Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Suicide Forest

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

The suicide forest in Japan is a beautiful place with a checkered reputation. Trigger Warning: This episode features a discussion of suicide. If you or anyone you know needs help, please call 988.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So, there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry here. Dave's here. You know how Dave's here and this is short stuff. That's right. This is a shorty from Dave Ruse. Still a contributor to HouseTopworks.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 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 988, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Yeah, good, good call, Chuck. Get a good call. That's right. So one of the other names for the Aoki Gihara forest is the Jukai, which means a sea of trees.

And it's because it's a huge swath of forest, just an enormous forest. Yeah, 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 over like a lava flow that from an eruption in 864. And one of the reasons that it's famous, not just for its views of Mount Fuji, but because, like you said, it's become to be known as the suicide force because so many people travel to Ayokigahara and never come out on purpose. 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've very least stopped listing out statistics on the number of suicides there. I think they stopped that in sort of the mid-20 teens. But Needless to say, it had happened a lot, and so they said, we're not going to 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 said it might have been this practice from like, when was this actually? The show Kusinbutsu. Yeah, I don't think I had a date on that. 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 a while. Yeah, but what we're talking about is a certain sect of Buddhist monks, a schedic Buddhist monks who would go to forests 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 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. Yeah, and it wasn't just a process of I'm gonna go bury myself in a like a 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.

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. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology?

And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies.

You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. What's up fam? I'm Brian Ford, Artisan Baker and host of the new podcast Flaky Biscuit. On this podcast, I'm going to get to know my guests by cooking up their favorite nostalgic meal. It could be anything from Twinkies to moms Thanksgiving dressing. Sometimes I might get it wrong, sometimes I'll get it right. I'm so happy it's good because man, if it wasn't, I'd be like, you know, everybody not my mom.

Ha ha. Either way, we will have a blast. You'll have access to every recipe so you can cook and bake alongside me as I talk to artists, musicians, and chefs about how this meal guided them to success. And these nostalgic meals, fam, they inspire one of a kind conversations. When I bake this recipe, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Does this podcast come with a therapist? It can. Listen to Flaky Biscuit every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, 1960, there's a short story written by a gentleman named, how would you pronounce that first name? Say, eacho. Say, eacho, Matsumoto, yeah?

Yeah. All right, and it was called Tower of Waves, always depend on you for Japanese pronunciations. Well, then technically it's Matsumoto. What'd I say? Matsu motto. Okay. I'm just saying if you're depending for me, I don't want to misguide you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

that's fine. Why are you hitting me with a ruler right now? It was called Tower of Waves and it's basically like a Romeo and Juliet-esque plot in 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 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. Yeah, and that's probably part of it for sure. But I mean, in the same way that the Sokushin Butsu maybe gave people the idea of going off to the woods to die. And this story gave them the idea of going specifically to Ayuki Gahara Forest to die. So we just have to say real quick, the West in particular uses the Japanese approach to suicide is kind of like a pure lens to like look through and be like, wow, this is like we can shed our own baggage or morality

about suicide because to us, Japanese people are like, sure, kill yourself, that's your own, 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. 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 mass hysteria that would lead teenage girls to go jump in volcanoes, which happened from the 20s to the 30s. There was one girl in particular, her name was Kiyoko, and she threw herself into a volcano, an active volcano, Mount Mahara, that wasn't in Ayokagahara, for us, but it was another example of people going to nature to take their own lives.

And there was an article in Time from 1935 that basically almost tongue-in-cheek covered this strange phenomenon in Japan. It's not very kind at all, especially if you step back and consider the material, but it's a good example of how we just kind of misunderstand the Japanese approach to Susa. They care about people taking their lives. There's not the religious morality attached to it. It's still tragic. It's just not a slap in the face of God if you do that 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 and 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 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 1993 in Japanese only called the Complete Suicide Manual by Wataru Sourimi. Sourumi. Sourumi. Sourumi. Sourumi. Sourumi.

Sourumi. Sourumi. That one I'm not doing very well. Well, I certainly can do. It's like, two, right? Yeah. But that are really trips you up. So you're like, two, Rumi, but you have to say it like Sourumi.

And it just comes out like you're blowing a raspberry. Right, I got you. This is from 1993, like I said, and it is, you know, there's no other way to say it, then it is a sort of step-by-step ins and outs manual of suicide, whether it has merit, what the drawbacks might be, different ways that that can happen

in order to be successful. And 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 gonna stumble upon you. You'll just go on this trip and not come back. 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, I'm 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 doesn't affect anybody, you know, like it definitely affects the people who live near the forest, the people who volunteer to go clean up the forest and the police who have to process these bodies too. 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. As you enter the forest, your life is a precious gift from your parents. Please think about your parents, siblings and children. Don't keep it to yourself. talk about your troubles, and then has their suicide help line number included, which is great. It really is. So yeah, that's the Ioki Gihara Forest, one of the most unusual places in Japan and also one of most beautiful I've heard. Yeah, the pictures are amazing. Yeah, and I guess that's it, right? That's right. Okay, everybody, well then short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. you