up the forest, and
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the police who have to process these bodies too.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: So you know, that's sort of the long and short
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: of it. There we mentioned a sign because they've taken
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: great measures now to have more awareness on suicide in
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Japan and especially around the forest, but there are signs
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: in the forest and as you enter the forests that
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: say your life is a precious gift from your parents.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Please think about your parents, siblings and children. Don't keep
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: it to yourself, talk about your troubles, and then has
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: their suicide helpline number included, which.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Is great, It really is. So. Yeah, that's the Ioki
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Gahada Forest, one of the most unusual places in Japan
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  Speaker 1: and also one of the most beautiful I've heard.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the pictures are amazing.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess that's it, right, That's right, okay, everybody, Well,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: then short stuff is out.
• 10:58
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• 11:01
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• 11:05
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