Another entry from the Life magazine on haunted places. This is on Japan’s Suicide Forest, also know as Aokigahara Jukai, a 14-square-mile volcanic forest at the northwestern base of Mount Fuji near Tokyo, Japan. Jukai means “sea of trees,” the most popular suicide destination in Japan, with at least 100 bodies found annually.
It seems to me Japanese society has some things in common with the Stoics with regard to suicide. One of the the things people find odd about both is that they at least seem to condone suicide in some circumstances. I prefer Western religious attitudes that suicide is a sin, and whatever sins you may have committed, killing yourself is only adding to them.
There are two movies on the Suicide Forest or suicide in Japan that come to mind. The first is “The Forest” from 2016, an English-language film about an American woman who kills herself in the forest in a “sins-of-the-father-brought-upon-the-child” plot. The other is called “Imprint” by prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike. It is less than an hour long, and was initially banned for its graphic horror content, It was true to my experience as a Western reporter in Asia who, frankly, was interested in women there. If you have a strong stomach, it is a good example of Japanese horror.