Aokigahara
She arrives dressed in all black and still clutching the one-way ticket in a small white hand.The bus is already a half kilometer down the road from where it dropped her off in the parking lot The driver had left quickly, casting nervous glances at the trees as she'd disembarked and burning her with a look of sorrow. He'd known why she'd come of course, but that's only to be expected.
This was Aokigahara after all. This was the infamous Sea of Trees, the place declared by the suicide manuals to be the perfect place to die.
There was an allure to this place (if one could be lured by death), and it had always been that way. Some say it started with the grandmothers who were left to die of exposure after their families judged them to be a burden. Others say it was more about famines and somehow less cruel. Nowadays though, it was where people came who were slowly being crushed. But whether that crushing came from societal pressure or from the shame of being unable to support families during harsh economic times - it didn't matter. Aokigahara had become had become a god of death filled with demons, and he accepted all-comers..
The girl shivers slightly but shrugs it off and walks towards the tree line.
Had she had cared, she would have brought a tent to at least give the impression that hers was an innocent solo camping trip. From what she'd heard though, there was no point pretending as the locals didn't care anymore anyway. The voluntary tribute accepted by Aokigahara had become nothing more than a blot on their reputation and a terrible inconvenience. They were sick of finding the bodies and sick of being associated with death.
The day is going down as she enters the Sea of Trees and she stops for a moment to take in the strange, still beauty of the forest around her. Standing in the permanent twilight of the forest she listens intently.
She'd heard tell of the forest itself guiding people to their deaths, of voices leading people to their perfect places to die. It had sounded...charmed. Beautiful even. So she waited, waiting for the ethereal voices she was sure would come.
It starts as a small wind that disturbs the stillness and wraps around the trees, laying out a chill trail for her to follow deeper into the woods.
"Come" say the voices, and she hastens to follow them before they fade.
To her right, she passes a large sign plastered on a tree and scoffs in a strange sense of camaraderie with the voices that lead her.
‘Your life is a precious gift from your parents’.
How could the people who put up that sign have not realized that it was entirely the wrong thing to say? She, like everyone she knew, was sick and tired of being told that her life wasn't her own, of being shunted from lesson after lesson and expectation after expectation. How ironic was it that she would have to die in order to take possession of her own life?
The voices whisper to her, lead her up and over an old lava flow all grown over with moss and grass, and just for a moment, she fancies she sees a white-faced figure running before her, giggling as it drops something very physical to the ground further up the trail. She continues to walk and knows before she sees it that this is the book reputedly found so often in these woods, Wataru Tsurumi’s 'Complete Manual of Suicide’. She picks it up and begins to read the first page, and as she does, she feels a disembodied voice move around her as she walks, chanting the words with her like a litany.
"...too many people have been brainwashed into believing that suicide is wrong. In elementary school, teachers make their students write essays on "the importance of life" and say that people who commit suicide are cowardly or weak-willed. Others offer cliches - "life is precious," "your family and friends will be hurt deeply" - but these are merely platitudes.
The truth is, life is dull and repetitive."
She repeats the words and pulls out one of the few items in her small handbag. It's a length of climbing rope, long, thin, and guaranteed for up to 300lbs, and around her the spirits seem to wake up. She can taste their delight, their expectant buzz of excitement, and she ties the knot. She clings to the book as she works, holding it tucked under one of her arms even though she doesn’t need to see pictures to know how to do this.
She has been practicing this for weeks now.
Once she’s done, she pulls the remaining items from her handbag: tickets, some money, credit cards and photos. These are photos of happier times with her boyfriend and family and she takes a moment to look at them before falling to the floor and begins the process of ripping them up. This is part of the ritual here: the destruction and deposition of one's old life into one of the many small holes in the ground.
Everyone does this here.
The pieces she makes are small and even, her actions methodical. She gathers them into a little pile and looks for the hole in the ground where her pieces can rest.
She doesn't have to look far. Not far from her little pile, she finds a small hole in the ground and pushes her fingers inside, curious to know who's already buried there. She finds the finy pieces of a photograph showing a handsome young man and pieces of ID that declare him to have been named Tanaka.
Tanaka looks like he was a good man in life and so she decides it would not be so bad for the pieces of Youki to reside in the same hole as that of Tanaka. She carefully scoops all the pieces in, not caring if they mix.
"We're neighbors now, Tanaka." she whispers, as though it's a secret she doesn't want the trees to hear.
When she stands up, she hears the sound of footsteps behind her. This time though, they're the footsteps of someone living.
She turns around to find a man, sad, weary, and shaking his head.
‘Why do you people do this here?’ he says plaintively. His voice is a bottomless ocean of sorrow.
She looks at him, unsure what to say. She'd had speeches memorized for if anyone had tried to stop her before she came. But now, looking at this man with his infinite sadness and care, all those clever words fell from her mind.
She notices the bag of salt in his right hand and an O-Mamori charm around his neck.
He had come prepared, but for what?
Then the forest screams murder around her, angry that it may be denied this time. She realizes that this is not the charming, beautiful perfect place to die, it's a feeding frenzy with a lure.
The man looks around as though hearing the screaming for himself.
"You hear that don’t you?" he asks, his tone measured.
She nods "Yes, they talk to me too."
The man tiredly rubs his eyes, "The CCTV picked you up at the bus stop. We thought you were a risk and I thought I would come and try to help you. Do you really wish to become one of these unhappy and bloodthirsty yurei?"
The screaming becomes louder, and she feels the coldness of fear take root in her heart and spread through her body. There would be no happy, blissful nothingness here, only an eternity of trying to lure others to the same fate.
She's afraid now, and looks to the man with the immeasurably kind and sad eyes who had braved the forest and its spirits to save her. He sees the dawning and holds out his hand to her and she takes it, even as she crouches down to the little hole. She scoops out her little pile, and some of the pile that once was Tanaka, and packs it into her bag. She wants the spirits to have nothing of her there and hopes that by taking some of Tanaka's pile, she can maybe rescue some of him too. Taking the rope, she packs it too, afraid that someone else might be tempted to use it.
She now knows that the forest doesn’t want them to leave, that the god of death that is Aokigahara and the demons that live within him hate being denied. She looks at the bag salt and O-Mamori and wonders how much faith they can put in them as they walk hand and hand, trying not to look at the darting shapes in the trees or hear the screams, wails, and curses hurled by the angry yurei.
The man though seems calm, as though he's done this many times before, and doesn't even startle. They walk until they clear the woods, and then they walk some more.
When they arrive at the door of a cafe, he presses some money into her hands, telling her to get some tea and that he'd be in in a moment. He walks off into the dark and she opens the door, glad to see the light and feel the warmth of the living. Heads turn and she's soon surrounded by people who had recognized her from earlier and who'd thought her dead. An elderly woman sits her by a fire before hurrying to bring her tea. A Buddhist monk comes and prays over her, chasing out the bone-deep chill with holy words. And then the police arrive.
They're nice, even if they do ask her lots of questions about why she wanted to die and what had stopped her in the end.
The man with the salt and O-Mamori doesn't come back.
Tuning out the officer's questions, she begins to look in her bag, at the torn pieces of the life she tried to leave behind. Scooping them out onto the table she tries to fit them together like small jigsaw puzzles. She fits them together like a jigsaw, remaking herself and enough of Tanaka that she finds something familiar in them.
Then it hits her. She’s looking at the guide who had brought her here.
"Miss? Are you ok, Miss?" the officer asks.
Then the officer sees too.
"Where did you get this from?"
His voice trails off in shock.
She tells them doesn’t know and begins to cry, explains about the man with the salt and O-Mamori, and how she had come back. As she tells her tale, a crowd gathers and the police officer looks at her in shock. Then when she is done, he tells her the story of a man named Tanaka Hiro who used to help the police search for bodies but who had, for reasons unknown, ended up taking his own life in the forest. Some had suspected foul play for there had been no one more anti-suicide than he, but a local Shinto priest had blamed the forest and the yurei.
The girl just nods and vows never to come to Aokigahara again.
Twenty years later and she can still hear the forest, calling to her and wanting to make good on its near victory all those years ago. But now she is the one with the bag of salt and the O-Mamori, and her vow never to return broken in the hope of saving others from the forest. When the locals spot them over CCTV, with their hopeless faces and clutching their one-way tickets, it's Youki they call.
And when she gets to the start of the tree line, it's Tanaka Hiro who meets her there.
This was Aokigahara after all. This was the infamous Sea of Trees, the place declared by the suicide manuals to be the perfect place to die.
There was an allure to this place (if one could be lured by death), and it had always been that way. Some say it started with the grandmothers who were left to die of exposure after their families judged them to be a burden. Others say it was more about famines and somehow less cruel. Nowadays though, it was where people came who were slowly being crushed. But whether that crushing came from societal pressure or from the shame of being unable to support families during harsh economic times - it didn't matter. Aokigahara had become had become a god of death filled with demons, and he accepted all-comers..
The girl shivers slightly but shrugs it off and walks towards the tree line.
Had she had cared, she would have brought a tent to at least give the impression that hers was an innocent solo camping trip. From what she'd heard though, there was no point pretending as the locals didn't care anymore anyway. The voluntary tribute accepted by Aokigahara had become nothing more than a blot on their reputation and a terrible inconvenience. They were sick of finding the bodies and sick of being associated with death.
The day is going down as she enters the Sea of Trees and she stops for a moment to take in the strange, still beauty of the forest around her. Standing in the permanent twilight of the forest she listens intently.
She'd heard tell of the forest itself guiding people to their deaths, of voices leading people to their perfect places to die. It had sounded...charmed. Beautiful even. So she waited, waiting for the ethereal voices she was sure would come.
It starts as a small wind that disturbs the stillness and wraps around the trees, laying out a chill trail for her to follow deeper into the woods.
"Come" say the voices, and she hastens to follow them before they fade.
To her right, she passes a large sign plastered on a tree and scoffs in a strange sense of camaraderie with the voices that lead her.
‘Your life is a precious gift from your parents’.
How could the people who put up that sign have not realized that it was entirely the wrong thing to say? She, like everyone she knew, was sick and tired of being told that her life wasn't her own, of being shunted from lesson after lesson and expectation after expectation. How ironic was it that she would have to die in order to take possession of her own life?
The voices whisper to her, lead her up and over an old lava flow all grown over with moss and grass, and just for a moment, she fancies she sees a white-faced figure running before her, giggling as it drops something very physical to the ground further up the trail. She continues to walk and knows before she sees it that this is the book reputedly found so often in these woods, Wataru Tsurumi’s 'Complete Manual of Suicide’. She picks it up and begins to read the first page, and as she does, she feels a disembodied voice move around her as she walks, chanting the words with her like a litany.
"...too many people have been brainwashed into believing that suicide is wrong. In elementary school, teachers make their students write essays on "the importance of life" and say that people who commit suicide are cowardly or weak-willed. Others offer cliches - "life is precious," "your family and friends will be hurt deeply" - but these are merely platitudes.
The truth is, life is dull and repetitive."
She repeats the words and pulls out one of the few items in her small handbag. It's a length of climbing rope, long, thin, and guaranteed for up to 300lbs, and around her the spirits seem to wake up. She can taste their delight, their expectant buzz of excitement, and she ties the knot. She clings to the book as she works, holding it tucked under one of her arms even though she doesn’t need to see pictures to know how to do this.
She has been practicing this for weeks now.
Once she’s done, she pulls the remaining items from her handbag: tickets, some money, credit cards and photos. These are photos of happier times with her boyfriend and family and she takes a moment to look at them before falling to the floor and begins the process of ripping them up. This is part of the ritual here: the destruction and deposition of one's old life into one of the many small holes in the ground.
Everyone does this here.
The pieces she makes are small and even, her actions methodical. She gathers them into a little pile and looks for the hole in the ground where her pieces can rest.
She doesn't have to look far. Not far from her little pile, she finds a small hole in the ground and pushes her fingers inside, curious to know who's already buried there. She finds the finy pieces of a photograph showing a handsome young man and pieces of ID that declare him to have been named Tanaka.
Tanaka looks like he was a good man in life and so she decides it would not be so bad for the pieces of Youki to reside in the same hole as that of Tanaka. She carefully scoops all the pieces in, not caring if they mix.
"We're neighbors now, Tanaka." she whispers, as though it's a secret she doesn't want the trees to hear.
When she stands up, she hears the sound of footsteps behind her. This time though, they're the footsteps of someone living.
She turns around to find a man, sad, weary, and shaking his head.
‘Why do you people do this here?’ he says plaintively. His voice is a bottomless ocean of sorrow.
She looks at him, unsure what to say. She'd had speeches memorized for if anyone had tried to stop her before she came. But now, looking at this man with his infinite sadness and care, all those clever words fell from her mind.
She notices the bag of salt in his right hand and an O-Mamori charm around his neck.
He had come prepared, but for what?
Then the forest screams murder around her, angry that it may be denied this time. She realizes that this is not the charming, beautiful perfect place to die, it's a feeding frenzy with a lure.
The man looks around as though hearing the screaming for himself.
"You hear that don’t you?" he asks, his tone measured.
She nods "Yes, they talk to me too."
The man tiredly rubs his eyes, "The CCTV picked you up at the bus stop. We thought you were a risk and I thought I would come and try to help you. Do you really wish to become one of these unhappy and bloodthirsty yurei?"
The screaming becomes louder, and she feels the coldness of fear take root in her heart and spread through her body. There would be no happy, blissful nothingness here, only an eternity of trying to lure others to the same fate.
She's afraid now, and looks to the man with the immeasurably kind and sad eyes who had braved the forest and its spirits to save her. He sees the dawning and holds out his hand to her and she takes it, even as she crouches down to the little hole. She scoops out her little pile, and some of the pile that once was Tanaka, and packs it into her bag. She wants the spirits to have nothing of her there and hopes that by taking some of Tanaka's pile, she can maybe rescue some of him too. Taking the rope, she packs it too, afraid that someone else might be tempted to use it.
She now knows that the forest doesn’t want them to leave, that the god of death that is Aokigahara and the demons that live within him hate being denied. She looks at the bag salt and O-Mamori and wonders how much faith they can put in them as they walk hand and hand, trying not to look at the darting shapes in the trees or hear the screams, wails, and curses hurled by the angry yurei.
The man though seems calm, as though he's done this many times before, and doesn't even startle. They walk until they clear the woods, and then they walk some more.
When they arrive at the door of a cafe, he presses some money into her hands, telling her to get some tea and that he'd be in in a moment. He walks off into the dark and she opens the door, glad to see the light and feel the warmth of the living. Heads turn and she's soon surrounded by people who had recognized her from earlier and who'd thought her dead. An elderly woman sits her by a fire before hurrying to bring her tea. A Buddhist monk comes and prays over her, chasing out the bone-deep chill with holy words. And then the police arrive.
They're nice, even if they do ask her lots of questions about why she wanted to die and what had stopped her in the end.
The man with the salt and O-Mamori doesn't come back.
Tuning out the officer's questions, she begins to look in her bag, at the torn pieces of the life she tried to leave behind. Scooping them out onto the table she tries to fit them together like small jigsaw puzzles. She fits them together like a jigsaw, remaking herself and enough of Tanaka that she finds something familiar in them.
Then it hits her. She’s looking at the guide who had brought her here.
"Miss? Are you ok, Miss?" the officer asks.
Then the officer sees too.
"Where did you get this from?"
His voice trails off in shock.
She tells them doesn’t know and begins to cry, explains about the man with the salt and O-Mamori, and how she had come back. As she tells her tale, a crowd gathers and the police officer looks at her in shock. Then when she is done, he tells her the story of a man named Tanaka Hiro who used to help the police search for bodies but who had, for reasons unknown, ended up taking his own life in the forest. Some had suspected foul play for there had been no one more anti-suicide than he, but a local Shinto priest had blamed the forest and the yurei.
The girl just nods and vows never to come to Aokigahara again.
Twenty years later and she can still hear the forest, calling to her and wanting to make good on its near victory all those years ago. But now she is the one with the bag of salt and the O-Mamori, and her vow never to return broken in the hope of saving others from the forest. When the locals spot them over CCTV, with their hopeless faces and clutching their one-way tickets, it's Youki they call.
And when she gets to the start of the tree line, it's Tanaka Hiro who meets her there.
This is beautiful. Thank you for writing it and shraing it.
ReplyDeleteThis is powerful. The moment Youki realises that the man in the pieces is her guide gave me shivers.
ReplyDelete