Cold Open: An alarming number of Japanese citizens have taken a dark pilgrimage to the Aokigahara (“Ah-oakee-gah-hara”) forest, more commonly known as Japan’s suicide forest, to end their lives, most commonly by hanging themselves from tree branches followed by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. An untold number have wandered in and have never wandered out. Beginning in the 1960s, between approximately ten and thirty people each year spent their last living moments in this forest at the base of Mt. Fuji. And the number of annual suicides has greatly increased recently. In 2003, 105 bodies were discovered. Comprehensive data on lives lost in the forest doesn’t seem to have been released since 2003, which is not a good sign.

Why here? Why is a small patch of serene forest the second most popular suicide destination in the world, thought to trail only the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco? More than 1,500 people have jumped off that bridge and died since construction was completed in 1937. So many that the government has decided to build the world’s most expensive safety net. A stainless steel net, located about 20 feet below the bridge’s sidewalk, will span 1.7 miles of roadway on each side of the bridge and extend twenty feet out over the water. It’s gonna take four years to construct and will cost just over $200 million. It should be finished by 2021.

And while that net will certainly make it a Hell of a lot harder for people to throw themselves off that bridge, how do you stop people from taking their lives in a thirty-square kilometer patch of forest? You can’t put a net under every tree.

We’re gonna break down Japan’s suicide dilemma, both within the suicide forest and without - it has one of the highest suicide rates of any country in the world, and look into all sorts of explanations, including some terrifying Japanese paranormal legends, today, on Timesuck .

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome! A. Happy Monday Timesuckers! Or Tuesday, Friday, last Monday for you time travelers, or whenever you’re happening to be letting the Suck knowledge slap your hearing biscuits.

I’m the Man Some Call the Suckmaster, the man my mom calls Daniel Boone, the man a lot of Starbucks baristas call “Don”, so apparently I need to speak up and enunciate, because I’m Dan Cummins, and YOU are listening to Timesuck. Welcome to the Cult of the Curious. Hail Nimrod!

In the Suck Dungeon again today, regarding this one early because the Reverend Doctor Josh Krell is on vacation this coming Monday. His whooping it up at Disneyland and possibly crying and shaking on the Pirate’s of the Caribbean ride because, it can pretty dark in there and there’s a lot of spooky voices and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you’re four years old. If you’re Josh, then, plenty to be ashamed of for doing that so hopefully that’s not the case!

B. Open House: Another open house reminder. And, just to be clear, this is just a visiting hours situation. Just a chance for anyone who wants to come by and say hi and see how the whole thing works to be able to do so.

May 29th, 3-7PM, in the Sandlewood Business Center, where we have a cool, hidden Suck Dungeon inside an unassuming, beige office complex where you might find an orthodontist, quilting catalog distributor, or storage closets packed with unsold ALF laser discs. We’ll have snacks. Some catered stuff from what I understand. We’ll have drinks. We’ll probably even have the dogs.

So pop over and, put some sights to the sounds, and meet some fellow Timesuckers and Space lizards. 2215 E Sherman Ave. Suite 109. Coeur D’Alene, ID 83814. Address in the episode description.

C. Memorial Day sale!

A Memorial Day sale has started! It started the second this episode was released. Or, if this episode was released a few minutes early - it starts at Noon. And it lasts through Memorial Day.

Sale is 25% off everything in the store, use the discount code HEROES at checkout!

And Space Lizards - listen to last Thursday’s episode for your 30% off code which cannot be combined with your existing discount.

Doing a big blow out to sale to make room for some new merch which will be hitting the store in waves this summer.

When the following items are sold out, they’re gone!

1. We will not be restocking the first generation original logo shirt. 2. We will not be restocking the second generation 100% imported unicorn scrotum black flat earth / lizard illuminati shirt. 3. We will not be restocking the Third Generation 213% imported Koala Anus Yah-Mo Timesuck Bojangles, Michael Motherfucking McDonald, and James Ingram shirt. 4. We will not be restocking the 4th generation 311% pure domestic bald eagle head feather Timesuck logo shirt. 5. AND - we will not be restocking the red, Danger Brain Hail Nimrod shirt. 6. AND - lastly, when the current hats are gone, they are GONE.

We will be getting new products in waves throughout the rest of the year. Several different products are in various stages of design and production including a new hat. Lynze is working hard with Danger Brain to make sure the new products are top quality - damn you Lucifina for making us all wait so long for what we want. Takes a minute to make good shit. So, if you’re bummed we don’t have new stuff as soon as you’d like, just know we are working on it all the time.

Again, 25% off using the discount code HEROES at checkout. Sale starts Monday, May 21st, that’s today, at Noon PST, that’s now. Sale ends Memorial Day, Monday the 28th, at Midnight PST. Hail Nimrod!

D. Space Newt bit by a dog! Shout out to Timesucker and Space Lizard Cody Osuna and his son Bohannon! Little Bohannon, only one year old who listens to this show and the Secret Suck with his father, got bit by a dog recently and needed 6 stitches to his cheek and four stitches across his tongue. He’s doing fine but the little dude misses his binky! Can’t suck the bink, can’t take a puff of that baby cig with stitches in his tongue. Bojangles sends positive healing energy your way young Space Newt! You shall heal at ten times normal speed now young anunnaki! Heal well! Praise Bojangles!

Email Lynze your address Cody and we’ll get you a little care package. [email protected]

Alright - some tour dates and then we’re off! I promise.

E. Tour: May 31st - June 3rd - the Flat Earth Tour continues at the Tempe Improv with special guest Gareth Reynolds from the Dollop Podcast. Excited!

June 8th and 9th I’ll be bring my flat earth mockery to the Drafthouse in Washington, DC - tickets are ON SALE! http:// drafthousecomedy.com/event.cfm?id=507358&

June 15-16th I’ll be at the Funny Bone in Des Moines, Iowa - two nights only! Tickets on sale there as well.

July 15th doing my next live Timesuck podcast in Orlando at the Orlando Improv AND several standup shows July 12-14. http:// www.theimprovorlando.com/ComedyClub/866e4def-e0ba-4722- b140-f1b2b8ab8940/Calendar/orlando

I’ll be at The Comedy Store in La Jolla the following week, July 20-22nd.

And then I’ll be in Dayton, July 27-28th, at the Funny Bone.

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv. Tampa, Palm Beach, Chicago, Sunnyvale, Portland, Tacoma, Columbus, your mom’s panic room, Grand Rapids, your dad’s crawlspace and more coming up in 2018!

F. Now, let’s dig into the darkness, and find out what the Hell is going on in Japan’s suicide forest.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Suicide Disclaimer: Quick note about today’s episode. I’ll be making jokes during an episode on suicide, but suicide is not a fucking joke.

Anyone listening to this, thinking of self harm, please reconsider. Don’t stay quiet if you’re having thoughts darker than anything Lucifina could put in your head. Reach out to someone, genuinely seek help. Think about those you’d be leaving behind. Hit pause, reevaluate the potential of your life and how you could change. Think you’ve fucked up too bad, made too many mistakes? Volunteer at youth or homeless centers - teach others to not make the mistakes you’ve made. Talk to someone who can provide a different point of view. Just hold on a little longer and reach out. Call the suicide helpline at Suicide Prevention Hotline dot org 1-800-273-8255. No sponsor - just me not wanting to lose a listener! Just don’t want to lost a listener to Nimrod’s butthole. You remember that’s where you end up, right? No ballsack for you buddy. Nimrod won’t let you in his heavenly scrote if you end it all.

But for real, if you know someone listening who is struggling with suicidal thoughts, who has attempted suicide, or even if you someone who has died from self harm and you need to talk to someone who understands the pain your in, hit those digits. Save yourself. Save a friend. Unless you know, for sure, that your friend is like, a serial killer. Then, maybe don’t try to talk them off the ledge. Maybe then, by saving a murderer, you’re getting other people killed. Call the police in that situation. Also - why haven’t you already called the police if you know your friend is a serial killer? Not cool buddy. Not cool.

III. How common is suicide in Japan? Alright, so we know that a lot of people have taken their lives in the Suicide forest. But what about Japan in general? Let’s give a little suicide context to the land of the rising sun.

As recently as 2017, Japan’s suicide rate was the sixth highest in the world and the second worst among eight major industrialized nations. The number of suicides in Japan was 21,897 in 2016, which was the lowest total in twenty-two years, but suicide was still the leading cause of death among people in the 15-39 age groups.

Japan’s suicide rate (the number of suicides per 100,000 people) stood at 19.5 as of 2014. Russia topped the list of eight major economies at 21.8. Japan’s rate was higher than 15.1 in France, 13.4 in the U.S., 12.6 in Germany, 11.3 in Canada, 7.5 in Britain and 7.2 in Italy. The year of most-recent available statistics varies by country.

The highest rate was observed in Lithuania, where 30.8 out of 100,000 were recorded as having taken their own lives. It was followed by 28.5 in South Korea and 24.2 in Suriname. The 11.7 suicide rate for Japanese women was the third highest, following South Korea’s 17.3 and Suriname’s (soo r-uh-nahm) 13.4.

Not sure what the Hell is going on in Lithuania. That stat send me headed off in a Side Suck trying to figure why suicide is such an epidemic and I couldn’t find a good answer other than theories on struggling to form an identity in its latest post-communist national incarnation - it split from the Soviet Union in 1990. And, also, poor national mental health resources. Oh, and a super high percentage of demons. There are 3.2 demons per capita in Lithuania which is 350 times the worldwide average. There are also several open portals to Hell in Lithuania and the citizens of at least four towns are constantly being attacked by actual monsters.

So - no formal study has tried to link suicide rate to so many fucking demons and to all the monsters and open Hell portals and such, but, that may have something to do with what’s going on.

And of course that is absolutely bananas.

And we’re not talking about Lithuania. Talking ‘bout Japan! Why are Japanese suicide rates so high?

A. Cultural view of Suicide: Well, for starters, suicide is viewed very differently in Japan than it is in the US. Yoshinori Cho, the director of the psychiatry department at Teikyo (“Tea kee yo”) University in Kawasaki, Kanagawa (“Kah-nah-gah-wah”), explains how, while in America, suicide is almost always culturally viewed as a shameful, cowardly, or selfish act - it can be seen as an honorable way out in Japan thanks to Japan’s samurai tradition.

Let’s talk but Seppuku! (“Se-poo-koo”)

1. Samurai: Seppuku (“Se-poo-koo”) , called harakiri (“Hahr-uh- keer-ee”) in the Western world, is the ancient samurai act of ceremonial suicide, first recorded in 1180.

And why would samurai kill themselves? To answer that we need a brief explanation of who the samurai even were. The Samurai were a warrior class prominent in feudal Japan between the 12th century all the way until April of last year. Last April, 2 million samurai handed their swords in to the Japanese government in exchange for brand new Play Station 5’s. They have shit over there we don’t even KNOW about yet!

No, they lasted until the 19th century, and they valued honor above everything else. They lived by a strict code that was much based on that ol’ hardcore phrase - “death before dishonor.” The samurai culture developed in the 12th and 13th centuries distinct from the culture of the rest of imperial Japan. They became these groups of warrior monks, in a way. They lived by the tenets of what became known as the bushido (“boo-she-daw”)— “the warrior code.” Which sounds like an awesome way to live until you realize that it includes some rules like killing yourself if your feudal lord gets killed. Which seems a little hardcore for my tastes. And the bushido code stressed unquestioning loyalty and obedience and valued honor above life.

I’m sure we’ll do a Samurai Suck at some point. That would be super cool.

Japan had a military government from 1192 to 1867 CE called a shogunate (“Shoh-guh-nit”). It was lead by the Shogun (“shoh guh n”), the title applied originally to the chief military commander, which then became a hereditary position. Technically - legally, the shogunate was under the control of the emperor, and the shogun’s authority was limited to control of the military forces of the country. But the feudal character of Japanese society created a situation in which control of the military became tantamount to control of the country, and the emperor remained in his palace in Kyōto chiefly as a symbol of sovereignty behind the shogun.

And the samurai were loyal to the daimyos (dahy-myaw) who were their feudal lords. And the daimyos (dahy-myaw) were loyal to the shogun. Being a samurai was to be the Confucian “perfect gentleman” and Samurai were taught that their essential function was to exemplify virtue to the lower classes. Obedience to authority was stressed, but duty came first even if it entailed violation of statute law. The extent to which duty superseded all else is perhaps best exemplified in the story of the 47 rōnin (“roh nin”) from the early 18th century, Ronin being samurai no longer serving a feudal lord. The samurai had become masterless after their lord had been treacherously murdered, and then they avenged their lord’s death and afterward were all ordered to commit seppuku (“Se-poo-koo”).

The precise content of the Bushidō (“boo-she-daw”) code varied historically as the samurai class came under the influence of Zen Buddhist and Confucian thought, but its one unchanging ideal was martial spirit, including athletic and military skills as well as fearlessness toward the enemy in battle. Frugal living, kindness, honesty, and personal honor were highly regarded, as was piety (“pahy-i-tee”) . However, the supreme obligation of the samurai was to his lord, even if this might cause suffering to his parents.

And the samurai were bound by the code of bushido to kill themselves rather than bring dishonor to themselves or their (dahy-myaw) or the shogun, their families, community, etc. If capture by the enemy was imminent, they would commit Seppuku (“Se-poo-koo”) rather than be taken. If their (dahy- myaw) was killed they would commit (Seppuku (“Se-poo-koo”). If they had brought dishonor on themselves in a number of ways, done something unforgivable by the code, they would commit Seppuku (“Se-poo-koo”).

In 1945, after their defeat in WWII, many Japanese military officials and civilians committed voluntary seppuku out of a resolute sense of pride and honor that refused to bend to the enemy.

And here’s how that ritual would go if time allowed and their enemy wasn’t kicking in the doors and about to capture you.

Prior to the event, the samurai would write a death poem because it was felt that the person facing imminent death was believed to have special insight into the nature of death and the value of life.

And then the samurai would drink some sake to get ready for what he was about to do. Hopefully, a LOT of sake.

Then, a large white cushion would be placed and witnesses would arrange themselves discreetly to one side. The samurai, wearing a white kimono, would kneel on the pillow in a formal style. Behind and to the left of the samurai knelt his kaishakunin (his “second” or assistant).

A servant would place a wooden table before the samurai, which would contain a sake (rice wine) cup, a sheaf of washi (paper handmade from mulberry bark) and writing utensils, as well as the kozuka (disemboweling blade) although the samurai would be allowed to use his own sword if he preferred. The sake cup was then filled from the left by an attendant. The samurai then emptied the cup in two drinks of exactly two sips each, as one sip would show greed, and three or more sips would show hesitation. This would make a total of four sips (the character shi, which means “four”, also means “death”).

That shit is hardcore. If I was about to disembowel myself, it would be really hard to stop at four sips of rice wine. Could I also have four shots of Everclear? Maybe also be given four fat lines of coke? Four syringes full of heroin?

Why the writing utensils?

Before committing seppuku, a samurai would write a jisei (death poem) which was considered important as a person facing imminent death was believed to have special insight into the nature of death and the value of life. The poem should be graceful and natural, usually in the theme of transient emotions. So many rules and rituals! Even mentioning the samurai’s impending death in the poem would be considered poor form and uncouth. This was also important for the samurai as the poem would serve as a written glimpse into his nobility of character and how he wished to be remembered after his death. Asano Naganori, for example, whose seppuku precipitated the famous incident of the “forty-seven ronin”, is said to have written a particularly poor death poem, possibly because he implied the impending end to his life, thereby showing his immaturity and lack of character.

What a fucking baby. Dude, man up and write a nice poem before slicing open your stomach and then having your assistant cut your head off. I hope that, if I were writing death poem, the Reverend Doctor Josh Krell would remind me to write it the correct way before cutting my head off. And if it was grammatically incorrect, Timesuck editor Jesse Dobner would also have to commit seppuku.

And they did get their heads cut off. All part of the ritual.

According to tradition, when he felt ready, the samurai would then loosen the folds of his kimono, exposing his stomach. He would then lift the knife with one hand and unsheathe it with the other, setting the sheathe to one side. After mentally preparing himself, he would drive the knife into the left side of his stomach, then draw it across to the right. He would then turn the blade in his wound and bring it upward.

Most samurai did not have to endure this last agony, as the kaishakunin would cut their heads off at the first sign of pain. The cut in seppuku carried out to its finish was known as the jumonji (crosswise cut), and to perform it in its entirety was considered a particularly impressive seppuku.

Why the stomach? I thought this was interesting. As the human spirit was believed to reside in the stomach, slitting the stomach open was considered to be the most straightforward, and bravest, way to die. Therefore, this act was a privilege reserved for the samurai. Commoners were allowed to hang or drown themselves, and samurai women, called onna-bugeisha (oh-nah boo-gay-shah), could slit their own throats, but only a samurai was allowed to commit seppuku. And yes there were samurai women - bad ass warriors who fought alongside the men. Definitely doing a samurai suck at some point.

Think about the phrasing of “only the samurai were culturally allowed to kill themselves in this way but commoners could hang or drown themselves.” That says so much about Japanese culture. Suicide is okay but don’t do it in a way not fitting for your social station.

And, bonus points for cutting open your whole stomach without showing pain. Fuck! No way I would be that samurai.

No, I feel like those other samurai who are supposed to witness the whole thing would be waiting a long, long time for me to cut my stomach.

There’d be a lot of them saying stuff like, “Are you about ready? I have to go the bathroom.” And, “c’mon dude. My legs are asleep. Enough already!” “C’mon man, you're supposed to write a poem, not a book. What page are you on? 250?” “For fuck’s sake, push the sword in already. Three of the other witnesses have killed themselves waiting for you to kill yourself. This shit is ridiculous.”

And there’d be a lot of me saying stuff like, “Wait. Wait! Could one of you guys scratch my back? I don’t want to die with an itch.” “Hey. Hold up. Does this sword seem sharp enough to you? I don’t want to stab myself with a dull sword.” “Hey - I’m really nervous to cut my stomach open right now. I think I might’ve eaten a bad egg this morning at breakfast. Feels like I have food poisoning. Maybe we should try this again next week. I’m really worried about what the smell is gonna be like. I don't want that. You don’t want that.”

Anyway, the real samurai tried to keep their composure even on the brink of death, and show their strength and full control of his mind and body in his last moments. Any previous reputation of a samurai would be meaningless if he were to die in an unseemly manner.

Of course, there were circumstances where there was not enough time for the samurai to undergo the whole ritual of seppuku. Therefore, acts such as cutting his own throat, throwing himself from a running horse with a sword in his mouth, or throwing himself off cliffs were also allowed.

And check out this element of the assistant chopping their fucking head off. Ideally, if the ritual went perfectly, and the assistant would lop off the samurai’s head almost but not quite clean off, in one stroke, so that the head would drop forward instead of flying off so that a second little chop could quickly be made and drop their head into their own hands. That’s right - more bonus points for catching your own head. Holy shit that is fucked up but also beautiful to me in a strange way. Catching your own head - that’s a tough way to go out. Only a fool makes fun of your badass-ness if you go out that way.

“Dude. That guy was a fucking pansy!” “Pansy? He caught his head. He caught his own fucking head after cutting out all of his intestines. Psycho? Maybe. Pansy? No.”

So, there’s that. And before we discuss other aspects of Japanese culture that explain a different attitude towards suicide than we have in the United States, let’s talk about the right way to go to sleep.

You’re not supposed to make yourself go to sleep forever, you are supposed to treat yourself to a good night's sleep, such as laying on the best mattress in the mattress game which brings us to our first sponsor.

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C. Kamikazes: Now let’s talk about kamikazes.

The kamikaze were a group of young Japanese pilots who flew suicide missions aimed at taking out as many of the enemy as possible. They would crash their planes, never ejecting themselves in an attempt at survival, into Allied ships. Like they did during the attack on Pearl Harbor. About 3,800 kamikaze pilots died during the war, and more than 7,000 naval personnel were killed by kamikaze attacks. While many other countries labeled kamikaze pilots insane fanatics, the Japanese viewed them more as determined heroes who sacrificed all for the security of their family and fellow citizens. They were voluntarily ending their lives with honor. And this wasn’t that long ago. This is in the 1940s. This again reveals a very different perception regarding suicide that we typically have in the United States.

The Japanese word kamikaze is usually translated as "divine wind" How dedicated were those kamikaze pilots? They trained to kill themselves in battle. Fuck. And they didn’t even think they were gonna be given some weird harem of virgins like some Islamic fundamentalist suicide attackers have believed.

I wondered, what did they believe awaited them on the other side of death? Well, the predominant religion, historically, in Japan is Shintoism. It’s the world’s fifth largest religion and it’s a religion of ritual and tradition. One of the core beliefs of the Shinto religion is the idea that everything possesses a spiritual essence or energy called “kami.” Mountains, rivers, places, animals and people are said to have kami inside.

Shinto beliefs about death and the afterlife are often considered dark and negative. The old traditions describe death as a dark, underground realm with a river separating the living from the dead. The images are very similar to Greek mythology and the concept of hades and to Norse mythology and the concept of Hel. Can’t forget about the Norse Gods and Odin’s Spider horse!

Shinto traditions lean heavily on the concepts of the presence of kami and not reincarnation. The spiritual energy, or kami, in everyone is released and recycled at the time of death. The spirits live in another world, the most sacred of which is called “the other world of heaven.” These other worlds are not seen as a paradise or a punishment. Instead the worlds are simply where the spirits reside. They can connect and visit the present world when people correctly perform rituals and festivals.

Shintoists believes that the ancestral spirits will protect their descendants. The prayers and rituals performed by the living honor the dead and memorialize them. In return, the spirits of the dead offer protection and encouragement for the living. Shintoism also views that some individuals live such an exemplary life that they become deified in a process called apotheosis. Many in the imperial family have experienced this honor, as have successful warriors.

So, basically, die a noble warrior’s death and you make it to the VIP section of the afterlife.

D. No Christianity: Shintoism being Japan’s major religion also plays into cultural attitudes towards suicide. It just doesn’t hold the same view of suicide that Christianity does.

An article in Psychology Today, titled “Asian Honor and Suicide: The Difference Between East and West” from 2014 talks about how, in the West, given Christianity’s view, suicide has long been shrouded in shame and is actually viewed as one of the most grievous sins you can commit because you can’t ask for forgiveness after you’ve committed it, and have, thanks to not being able to call out that final Hail Mary, condemned your soul to Hell.

But in Eastern cultures, it has been seen as a way of atonement, of restoring honor like the samurai, and a way of protecting a family’s legacy from being tarnished.

Even as recently as 2007, after a high profile cabinet minister killed himself while under investigation for financial impropriety, the governor of Tokyo called him a true samurai for preserving his honor.

It’s just not looked at in the same way. At all. It’s one of the ultimate sins and a shameful deed in the U.S. whereas in traditional Japanese faith, it erases the misdeeds and wrongs of the life lived and leads to an enlightened soul.

Japan is trying to change this cultural attitude though.

In the early months of this year, 2018, Japan announced that it was rolling out a five year plan aimed at increasing suicide prevention. Their goal is to cut suicide rates by 30 percent over that course of time.

So, now that you know a little about Japan’s historical attitude towards suicide, we can peak into the specifics of the suicide forest itself.

IV. Aokigahara: Aokigahara (“Ah-oakee-gah-hara”) lies at the base of Mount Fuji. Locally, it’s known under the much less ominous name of Jukai ("Sea of Trees") because of the high density of trees that are green year round.

Mt. Fuji, Japan’s holy mountain and national icon, is the tallest peak in the country and its pristine, snow-capped, familiar shape is painted and imprinted on virtually everything you can image - flags, cups, shirts, hats, posters, ancient and contemporary art. Its majestic image conjures a sense of awe that transcends time and culture. While it’s only sixty miles from the congested streets of Tokyo, it feels as though it’s a world apart from the modern setting of the city.

Mt. Fuji rises 12,389 feet above sea level in an otherwise gentle landscape where the mountain has long been heralded as being spiritually significant. The Ainu, an ancient indigenous group, believed it to be a sacred place and named it after the words meaning “fire” and “hearth”. Buddhists have also held that it is a powerful and spiritual place, but the Shinto are the ones who hold it in the highest regard. The Shinto have eight major shrines at the base of Mt. Fuji and hundreds of smaller ones throughout the area.

The earliest of these dates all the way back to 806 CE, predating those samurai we spoke of earlier. Climbing the mountain itself was considered an important pilgrimage and as such required the guidance of a holy monk or priest for many generations. And women weren’t allowed out there at all until 1945, as they were believed by the Shinto to be unclean due to menstruation and childbirth.

Uh oh! Didn’t catch that part of Shintoism earlier. Shintoism has a complicated attitude towards women. They’re seen as conduits between spirits and men and are described as miko, or "Children of God.” And yet - they have those dirty bloody baby dispensaries that fuck up all the shrines. To this day, there are still shrines that have signs asking to women to at least wait until 72 days after childbirth before bringing their naughty filth holes around the sacred shines.

They better be careful. Lucifina might just wreak havoc on those shrines. She might make Mt Fuji erupt in anger. Don’t want to piss off Lucifina. Hail Lucifina!

Today, thousands of people climb Mt Fuji’s slopes for several hours in late summer, usually at night, to see the sun rise from the astounding view at the peak. It’s considered a sacred, powerful site - that women are now begrudgingly allowed to enjoy - and it’s said that if you have a dream about it you will have good fortune. And the (“Ah-oakee-gah- hara”) forest lies beneath its Northwestern side. to get to the isolated forest by train that consists of about twelve square miles of dense, beautiful forest that grew atop the hardened lava of Mt. Fuji’s last major eruption back in 864 CE.

The porous lava rock that makes up the ground absorbs sound well and creates a hushed environment that is eerily quiet. If you were to yell for help, it’s unlikely that anyone would hear you. God, that would be weird if you didn’t know that type of rock the forest is built on is especially good at absorbing sound, in addition to the sound deadening dense vegetation. Little things like that can be super unnerving, especially at night.

And, outside of park workers themselves and people wanting to commit suicide - not many locals go there. Local children are often advised to avoid it because it’s believed by many to be a haunted place full of dark forces. The area first started being called the “Suicide Forest” in the 1960s when tourists visiting the area began to find rotting corpses while on their hunt for gorgeous views of Mt. Fuji. Within a couple of quick decades, volunteers, police, park rangers, and journalists were regularly surveying the grounds in search of those contemplating suicide to try and talk them out of it and for the remains of those who had made their final decision.

If you do decide to visit for any reason, when you get there, you’ll find the forest has a small paved parking lot that too often has one, or several abandoned cars.

Hundreds of cars have pulled into that lot with their owners only to eventually leave without them. A trail leads from the lot into the forest and there’s a sign along the trail the likes of which you probably won’t find in any other park in the world. It says, “Your life is a precious gift from your parents. Please think about your parents, siblings, and children. Talk about your troubles,” It proceeds to advise you to contact the Suicide Prevention Association.

If you decide to press on and journey into the breathtaking greenery of the cyprus, hemlock, and pine trees you may find some of its natural inhabitants on the way, but it’s a bit unlikely. Asian black bear, bats, mice, deer, boar, fox, rabbit, squirrels, and birds quietly share the environment made by the conifer and deciduous trees. I had no idea there were bears in Japan. I looked them and they’re pretty damn cute. They max out at around 270 pounds, so, they’re legit bears. But, they’re also highly endangered and unless poaching goes down, it’s thought they’ll be extinct within a 100 years. I guess there’s about 10,000 left in the whole country.

When the sun is up in the forest, you’ll hear the quiet chatter of birds but it’s deathly silent in the dark. Occasional flowers and mushrooms can be found amongst the ferns and moss covered rocks on the forest floor. Tree roots and fallen limbs snake through the undergrowth, over and around rocks and small caverns, and create a creeping sense of entanglement. The first kilometer or so of hiking, which takes you closer to the mountain itself, is littered with remnants of other hikers, despite the constant upkeep of the officials working there. The trail itself is mostly clean, but ribbons and ropes are left tied to trees from previous visitors who marked their way back to the trail, and small pieces of garbage - cut credit cards, empty blister packs from pills, the occasional broken phone - are easy to spot on the periphery. Trail markers point the way to several natural attractions - the Narusawa (Nah-roo-sah-wah) and Fugaku (Foo-gah-koo) Ice Caves, the Lake Sai Bat Cave, and the Fuji Five Lakes.

Those ice caves would be pretty creepy if the government hadn’t sanitized them with steps and hand railings going down into them and lights and paths and screens and signs. Water droplets falling to the cave floor freeze and create these ice stalactite and stalagmite looking formations in these deep caves formed by lava cooling as it flowed back when Fuji erupted. Super cool and also a great setting for a horror movie.

The farther in you venture out into the forest past the caves, the more pristine the forest becomes and also the more foreboding it feels. If you choose to ignore all suggestions and venture off the path, it can get easy to get lost. It all starts to look the same, so which way exactly did you come from? Given that roughly a hundred bodies have been found each year (although officials have quit posting the number, in hopes of quelling the phenomena), for the last several years, the longer you wander lost through the forest the greater yours odds of encountering a dead body become. Most of the suicides have hanged themselves, which is nearly always fatal, and the majority of the rest choose death by overdose, which isn’t nearly as fatal, but, there’s a good chance that some of those who don’t die right away from an overdose, people who may have changed their mind, end up still dying because in their drugged and disorientated state, they can’t figure out how to make it back to civilization before it’s too late.

While the Japanese government is well aware of the high number of suicides in the forest, short of just no longer letting anyone into the forest, there isn’t much that can be done to stop it. It’s not like the Golden Gate Bridge where you can build a net so people can’t jump to their deaths in the bay below.

If you want to see any of this for yourself, there’s quite a few documentaries online about the Suicide forest.

I watched a short, twenty minute VICE documentary on the suicide forest where a cameraman follows nature guard Azusa Hayona on a walk through some of the grounds. Hayona is a geologist who works in the forest as an environmental protector and he’s also just a good dude who doesn’t want people to kill themselves and he tries to find people before it’s too late.

He regularly goes on suicide patrol, in search of bodies and people to talk down. He’s lived in the area for over thirty years and has personally found over 100 corpses in the twenty years prior to the VICE piece.

Holy shit, man! Can you imagine discovering over 100 dead bodies. And not all once - which would be horrific, but, I would prefer that to having them strung out over two decades. Jesus man. You can’t ever get images like that out of your mind.

Hayona claims, as many of the local rangers do, that he can likely guess who is coming for a nature hike, who is coming with indecision and doubt, and who is coming to never leave. Those who enter the forest and are contemplating suicide but haven’t yet made up their mind often bring a tent and use rope or ribbon to mark their way back to the trail as they venture off to a secluded part of the wood to contemplate their fate. Their informal markers are everywhere in the forest. The occasional cut noose can also be found on the ground, from those who made their decision.

As Hayona leads viewers on a walk through the forest, often off trail, he encounters an abandoned tent that appears to have been there for a few days. Hayona hopes they’re off walking and still deciding, that they still have hope, pointing out that if a body had been found the tent site would have been cleaned up. Nearby, he finds a creepy stuffed doll nailed upside down to a tree. Seriously. The kind of shit that would send most of us into sheer panic if you ran into it alone at night.

The doll wears a striped suit, its face is ripped up, and nails are driven through its feet and hands. It’s been crucified in an inverted position. Hayona says the doll is a sign of contempt for society and that a curse has been driven into the tree with the nails. A short walk leads him to a wooden sign nailed to another tree, presumably by the same person, that reads, “Suicide note: I came here because nothing good ever happened in my life. Don’t look for me.” Their name is also listed.

Then he comes across a second note that speaks to the sheer volume of tragedy that has occurred in this forest. It says, “Need help writing your suicide note? Call +44 445 887 9909. Very affordable rates. We’re not trying to take your last dollar. Well, actually we are. Call now and get a free doll crucifixion kit!”

Alright - the first note is totally true! So is the doll. The suicide note business, not so much. Can you imagine if that was a business? That would be such a dark business. The only way you make more money is if more of your clients kill themselves. Almost zero return customers. Only people who tried to kill themselves, failed, and are trying again but feel like they need a new note since their life circumstances have changed. The ideal customer is someone who is extremely suicidal, their life undergoes a lot of changes, AND, they’re really bad at killing themselves. What a sad person that would be. Their self esteem is already terrible, possibly because they don’t believe they’re good at anything, and then they feel even worse about themselves because they’re not even good at suicide.

Okay. This is getting pretty dark. More on Hayona’s journey through the woods.

Further into his patrol, Hayona finds another tent in the middle of a trail. This one has someone inside. It’s Chikatilo!

(Chikatilo) “What is big deal!?! I bother no one! I stroke soft shame cock in woods where no one watch but nosy park ranger. Maybe I also wrassle some people. But, only people wanting to be wrassled! It mercy killing. Chikatilo help them. I kind of good guy this episode.”

No. Ukrainian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo is not in the tent.

Park geologist Hayona approaches and asks the man inside if everything is OK. He lets him know that he is not allowed to camp there and that he is a nature guard on suicide patrol. The man apologizes, but never leaves his tent. Hayona asks him to take time to think and be positive, he tells the stranger that it was nice to meet him, and he shows him how to leave the park. He’s worried because the guy didn’t look like a hiker; he wasn’t dressed the part.

Shortly after this, Hayona finds a perfectly intact skeleton on the ground and shows clear disappointment and sadness. The bones are resting inside the clothes last worn by the person who ended their life, the feet are still neatly tucked into their laced boots. It’s pretty eerie. The shoes look new. They’re clean burgundy and black rubber-soled hiking boots. Some guy’s leg bones run right into them popping out of faded dark blue pants. There’s an empty water bottle near the guy’s left hand. It looks like some guy laid on his back, took some sleeping pills, drank ‘em down with a little bottled water, feel asleep, never woke up, and then his body wasn’t found until two years later. Nothing but a skeleton and some clothes. That’s what make it strange. No flesh at all. Just bones. And clean, new looking shoes. The body has completely rotted and has being eaten by scavengers and bacteria down to a skeleton, and the shoes are fine. Just a blatant reminder of how fragile and temporary we all are.

The whiteness and near cleanliness of the bones also make it look fake somehow, like a Halloween shop display. But this is real. Hayona lets the cameraman know that someone will be notified to properly take care of the body.

Near the end of the film, Hayona comments that “You think you die alone, but that’s not true,” as he shows the viewers bouquets of flowers and boxed chocolates left in remembrance of another victim of suicide. It’s a short film, but the impact is big. The fact that there are so many people ending their lives in that forest that it’s a virtual guarantee that you will encounter something like this by merely venturing off of the trail is a travesty. How did this forest become such a magnet for death and despair?

We’re gonna look into reasons very soon. But before we talk about more death, let’s talk about some life!

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V. Why This Forest?

Okay. Now back to death and despair. So, we know now that suicide is viewed differently in Japan. We know that a lot of suicides occur in the “Ah-oakee-gah-hara”) forest. But why do they occur in this particular forest? I mean, if you’re going to kill yourself, why take a trip out into the woods to do it?

Why, out of all the locations available in a country plagued by suicide, is Aokigahara forest the location of choice for those ending their lives? It’s an absolutely stunning, potentially tranquil, natural wonder. The setting seems to lie in such stark juxtaposition to the common acts committed there and the decomposing or animal-scavenged bodies left hanging from the ancient trees.

A. “Kuroi Jukai” (Black Sea of Trees): The answer may lie in a pair of books, the first being 1960’s “Kuroi Jukai” (Black Sea of Trees) written by Seicho Matsumoto. You can order it off Amazon and read it if you can read Japanese. It hasn’t been translated into English.

It’s about young lovers venturing into the Aokigahara forest to end their lives. It’s reportedly written in a romantic tone that glorifies the protagonist’s actions.

In addition to this book that may be the reason people began to kill themselves in this forest, another book published in 1993 may be the reason the amount of suicides have spiked in more recent years. It’s called “The Complete Suicide Manual”, written by Wataru Tsurumi, and it’s exactly as fucked up as it sounds.

It lists out the options for committing suicide and then ranks them, noting their effectiveness, cost, pain level, preparation required, emotional impact on family, etc. Tsurumi doesn’t really get into the morality of suicide, or the philosophy around it, he simply published an instructional manual that covers over eleven methods in eleven chapters: overdosing, hanging, slashing the wrist, i.e., the carotid artery, car collission, gas poisoning, electrocution, drowning, self- immolation, freezing, miscellaneous - that’s a weird one - and then self-defenestration (De fen eh stray tion), which I had not heard of. Self-defenestration (De fen eh stray tion) is a very fancy way of saying “throwing yourself out of window”. Seriously. Defenestration (De fen eh stray tion) defined by Merriam Webster as “throwing of a person or thing out of a window assassination by defenestration” (De fen eh stray tion)

I feel like that has to be a really short chapter.

“Chapter 10, Self-Defenestration (De fen eh stray tion). Find a window at least 100 feet off the ground. Open it. Throw yourself out of it.

Chapter 11: Miscellaneous. Section - death from anal explosion. Find a dynamite stick. Stuff in your ass. Light it. Spend several seconds really hoping you used enough dynamite to die as opposed to enough to keep living after you’ve blown your dick and balls and/or vagina off and also destroyed your spine and butthole.”

Pretty controversial book. As it should be. And sadly, there have been many books found along with bodies at the scene of carious suicides, including several cases of the suicides of junior high school students. Rough.

The author in the book claims that he opposes the societal pressure to persevere and live strong. And he lists the Aokigahara forest as “the perfect place to die” and way too many copies of this book have been found in the forest.

The book had sold a million copies as of 2006, the year of an article I found where the author was interviewed and asked if he had any regrets and he said he didn’t. He said: “Killing oneself is not a crime. It’s not right to criticize those who killed themselves because we all have the freedom. When the authorities are tightening the control and surveillance of individuals, I have to speak out even more loudly that we can choose whatever way we want to live our lives.”

So, is this book to blame? Can literature really have such a dramatic impact? The rate of suicide within the forest did increase significantly after the publication of both of these works, but correlation and causation can not be confused. These suicides may well have been committed regardless - these books might have just changed the location.

Or, did the books maybe just add to an already existing supernatural, paranormal explanation as to why so many die at their own hands in that forest. We’re gonna look at that in a second. It’s gonna get a little scary, little creepy. So, before digging into more horror, let’s lighten things up and check in with what those lovable losers have to say about the suicide forest, those Idiots of the Internet. PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

VI. Idiots of the Internet A. To find this week’s whackadoodles, I went to the trailer for the 2016 US horror movie, The Forest, starring Natalie Dormer. I’ve never seen it. It’s about a young woman who travels to the suicide forest to find her twin sister and finds a bunch of creepy monsters instead.

I watched the trailer, and that was enough for me. Somehow, according to various comment section posts and reviews, the film had a 10% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I say “had”, because right now, it has no ratings on rotten tomatoes. Curious how the producers or distributors pulled that off? I’m sure a lot of other films would like to erase their terrible ratings. The other 2016 US film set in the Suicide Forest, Sea of Trees, a drama starring Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts, Ken Watanabe, has an 11% approval rating. So, apparently, this forest is also the place a lot of movies have gone to die.

Sorry. I know that joke is not in the best taste, BUT, you know I’m big on getting help if you are actually feeling suicidal, and, that joke basically wrote itself.

Couple virtue signalers pop up in the comment section almost immediately.

1. User Ashley Duskmountain writes: Suicide forest is a real place i find that so sad!

2. Rikka Potato posts: It’s sad that there actually is a suicide forest…

You’re right, Rikka and Ashley, suicide is sad. Thank God you two pointed that out, or I might have gone my whole life thinking it was a thing super happy people did that should be celebrated. Great job. You’re both wonderful, kind-hearted, thoughtful people and now we all know that.

3. User AmyxAmy clears an important misconception about the film up, posting: The forest is based on Aokigahara yes it's real but the monsters are fake.

Ohhhhhhhhh! That makes way more sense than what I thought Amy, I thought that the forest was fake but the monsters were real. Got it! Thanks for letting me know the monsters aren’t real. Nice to hear from a monster expert. Now I can sleep easy.

I wonder if AmyxAmy posts on all horror movie videos. “Hey everybody - finally just watched the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Apparently, lagoons are a thing. That part of that movie holds up. HOWEVER - as of this message - no humanoid, amphibious salamander-ish creature has been found. So, don’t be afraid to swim in lagoons this summer.”

4. Maksim Dejanovic posted: “the movie was filmed in Serbia and I was in the house where is filmed its still there”.

Maksim posted this in 2017 and the movie was filmed in 2015.

Wow! That’s SO CRAZY that the house would still be there TWO WHOLE YEARS after filming. Incredible! I’m shocked they let you in this historically significant building. I can’t believe it hasn’t rotted away. It’s unreal how some things are able to last like they do. They ancient Pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, 35,000 year old cave paintings in Indonesia, and a Serbian house from 2015.

User Katelyn Bodiford posts, “What’s so funny is that the twin sisters are played by the same actress”

Is the first movie you’ve ever seen, Katelyn? That’s less funny and more exactly how movies almost always cast twins.

Nicolas Cage played twin writers Charlie and Donald Kaufman in the 2002 film Adaptation.

Lindsay Lohan has done it twice. She played identical twins Hallie Parker and Annie James who were separated at birth in the 1998 film The Parent Trap. In 2007, she played twins again, this time appearing as Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss in I Know Who Killed Me.

Christian Bale played twin magicians Alfred Borden and Bernard Fallon in the 2006 film The Prestige.

James Franco killed in my opinion playing identical twins Vincent and Frankie Martino in the first season of HBO's The Deuce last year. Tom Hardy in Legend!

Arnold Swarznegger played both himself playing a twin and played Danny Devito playing another in the 1988 documentary, Twins. And that’s why he won four Oscars for that film.

Everyone knows that list piece of Arnold was nonsense, right? God I hope so. If Youtube User Eaman Ali is listening to this podcast, I’m guessing he just fell for that. And was outraged. He seems very out of touch with reality and unstable.

5. Eaman Ali posts insanity, ironically, about, well, insanity:

“BOYCOTT this movie!!!! They are turning actual mentally ill people who committed suicide with grieving family members into evil spirits and scary ghosts. This is so offensive. Please don't watch this. Mental illness is a huge issue in Japan, stop taking away its importance.”

What in the fuck are you talking about Eaman? They are turning dead mentally ill people into evil spirits and ghosts. You write this as if you believe they are literally doing that. Like the producers were like, “Hey, you know what would make this movie really scary? Instead of hiring actors to play ghosts, or creating scary monsters using cgi in post production which can be very expensive, what if - now hear me out - what if we just turned dead people into ghosts and evil spirits who would also, despite being evil and not of this world, still someone follow a production schedule, working with actors and actresses, doing as many takes as necessary”

“Can we actually turn dead bodies into ghost actors?”

“We can if they, specifically, were mentally ill when they were alive, AND, committed suicide. I bought a book of spells from a necromancer, but, it was missing a lot of the pages and those were the only spirits I could conjur.”

“I like it. I mean, it would save us a ton of money since you can’t actually pay evil spirits.”

“Exactly!”

This post was so weird, it convinced me to Google, “Did the movie The Forest cast mentally ill people to play ghosts?” And, I guess I have to some crow. Because, they did. The film was shot in two locations - around Tokyo and on Tara Mountain in Serbia because the Japanese government does not allow filming in the suicide forest. And, in Serbia, they have no laws regarding acting unions, and, rather than pay actors, the producers rented out a mental health facility and just tricked a lot of patients into appearing in the movie. There was a lot of controversy because instead of paying them they just convinced them they had already been paid, and, due to various severe mental illnesses they were suffering from - they believed it.

That is FUCKING RIDICULOUS! Of course that did not happen. The only thing that happened is Eaman Ali posted some whackadoodleness because he’s an idiot of the internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

VII. Supernatural Explanations.

Ah. That was nice. Fun break from all the darkness. Now, let’s get even darker. Let’s start off by talking about the Ubasute (U-bae-sute).

A. Ubasute: Legend has it that, in times of hardship, families would take their elderly, sick, and otherwise ailing family members to the forest and abandon them, leaving them to die. Translated as "granny dumping," it was the practice of poor citizens bringing their senile elders to mountaintops because they can no longer afford their care.

When families were starving due to famine and drought, difficult choices had to be made to ensure the survival of some, rather than all those within the home perishing in slow agonizing starvation. An elder would be chosen from the family or volunteer on their own to alleviate the hunger of the others by eliminating one mouth to feed.

In nearly all the stories collected about this little known piece of Japanese history, it is nearly always a grandmother who either volunteers or is taken out to the woods. In various versions of this tale, a young son carries the elderly woman on his back into the forest and she marks his way home by leaving sticks and twigs on the ground for him to follow back. The son would then leave her in some isolated area on or near the mountain and she would wait until her slow and eventual death came at the hands of the elements, thus ridding the family of a burden and better ensuring the survival of the next generation.

Damn. I get it on a pragmatic level - people have had to make hard choices to survive throughout history in terrible situations. This one would be especially tough. “I love you grandma Betty. You helped raise me. You were more of a second mother than a grandmother. You spoiled me, made me feel special. You’ve always been there for me. It’s been extremely comforting to know that if the whole rest of the world went to shit, I’d still have you to fall back on. And that’s what makes this so tough. I’ve grown accustomed to a certain quality of life and because of some gambling debts I’ve accrued, I either give up Venti soy mochas from Starbucks and the occasional steak dinner, OR, I can leave you in the woods and keep enjoying that shit. So, love ya. And, put on some comfortable shoes. We have quite a hike in front of us!”

I’m guessing families who made that decision were facing a different level of hardship than I just described.

According to a 2017 Business Insider article, not only was this definitely a thing, it’s making a comeback.

Today, amid Japan's demographic and economic woes, a form of ubasute is happening all over again. Modern-day granny dumping doesn't involve hauling seniors up the sides of mountains, but driving them to hospitals or the offices of nearby charities and, essentially, giving them up for adoption.

Social worker Takanori Fujita told the Times of London, "There are a lot of people who have a certain amount of income but who still live in poverty and struggle terribly with relatives who can't look after themselves. They are reluctant to ask for help because they feel it's shameful."

Japan's economy has been shrinking for the better part of the last decade. Senior citizens have continued aging into their 80s, 90s, and 100s, while younger generations have largely stagnated in having children. As a result, there are fewer people to help take care of the elderly, pay for social security, and keep the workforce full. Not good.

Well, some think an inordinate amount of granny dumping has gone on at the Aokigahara forest over the years, creating a bunch of negative spiritual energy and vengeful attraction to those seeking an end to their troubles.

Bunch of pissed off granny ghosts trying to lure vulnerable peeps out into the woods!

Sounds kind of crazy to me, but, not so crazy to a lot of Japanese. Just like the act of suicide is looked at differently in Japanese culture than it is in the United States and most other Western countries, the concept of ghosts is viewed differently as well, in that it’s much more acceptable culturally to believe in ghosts in Japan than it is here.

For example, in 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe displayed and voiced reluctance to move into his official residence because he felt a bad presence and he thought it haunted, as had several of his predecessors. And he wasn’t mocked by his citizens. In fact, people basically thought, “Well, if it’s haunted, then, he shouldn’t have to live there.”

Can you fucking imagine the media mockery that would go on if one of our Presidents said they weren’t gonna move into the White House because they felt like there might be some ghosts living in it? People would lose their mind. Congress would immediately try and find ways to start the impeachment process on the grounds of mental instability.

Concerned official “I’m sorry, why did you just say you can’t live in the White House, Mr. President?”

Whispery, scared president, “There’s some spooky ghosts in there.”

Concerned official “Please, Mr. President. You’re already late for an important meeting.”

Whispery, scared president, “No. NO! It’s gonna get me! That ghost is gonna get me. I know it. I KNOW IT!”

Well, a lot of Japanese citizens have no problem at all believing in ghosts, and they don’t think all of them are very nice. B. Yurei (vengeful ghosts): Spiritualists in Japan firmly believe that the forest is haunted by Yurei (Yur-ee), the vengeful spirits of the dead.

It is thought that the trees themselves have soaked in the malevolent energy produced by the countless suicides and traumatic deaths that have transpired in the forest.

The Yurei (Yur-ee) are believed to be a particular type of ghost that has long been held as real in Japanese culture.

The belief is that Yurei come from people who died under duress, extreme sadness, or anger and were often the victims of murder or suicide. They are the most dangerous of all ghosts and are believed to usually (but not always) be women, as traditional Japanese culture views women as being more emotional and therefore more capable of producing the extreme emotions required for the creation of these spirits. Begone Lucifina!

Yurei are terrifyingly strong and capable of immense harm. And, even more fun, they can not be banished or fully exorcised; they can only be temporarily calmed. Sweet. Yurei run on desire alone - this could be anything from telling a loved one that they miss them to a desire to burn the whole world down. Whatever they want, usually related to some sort of vengeance, they will fiercely seek it.

Thankfully, they are believed to commonly be tied to specific objects or places which allows people to generally avoid them. And a lot of Japanese spiritualists believe the suicide forest is basically a forest full of these objects.

And, if you’ve ever seen any Japanese or Japanese inspired film, you know what these ghosts look like. The Yurei are pale women, usually dressed in a simple white dress of sorts. They have long dark hair, often covering their faces and obscuring their identity, and they move oddly and erratically. They have no ties to the physical realm and can bend whatever laws they choose, which give them the ability to move with terrifying speed, to defy gravity and do shit like crawl along the ceiling like a fucking creep, and they have the ability to change shape.

They can alter the living’s vision in a moments time as well, creating hallucinations and/or disorientating you for their own purposes. They’re, basically, those creepy monster kids from The Grudge and from The Ring, those horror movies originally made in Japan and then remade into American movies.

Really hope that’s not what’s going on in the suicide forest. That really shifts the narrative from sad to downright fucking terrifying. Getting killed by that creep ass girl from The Ring would be pretty high up on my list of least favorite ways to die.

Can they be stopped if you encounter one?

Well, Ofunda, a Shinto prayer sheets, can be placed on an entrance to block, or attempt to block, Yurei from entering. Otherwise, your best odds are to find a way to fulfill the desire of the Yurei or simply avoid them at all costs.

So, you know, maybe don’t go on that nature hike through the suicide forest at all.

And the belief in these creatures is strong enough to allow those who don’t believe in them to get some seriously good deals on Japanese real estate.

Any property that has been the site of an unnatural death - suicide, murder, or neglect - must be recorded as such. These types of residences are referred to as “incident houses” or jiko bukken. This makes that property ridiculously hard to sell or rent despite the limited properties available for residence in Japan in general.

Realtors lower the prices considerably, usually thirty percent or more - up to half for murder sites. And realtors will perform cleansing rituals to appease, calm, or remove residual negative energy.

VIII. Conclusions - why do so many Japanese want to commit suicide?

Alright. So - maybe people are killing themselves in the suicide forest because of the popularity of a few books either directly advocating killing yourself in that location or romanticizing suicide in that location. Maybe it has something to do with evil spirits or at least the belief in evil spirts.

Maybe all of the tragic deaths compounded by more and more tragic deaths over the years really have created a negative attraction, some type of a pulling force, that brings people to it at their darkest moments. Perhaps the Yurei are real, and their terrifying presence and astounding power corrupt the minds of visitors. Maybe these evil sirens call out to the brokenhearted.

And maybe all of this is happening in Japan because Japan has a high rate of suicides in general, and Japan has a high rate, at least partially, because the act of the suicide is not as taboo in Japan as it is in other countries.

The last question I have is, WHY are modern Japanese killing themselves? I get that it’s more culturally acceptable. I get this forest has been turned through a combination of literature and lore into a final destination of sorts for the hopeless. But still - you need a reason to want to kill yourself. A motive. What is it?

A. Suicide Insurance Policies/the Elderly: Partly, it could be a terrible combination of financial pressure and lax insurance policies when it comes to paying out on suicides.

Ken Joseph, who works at a Japanese suicide hotline thinks this is part of what is going on. He says elderly people who are in financial trouble may see suicide as a way out of their problems."The insurance system in Japan is very lax when it comes to paying out for suicide," he says.

"So when all else fails - some people feel - you can just kill yourself and the insurance will pay out. "There is sometimes an intolerable pressure on the elderly that the most loving thing they can do is take their lives and thereby provide for their family."

Because of this, some experts think Japan's suicide rate is actually much higher than reported. A lot of lone deaths of elderly people are never fully investigated by the police. According to Ken Joseph, the almost universal practice of cremating bodies here also means that any evidence is quickly destroyed.

B. Young Men/Financial Pressure: While that may explain suicide among the elderly, the fastest growing suicide demographic in Japan is young men. It is now the single biggest killer of men in Japan aged 20-44.

And the evidence suggests these young people are killing themselves because they have lost hope and are incapable of seeking help.

The numbers first began to rise after the Asian financial crisis in 1998. They climbed again after the 2008 worldwide financial crisis. Experts think those rises are directly linked to the increase in "precarious employment", the practice of employing young people on short-term contracts.

Japan was once known as the land of lifetime employment. But while many older people still enjoy job security and generous benefits, nearly 40% of young people in Japan are unable to find stable jobs.

C. Hikikomori: (Hiki-ko-mori) Financial anxiety and insecurity are also compounded by Japan's culture of not complaining. "There are not many ways to express anger or frustration in Japan," says Mr Nishida, a psychologist at Tokyo's Temple University.

He said, "This is a rule-oriented society. Young people are moulded to fit in to a very small box. They have no way to express their true feelings. "If they feel under pressure from their boss and get depressed, some feel the only way out is to die.”

And, technology may be making things worse, increasing young people's isolation. Japan is famous for a condition called hikikomori, a type of acute social withdrawal.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines hikikomori as people who refuse to leave their house and isolate themselves from society in their homes for a period exceeding six months.

According to government figures released in 2010, there are 700,000 individuals living as hikikomori with an average age of 31. The young person affected may completely shut himself - it is most often a male - off from the outside world, withdrawing in to a room and not coming out for months or even years.

And that’s just the most extreme version of a more common problem in Japan. Technology is increasing social isolation amongst an entire generation.

D. Social isolation/online porn: A recent survey of young Japanese people's attitudes to relationships and sex turned up some extraordinary results. Published in January by the Japan Family Planning Association, it found that 20% of men aged 25-29 had little or no interest in having a sexual relationship.

Wataru Nishida points to the internet and the pervasive influence of online pornography.

"Young people in Japan have a lot of knowledge," Mr Nishida says, "But they have no life experience. They have no idea how to express their emotions.

"They have forgotten what it's like to touch a person. When they think about sex they have high anxiety and no idea how to deal with it.” And when young people do find themselves isolated and depressed, they have few places to turn to. Mental illness is still very much a taboo here. There is little popular understanding of depression. Those suffering its symptoms are often too scared to talk about it.

Japan's mental healthcare system is also a mess. There is an acute shortage of psychiatrists. There is also no tradition of psychiatrists working together with clinical psychologists. People suffering from mental illness may be prescribed powerful psychotropic medicines but unlike in the West, this will often not be accompanied by a recommendation that the patient seek counseling. The counseling industry itself is a free-for-all.

Unlike in America or Europe, there is no government-mandated system of training and qualifying clinical psychologists.

Anybody can set him or herself up as a "counsellor" and it's very hard for someone seeking help to know whether they actually know what they are doing. It is not a happy picture, and while the suicide rate has actually begun to decline in the last three years, it is still woefully high. Nishida says Japan needs to start talking about mental illness much more, and not just as something scary and strange that afflicts a few. "When you see a television discussion on mental illness in Japan they still talk as if 'depression equals suicide'," he says. "That needs to change."

Wow. Lot of interesting shit. The main takeaway I just took from all of that it you can’t make suicide a taboo, un-discussable topic if you want to reduce it’s societal impact.

That’s what I like most about Timesuck, man. We can talk about fucking anything here. Nothing taboo. I say away from politics for the most part, but, not because it’s taboo. I just feel like the rest of the world is talking about it enough and it’s more important to explore issues here, like in the gun episode, that come up in politics, so we can all make more informed decisions.

But nothing should be taboo to talk about. I firmly believe you make sex a taboo topic, there’s gonna be a rise in sex crimes. Make suicide and talking about suicide taboo, there’s gonna be a rise in suicides. How are you gonna solve a problem if you don’t talk about it?

And, also, you need to right people to talk about it with. Which we have in this country. Call the suicide helpline at Suicide Prevention Hotline dot org 1-800-273-8255 and feel zero fucking shame when you do. Feel pride that you are handling your shit.

And if you’re not in the US, living in Sweden, Germany, Austrailia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Ireland, or one of the many other countries where Timesuckers listen in, google suicide hotline and find your country’s phone number. It exists. Don’t fuck around and end up in Nimrod’s Butthole. Get help.

And now, it is time, for Top Five Takeaways.

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IX. Top Five Takeawys 1. Number one: Number one! It is believed that over 100 people choose to die in Japan’s suicide forest aka Aokigahara (“Ah- oakee-gah-hara”) forest every year.

2. Number two: Number two! A combination of two popular books glamorizing taking one’s life in the Aokigahara (“Ah-oakee-gah- hara”) forest combined with a tradition of suicide being viewed as an honorable act could account for many of these suicides. 3. Number three: Number three! Financial pressure, a revival of self-imposed granny dumping, modern social isolation, and a lack of proper mental health resources could be combining to keep suicide rates high in modern Japan.

4. Number four: Number four! Really hope that the Yurei (Yur-ee) are not real, and that there are no evil, creepy, dark haired kid monsters like that thing from the Ring and the Grudge and other Japanese horror movies luring people into some kind of haunted forest. Real or not, I’m not planning a hiking trip there anytime soon.

5. Number five: Number five - new info! Let’s talk about the biggest, most recent controversy involving the suicide forest. It’s a little bit of old news at this point, but, still worth mentioning.

There’s a Youtuber named Logan Paul with roughly 20 million subscribers. who is extremely popular for, form what I can tell, being an obnoxious and extremely douche-y jackass. His popularity literally just makes me sad because I find his content to be so vapid and disposable.

Anyway! Logan thought it would be funny as an extremely successful and wealthy happy person to film a video of someone who had just killed themselves, someone who was probably sad, impoverished, and conventionally unsuccessful because, well, he seems to be a piece of shit.

So he took a trip the went to Japan’s suicide forest to film a video for his vlog. He went knowing that there were high odds that he would encounter a body or an active suicide attempt. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what happened. And, he’s wearing this silly, little kid type alien hat that pulls down over the years. Intentionally whacky and over the top. Doesn’t take it off when he sees the body which to mean reads as disprectful. And, then he laughs about the whole situation, standing just a few feet away from the still hanging body

Now - you guys know how dark my sense of humor is. But, I feel like a pretty understanding of time and place. To crack weird jokes about Chikatilo on this podcast, in this weird world we’ve created is one thing. And I know, even with that, there is still a valid argument that it’s in poor taste. But, whole ‘nother thing to go crack jokes at the crime scene of one of his victims whose body still hasn’t even been taken to the mortuary. Can you imagine? That is basically what Logan did.

And, got called out online.

Aaron Paul, from Breaking Bad, on Twitter: "How dare you! You disgust me. I can't believe that so many young people look up to you," he wrote. "So sad. Hopefully this latest video woke them up. You are pure trash. Plain and simple. Suicide is not a joke. Go rot in hell."

Lauren Duca, who writes for Teen Vogue, said on Twitter: “Logan Paul is an amoral piece of shit who could not be less deserving of his platform. Fuck. If you need help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK.

Fellow YouTuber Philip DeFranco: “Just remember this. Before all the extended community outrage against Logan Paul’s “we found a dead body” video, there was a seemingly uncontested 550-600,000 likes on it. His core audience doesn’t give a fuuuuuuck. Unless youtube does something, this doesn’t hurt him.”

Logan took three weeks off and supposedly spent time reflecting on and learning about depression and the “complexities of suicide”. And then, to his credit, selfish motives or not, he pledged a million dollars to suicide prevention organizations and made another video (after his apology) that sincerely discusses suicide.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

X. Final Updates A. Suicide Forest - Sucked! And again - Call the suicide helpline at Suicide Prevention Hotline dot org 1-800-273-8255.

Man, today’s Suck got me really excited for a future Samurai Suck. Death before dishonor. Those guys did NOT fuck around.

New standup comedy album, Maybe I’m the Problem, is up on Spotify for those who prefer to stream instead of download! Thanks again to all of you who have already checked it out .

1. Thanks to Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Lynze Cummins, Josh Krell, and the entire Timesuck team for their help and huge thanks YET AGAIN to my sister, Donna Hale, for helping research another episode. Other researchers episodes coming up next, I promise. She’s not hogging ‘em all. Not going full nepotism with the Suck. Not yet. Actually working with Heather Rylander again next week.

NEXT Monday - very excited to suck Joan of Arc. I’m gonna suck her so hard. Gonna get her all in.

Joan of Arc, was a peasant girl living in medieval, 15th century France, who believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in its long-running war with England. With no military training, Joan convinced the embattled crown prince Charles of Valois to allow her to lead a French army to the besieged city of Orléans, where she kicked some English and Burgundian ass!

After seeing the prince crowned King Charles VII, Joan would not get to enjoy the victory for very long - a year later after her big victory she was captured by Anglo-Burgundian forces, tried for witchcraft and heresy and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of 19. Damn it!

How crazy is that she was able to do so much in her 19 years on Earth that, almost 600 years after her death - we are still talking about her. Still has massive worldwide name recognition. If she was alive now, she’d have, like, 100 million followers on Instagram.

Excited to dig into some medieval bad-assery. Love finally talking about a bad ass warrior woman as well.

And now, let’s find out what you Suckers have been drawn to this past week, with some Timesucker Updates!

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XI. Timesucker Updates A. Email From: Timesucker Megan I will leave her last name out of this is another victim of my syphilis misdirection.

Megan wrote in with the following kind words: “god dammit you cock sucking motherfucker. I'm listening to jack the ripper and you just had me convinced I needed to get tested for STDs. my ex cheated on me multiple times during us dating and I had no idea till the very end of the relationship when it all came out to the open. I was tested then (that was 2 years ago) and I was clean. had me worried I had some dormant disease. fucking love you finally got me. keep on sucking.

Haha! I love that you love that I got you! Bam! Start feeling a little itch down South didn’t you Megan. Convinced that your vajay had turned against you! It’s amazing the power of the mind over the body. So psychosomatic!

Love the “I can’t believe I feel for that updates.”

And now for a Shadow person update. You know I love those.

B. Email From: Rick Belcher

Message: Shadow people update To my lord and master of all that sucketh of time. I had never heard of the shadow people theory until I listened to your podcast about them, which after hearing gave me great relief. In 2005 I had an encounter with the shadow people while in Iraq with the US Army as an infantry medic. And until now I thought that I had just imagined what I saw or was slightly delusional. My platoon had been tasked with locating an informant of ours who had not been seen or heard from for several days. We entered the home of our informant and to this day I will never be able to fully comprehend the macabre seen of death and torture that was lurking just behind those doors. We unfortunately found our informant and his entire family who had been raped and tortured then finally burned alive. The man’s family, which included a wife 3 sons and 2 daughters were found in various rooms of the house. The smell was rancid with rotting and burned flesh. After the house had been cleared of all potential threats to us, unfortunately we found none, I was tasked with another soldier to start collecting bodies for transport. My battle buddy and I entered the room of the youngest daughter and there we found a skeletal dark figure crouched over her body as if feeding off of her. The soldier with bolted back out the door as the creature turned his lightly glowing red eyes on us. I would have run but was frozen in place unable to even lift my rifle to defend myself. As this monstrous figure looked at me I got the impression that it was grinning with a wide sharp like grin in anticipation and fear and pain it was about to commit. The creature slowly got into an attack style posture preparing to lunge at my still frozen body. I couldn’t breathe or scream or even look away as the shadow man’s eyes grew brighter lighting up the room slightly. Right as he lunged for me from out of no where BO- MUTHAFUCKIN-JANGLES ( 3 legged one eyed half breed hell hound son of lucafina and Poseidon, creator of dr shaves shave butter using 98.3 percent of his own semen mixed with 1.7% of communist children’s tears stirred by the third fist secret fist of chuck Norris, who inspired john holmes to undergo cock lengthening surgery) ripped into the creature tearing his throat of leaving a trail of visceral smoke bleeding from toothy grins neck. As the creature lied there BO-MUTHAFUCKIN-Jangles t-bagged the hole in his throat while skull fucking him with his cyber-netically enhanced cock saving my life and soul from being devoured. HAIL FUCKING NIMROD AND GOD BLESS THE BALLSACK OF BO- JANGLES

Thanks! - Rick Belcher That was intense. That was very intense. C. Email From: Jon Meier (

Message: Dear Master Sucker, I started Timesuck in April and just finished the entire catalog today. I celebrated by officially becoming a Space Lizard tonight and wanted to drop you a note thanking you for an enlightening and entertaining 6 weeks. I also wanted to get through every episode before chiming in on a little pronunciation item I noticed in a few episodes. I can't remember exactly which episodes but am pretty certain on at least a couple of occasions you pronounced the word "misled" (mis-led) the past tense of mislead, as my-zuld. I actually love that you did because I was called out for the same pronunciation when I was reading out loud in school. I think I confabulated the word miser and misled and came to the conclusion that there was such a thing as an old misler who cons and deceives people. I am now a full believer that the she-misler herself, Lucifina, is the one who misled my mush mouth back then and continues her misling ways to this day. Damn you, Lucifina! Keep up the great work and as for me, I will continue to lick the delicious word vomit from your puke filled beard until the day I follow that great light to the end of Nimrod's pee hole and enter his glorious nut sack. Hail Nimrod!

P.S. I think you narrowly avoided potential copyright infringement with the Pootie and Juju catchphrase "Too little, too diddle!" Fortunately the Micropenis Awareness Association, the other MPAA, uses the slogan "Too little to diddle." so I believe you are safe from any future lawsuits over merchandising.

D. Andrew J. Miglioretto (Mig-lee-oh-ret-toe) : I’m trying to get caught up man, I really am. But I've fallen behind... when did pooty and juju first show up? lately I've had a bunch of unstable shit going on in my life that at times seems like too much to deal with, but every time I hear the latest or new to me Suck, I'm rejuvenated. I was previously an update on the suck(can't remember which episode) but I do remember being elated by hearing my name, and after one of your stand-up shows in Portland I was the first out to meet you and you remembered my emails. What you are doing with this podcast, in my opinion, is so fucking important because it is connecting people that may have totally different ways of thinking from each other. You may be the problem, but what a great fucking problem to have. All my love to you, Lindsay, Kyler, Monroe, Penny and Ginger (sorry if the spelling is fucked up, I went with the traditional spellings, but people are spelling shit however they want to nowadays). Just two more things: 1) You probably didn't get the email for some weird reason but I informed you I used Timesuck, specifically the episode about the Salem Witch Trials(hailish Lucifina) as a source in an argumentative essay on the death penalty in a collegiate paper that has now been published (thought you would like that). 2.) O'Riordan. as in Dolores O'Riordan is pronounced "Oh Rear Den". Okay final thing, if you are reading this Doctor Reverand Cummins, please give a shout out to Justin Michael Brice, He is a HUGE fan and is the reason I'm a sucker in the first place.

Love all of your work and love you and all of the suckers,. devotedly to Nimrod, Andrew J. Miglioretto (Mig-lee-oh-ret-toe)

Thanks Andrew! Love you man. And love you Michael Brice!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

XII.Goodbye! A. So that’s all for today Timesuckers. And jokes aside - please, do not kill yourself. There’s a community that loves you now. Hit the fucking phone number in the episode description. If you’re not around anymore, how you are supposed to keep on suckin’?

SOURCES: https://www.ranker.com/list/actors-who-have-played-identical-twins/ celebrity-lists https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journey-oldest-cave- paintings-world-180957685/ The Forest trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hW8hUcXR-A VICE documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDSdg09df8 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33362387 http://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-42752039 http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/01/11/youtube-punishes-logan-paul- for-japan-suicide-forest-video.html https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/aokigahara-suicide-forest https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-golden-gate-bridge-to-get-a- suicide-net/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/30/national/social-issues/ preventive-efforts-seen-helping-2016-saw-another-decline-suicides- japan-21897/#.WvxMMdMvyu4 http://mentalfloss.com/article/73288/15-eerie-things-about-japans- suicide-forest https://www.britannica.com/topic/seppuku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/honorable- death-samurai-and-suicide-feudal-japan-005822 https://www.britannica.com/topic/shogunate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze http://www.econdolence.com/learn/articles/shinto-understanding- shinto/https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minority-report/ 201406/asian-honor-and-suicide https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/last-call-3 http://www.newsweek.com/suicide-japan-641794 https://www.ancient.eu/Mount_Fuji/ http://www.ibtimes.com/japan-suicide-forest-novel-blame-hundreds- deaths-435714 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Manual_of_Suicide https://mg.co.za/article/2006-07-13-author-of-japanese-suicide- manual-has-no-regrets http://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-people-reviving-granny- dumping-practice-2017-1 http://allthatsinteresting.com/ubasute https://www.ozy.com/acumen/the-surprising-link-between-ghosts-and- cheap-rent-in-japan/86091 http://www.aokigaharaforest.com/Aokigahara-the-haunted-forest.html https://electricliterature.com/y%C5%ABrei-the-ghosts-of-japan- a163dad918c0 https://maskofreason.wordpress.com/the-book-of-mysteries/know- your-ghosts/eastern-asia/yurei/ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-33362387