Archive for the ‘Hikikko Mori’ Category
Aokigahara: “A Beautiful Place To Die”
I came across a couple videos on YouTube ( vid 1 and vid 2) about Jukai (Aokigahara) the other day after I noticed a group of hits on my blog stats. I had done a post about the forest post seeing an episode of “Destination Truth” where the team from SCIFI went into the forest looking for ghosts.
Until that episode of the show I had never heard of Aokigahara, but the happenings there with all of the suicides made sense to me. The Japanese mindset that still persists today of “face” and honor re-enforces this suicidal tendency as well as the aesthetic that the Japanese have for death and it’s potential beauty.
Of course many of these people today are at their wits end and certainly not going there just out of a feeling of honor. Most are depressed, upset, and generally mentally ill. But, the “idea” of a beautiful, peaceful, and harmonious suicide seems to have taken root in the current Japanese psyche. Much of this stems from a book that I likely referenced before in my last post. The name of that book is Kuroi Jukai by Seichō Matsumoto, which has star crossed lovers taking their lives in the forest as a pastoral end.
Now, as you may know, the Japanese culture has a fairly violent and dark undercurrent as opposed to its rather placid exterior. The internal workings of the Japanese mind may in fact be a very dark place indeed. Of course the same can be said for many places including the US. So, lets just say that all humanity has this dark space, but, the Japanese kind of have made it an art.. Like Manga or Anime. This of course can be seen in their media like those mentioned or in movies like “Suicide Club” which I have referenced before.
I suppose though, that the overall feeling behind an honorable death is to give it some meaning. A death with meaning removes the randomness or meaninglessness of life altogether I suspect. The peacefulness and beauty aspects I have seen in the actions of the Samurai. A samurai commonly wrote a death poem before going into battle or committing Seppuku to give meaning to the death and to settle their mind as well as show their grace in the face of their demise. All of these things are seen as the duality of Zen Buddhism, the basis for the Samurai way that became Bushido.
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;
A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
Uesugi Kenshin
1530-1578
In fact, I would not be surprised if I found through some digging, that there might indeed be some death poems found in Aokigahara.
Now, having delved somewhat into the mind set, lets look at the forest today and what seems to be playing out now. Since the SCIFI show, there has been an uptick in traffic that surrounds the forest and expeditions going there looking for a good fright. One of those sites is on funzu.com (WARNING IMAGES ARE SOMEWHAT DISTURBING) where my lead picture above comes from. It seems that on first blush, this picture and the others on the site may indeed show actual remains. However, I think I am somewhat incredulous about the hanging bodies.
My problem with the hanging photos is that they look to be staged and not real dead weight bodies on rope. In fact in one case the string looks too light to hold an adult body and in two of the others, the bodies are leaning/crouching and thus would not have been sufficient to actually kill someone who’s arms were not pinned behind them say.
Good try guys…
In fact, when you watch the YouTube video you will see the Danish guys saying that they think that some of the ropes etc that they are seeing are actually just props. I could see this being the case as people would like to draw attention to the forest and scare others. However, much of the errata that seems to be found on the ground if you look around actually seems to be personal effects of people who have just wandered into the trees looking to disappear.
It is little wonder that this place, a place thought to be haunted by demons, now is so charged with “ghost” activity, if there is any such thing. I suppose on the quantum level, I can grok the whole notion. Since matter and energy are interchangeable why not huh? It’s just rather hard to prove or disprove for that matter.
In any event, given the economic distress still ongoing in Japan, the insular nature of the current generation of Japanese, and the overall rigidity of their culture, I expect an uptick in suicides at Aokigahara in the foreseeable future.
CoB
Modern Seppuku
A suicide technique that mixes household chemicals to produce a deadly hydrogen sulfide gas became a grisly fad in Japan last year. Now it’s slowly seeping into the United States over the internet, according to emergency workers, who are alarmed at the potential for innocent causalities.
At least 500 Japanese men, women and children took their lives in the first half of 2008 by following instructions posted on Japanese websites, which describe how to mix bath sulfur with toilet bowl cleaner to create a poisonous gas. One site includes an application to calculate the correct portions of each ingredient based on room volume, along with a PDF download of a ready-made warning sign to alert neighbors and emergency workers to the deadly hazard.
The rest HERE
Well, it seems that the Hikiko Mori, Lost Decade, and a general depression in Japan has given those who wish to commit suicide a new method. Now it seems to have made it to the US also. Of course as our country and global economy melts like a thermonuclear Chernobyl, expect to see more of this I think…
Last month we shed 700K jobs…
Layoffs are still coming…
yay.
Suicide Club: Just Whack.. But I think I am understanding the Japanese youth mind more…

Little kids, chicks, half naked teen girls, and a wood planer! Only the Japanese could come up with this!
So I decided to look up “Suicide Club” on You tube today and what do you know, it was up there in ten minute chunks to watch. After the film was all said and done (with some missing time as I think the content was too “out there”) I found myself rather intrigued, confused, and grossed out, but in a silly bad horror way.
Plot Line:
54 Japanese “Hyper super cute” school girls (ya know the kind you see in anime and manga) clasp hands together in a line at Shinjuku station and leap in front of an oncoming train.. *SPLAT* Heads and limbs everywhere. Soon after kids start to off themselves in various greusome ways and the cops have no idea what the hell is going on, except they hear the term “Suicide Club”
Interspersed with this are images of another “super cute” group of pre teen “backstreet girls” who sing a song about.. Well, emailing them? I guess. Anyway, they seem to be involved somehow subliminally.. Long story short, an Otaku hacker girl kinda figures things out, mayhem ensues, and, well more suicides… Need I say more?
Whoa… If it were bloodier I would have to be wearing a plastic garbage bag like at a Gallagher stand up routine! Anyway, I digress…
Mostly though, I think I started to get on the trail more of the Hikikko Mori mindset as well as perhaps the Otaku in watching this film. Sure, it was silly and really, even without the time gap, confusing trying to make out just what the hell was going on. This is especially true of the whole scene involving the “girl band” and the underground lair with the removal of skin with a wood plane. *Ick! Ouch!* Of course that belies the whole issue of the “Skin Rolls” being sent to the cops…
*ugh just had a bad salmon skin sushi roll image in my head!*
It was just kinda arbitrary and, well of course creeptastic in a sadistic sexual way that the Japanese have really mastered. Mmm yeah…
The hardest thing to wrap my head around was the whole thing where the kids have this Q&A session with the Otaku Hacker:
little kid: “Are you connected with yourself?”
little girl: “Are you severed from yourself?”
little girl 3: “Did you come to repair your connection?”
What the…? Are they really phone repair kids or what? I am kinda lost there in the scheme of things at first. Then I begin to think about my Zen teachings and think perhaps they are talking about “one-ness” Maybe? They go on about being severed or not severed after death and its there that the bread crumbs end.. One of those damn Myazaki anime birds must have ate em…
In the end I was left thinking;
“Whoa, that’s just fucked up”
I mean, no one but NO ONE does evil creepy scary kids like Japan! Add to this the whole suicide issue going on there and man I am not surprised to hear that people just take a ride out to Aoikigohara and disappear.
Oh well… You watch and decide yourselves..
Sayonara…