At 45, Tarot decided that he did not need such a life. He lost his job at a steel mill, got stuck in debt, and had nothing to pay for housing. It was not possible to find another job.
And the man wanted to simply disappear into the blackness of the forest. “My will to live disappeared,” says Taro, “I lost my ego, and I no longer wanted to live on this earth.” He bought a one-way ticket to the ominous forest. When I got there, I went into the thicket, cut my wrists with a razor, but, apparently, somehow not very skillfully, because I did not die right away. He began to wander among the trees, after a few days he was completely exhausted. So he lay in the bushes, half-dead from thirst, hunger and cold. But life was still glowing in him when a tourist stumbled upon him. And raised the alarm.
The history of the Tarot is just one of hundreds and thousands of tragedies that lead to the Aokigahara forest. It is known, after all, that Japan occupies one of the leading places in the world in terms of the number of suicides, and in Japan itself, this forest undoubtedly belongs. Local residents say that they can always tell who goes to the forest to admire nature, who is looking for mystical adventures, and who weaves there only to never return.
And Taro has already "celebrated" a kind of anniversary of his failed suicide attempt, and now - through a financial consulting company - he is helping others not to give up. But he works without payment, on a voluntary basis. And still lives in a homeless shelter, and is looking for a job … Thinking about suicide? Much less often than before … He tries not to think at all, but these thoughts have not left him completely. So it would be better for him not to walk in that forest …
DON'T ALL GONE BY YOURSELF …
It is hard to imagine that this forest is not so far from Tokyo, at the foot of Mount Fuji. The last volcanic eruption in 1707 did not quite accidentally cover only these 3000 hectares of land with red-hot lava, overgrown with white cedar, pine and boxwood. The local inhabitants are foxes, wild dogs, snakes. Trees, often 300 years old, stand like a solid wall, their crowns close together, so that the semi-darkness and complete silence cause a feeling of hopelessness and oppressive anxiety. It is clear that such a fateful place gives rise to a lot of fears, legends, fables, superstitions.
Rumor has it that ghosts, goblins, demons, devils, werewolves and other innumerable creatures of the human subconscious live in the Aokigahara forest. Knowing that a person lost in this forest will almost certainly be doomed, as early as the 19th century, during the periods of terrible famines, the desperate poor brought here those babies, cripples and old people who would die by starvation anyway … They were kind of “fed” to the gloomy forest. Maybe not all died, but, this or that way, later stories appeared about witches, sorcerers, malicious children, etc. living in this forest.
And only then, closer to our times, people began to come here on their own to commit suicide. It is difficult to say how many of them were, such unfortunates, because only since 1970 the police began to regularly comb this forest, looking for corpses.
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The bodies found in the forest are delivered to the office of the local forestry, where a special room for storing corpses is allocated - a room with two beds: one bed for the deceased, and the other for a worker from the forestry, who must sleep next to this corpse. Otherwise, according to Japanese belief, left
unattended, the dead man will turn into a ghost, and his restless soul will howl all night long and, possibly, try to nest where he will have a company for communication - that is, to the living. The workers usually draw lots - which of them should sleep with the corpse.
We will not cite the sad statistics here, we will only say that ordinary travelers - "savages", and tourists who have bought a voucher, and sufferers seeking solitude, and just vagrants often perish in the forest. And, of course, suicides. It is no coincidence that some forest paths are fenced off with wire, and the shields standing here and there are calling - stop, think about what pain you will cause to your loved ones …
WHAT'S THE SECRET?
A certain role was played by the traditions of the country where suicide has long been considered an acceptable act - if only “not to lose face”. Or maybe some of the creations of Japanese writers added fuel to the fire - Pagoda of the Waves, Black Sea of Trees, and especially the 1993 Complete Guide to Suicide, where Tsurumi Wataru described the Aokigahara forest as an "ideal place to die. ".
But what kind of mysterious power over human souls does this forest have? What is happening here with the person? And something strange is happening. The person loses orientation, cannot find the way back, begins to wander, panic and … quickly gives up. Finding a lost person there is simply unrealistic, and he himself is unlikely to get out, especially since cell phones stop working, and the compass needle begins to rotate wildly. So it is difficult to say who is dying here accidentally and who is intentional.
But the secret of the forest is still quite earthly. A large amount of iron in solidified volcanic lava creates a powerful magnetic anomaly here with all the ensuing consequences. That is why the compass "lies", the mobile phone fails, and other equipment does not work either. For the same reason, there are practically no natural “orderlies of the forest”, vultures. The oppressive, stifling atmosphere deprives a person of the ability to navigate normally: as soon as you move away from the trodden path by ten steps, you no longer know where you were going from and in which direction to go now.
But why do all suicides go here? First, because they want to die at the foot of the sacred Mount Fuji. Secondly, this is a very secluded place: the forest is so dense that no sounds from outside can be heard here. Thirdly, the forest already has such a reputation.
In the parking lot, a Buddhist monk in orange robes explains that the spirits of the dead are inviting the living here. Schoolchildren say that they really saw whitish translucent silhouettes of ghosts in the forest. And spiritualists believe that over the course of several centuries a special lethal aura has formed in the forest - it accumulates the negative energy of those who died here not by their own death. One way or another, but according to the number of suicides, the Aokigahara forest ranks second in the world - after the Golden Gate Bridge in the American San Francisco.
