The Call of the Quiet Forest
Aokigahara Forest is a quiet, hauntingly beautiful woodland located in the northwestern base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. The trees in this forest are so dense they block the sound of the wind; wildlife is also conspicuously absent. The forest is eerily quiet. For many Japanese, Aokigahara (“Sea of Trees”) is the perfect place to die. More than five hundred people have chosen this place to commit suicide. Seventy-eight people killed themselves here in 2002; in 2003, the figure climbed to a hundred. Local authorities subsequently stopped publicizing the number of bodies found in the forest. Since 1970, authorities conduct yearly body search. The search party includes volunteers and journalists. As the forest is dense, nobody knows how many more bodies are left undiscovered. If you are morbid enough, you can look at pictures at some of the bodies found here (warning: disturbing images ). A writer, Seicho Matsumoto, published a novel entitled “Tower of Wave”