Japan struggles with soaring death toll in Suicide Forest
HUNDREDS of police and volunteer firemen ventured into the Aokigahara forest in Japan last week, forming a human chain to look for the bodies of suicide victims.
They discovered four more to add to the 44 already found this year in what is now regarded as Japan's suicide centre - a dark, 3,500-hectare forest that covers the lower slopes of Mount Fuji. So many people kill themselves there that local authorities are now running out of space to store their remains.
A spokesman for Narusawa and Ashiwada, two of the three villages that border the forest, said: "I think everyone has the same reason for choosing this area. It's because of the novel by Seicho Matsumoto, Kuroi Jukai (Sea of Trees). After that was published 23 years ago the number of suicides around here increased." The novel tells the story of a woman who has a love affair with a young public prosecutor. He is blackmailed by the woman's husband, and the only escape for the lovers is a double suicide inside the dark and mysterious Aokigahara forest.
While the number of suicides may have increased because of Matsumoto's novel, the forest's roots as a venue for suicides go back even further. A Sixties novel, The Pagoda of Waves, featured a woman who killed herself in the Aokigahara forest; the story was later turned into a television drama series. Annual suicide patrols were set up in 1971 and last year found a record 74 bodies. Many people believe that the forest's proximity to the mountain - the most spiritual of all locations for the Japanese - and its vast and lonely interior, make it an ideal place for suicide.
The forest is described in the best-selling Complete Manual of Suicide as "the perfect place to die". Last year the manual sold more than 1.2 million copies. Nationwide, suicide rates are soaring in Japan with 33,048 people killing themselves in 1999, the second year running in which the number rose above 30,000. A record number of bankruptcies and rising unemployment are blamed as the main causes. Men whose lives are defined by their work tend to be most vulnerable.
