ニューヨーク・タイムズのインスタグラム(nytimes) - 1月9日 00時00分

With a canopy of cypresses and pines towering over lumpy, moss-covered lava rocks from Mount Fuji, #Aokigahara Forest has an ethereal beauty that evokes Tolkien’s Middle-earth or the Forest of Endor in Star Wars. Well-marked paths wind through the forest’s 7,400 acres, but those who step off the trails can easily hide deep within what’s known in Japanese as the Sea of Trees. Long before the YouTube star Logan Paul brought renewed notoriety to this primeval forest by posting a video of a body hanging from a tree, local officials fought to reverse Aokigahara’s bleak reputation. Signs at the foot of walking paths promote a suicide hotline. “Life is a precious thing that your parents gave to you,” they read. Japan has long struggled to combat a high suicide rate. Historically, #Aokigahara was known as a place where monks would go to starve themselves to death. According to Japanese folklore, the ghosts of those who have committed suicide wander in limbo in the forest, which was memorialized in 1960 in the novel “Tower of Waves” as the romanticized setting for a suicide by a pair of young lovers. Since then, it has appeared often as a suicide site in other novels, TV shows and movies. Visit the link in our profile to read more, and to see more photos by Ko Sasaki.

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