Talk:Aokigahara/Archive 1

Swing image
Does anyone else think that the image of the swinging woman is kind of inappropriate for this article?  howcheng  {chat} 00:20, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. _dk 00:23, 18 July 2007 (UTC)]
 * I have had some problems with the user that posted that photo. He takes pictures of that woman, sometimes nude, and then posts them as references on articles.  I'm gonna take it down.MightyAtom 04:06, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * We shold recover the pic until MightyAtom suggests a better replace. dima 08:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Usually having no image is better than having a bad image. It didn't really show anything anyways. _dk 08:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That pic gives proof of the statement that Aokigahara is not so horrible as it is described. Also, the pic shows that the lianas in aokigahara are strong enough to keep the weight of a human body. I believe, the specialist can even identify the lind of liana by its piece which is close to the camera. Therefore, Deadkid is wrong. dima 04:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * This is not an article about lianas in Aokigahara. Neither is it about Domitori's Asian girlfriend. _dk 04:18, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Suicide is an epidemic problem in Japan. It is not limited to Aokigahara. The obsession with this particular forest and its high rate of deaths seems to be an issue of debate amongst people living outside of Japan.

Thousands of people throw themselves in front of commuter trains each year. While these deaths may not be as poetic, they have a far greater impact on the general population. When someone jumps in front of a train, everything shuts down, the doors do not open and the densely packed train stays at a standstill. People on the train can be trapped for up to an hour after witnessing such a traumatic event.

Recently, people have been using toxic gas to commit suicide in densely populated areas. This has caused a high number of hospitalizations and evacuations across the country. To say that a particular artist, or that an article about the suicide forests is inappropriate for Wikipedia belittles the serious issue of suicide in Japan.

There are many reasons why the deaths in Aokigahara are tragic, but it should not be surprising that people would want to enjoy their last moments enjoying nature. There are real and serious issues about suicide which need to be addressed in Japan. This article is not at all inappropriate. The number of people committing suicide outside of Aokigahara is far greater than this article would imply.

The problem has become so serious that the Japanese government is attempting to find ways of reducing the rate of suicide in Japan. Japan's high suicide rate is not a joke. Aokigahara is a place for people to enjoy as a natural tourist destination, and is not simply a morbid curiosity photo spot. The content should remain as serious as the problem.


 * That's interesting. I stumbled on this talk page while researching for the newly created suicide in Japan.  It addresses many of your concerns.  --C S (talk) 18:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * If you look at that WP page for suicide in Japan you will see that suicide is NOT an epidemic in Japan and is largely a false stereotype Void burn (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

30 suicides a year
The Peter Hadfield ref in the Telegraph does not support that statement. It says the prefecture has 39 per 100,000, but nowhere does it give the annual number for Aokigahara. I went through all the other refs and none of them give this statistic. In fact, the indication is that number is on the rise and much higher than that. The 30/a year stat I managed to find in an academic paper from 1988, but obviously that was quite a bit ago. the Telegraph article is quite informative, so I didn't want to just remove it, but I added a citation needed tag. --C S (talk) 22:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Geographic info
The article is strangely lacking in information about where exactly this is located, what prefecture etc., and also how large this area is. --C S (talk) 23:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Number of Suicides
This appeared in the online edition of Time Magazine in the Quotes of the Day section:

Friday, Mar. 20, 2009 "It's my dream to stop suicides in this forest." IMASA WATANABE, of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government in Japan about the Aokigahara Forest, also known as the "suicide forest." There were 2,645 suicides recorded there in January 2009, a 15% increase from January 2008

Could this be correct? I don't want to update the page from a single source when it is so out of whack with the existing numbers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.230.252.93 (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I have never seen a source listing the suicides as that high...I would need to double check that.MightyAtom (talk) 20:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That quotation of the number of suicides is for the entirety of Japan in the article you referenced, not Aokigahara in specific. Jon-e-five (talk) 18:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Methods of suicide
Any mention of the suicide methods here? I first found this article when I was curious about why a forest is a suicide hot spot. --Kvasir (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * According to the suicide patrol in the VBS.tv video, hanging is #1, sleeping pills is #2. kevyn (talk) 00:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In which case, the actual methods should be incorporated into the article. As it is written now, the reader is left to wonder exactly what happens when someone goes into this forest to end their life (unlike the Beachy Head and Golden Gate Bridge article, which clearly state what actually goes on). It took kevyn's response above to fill me in on this. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 17:44, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

VBS.tv video
VBS.tv has released a very good web video about the suicide patrol in Aokigahara Forest, which I saw when it was posted on BoingBoing today. I believe the video is encyclopedia-worthy as an external link, and so I added it... only to discover that vbs.tv is on the Wikipedia spam blacklist. I don't know anything about VBS or why it's blacklisted, but I think an exception should be made for this video. As a workaround, I linked to the BoingBoing article, which is kind of klunky, but I'm not sure what else to do... any suggestions? kevyn (talk) 00:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I also saw the video and it looks good. I think we would have to request whitelisting at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist (and get it approved) to be able to link directly. Arthena(talk) 14:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

On 14-FEB-2011, OptimistCynic removed the link to the VBS.TV video. I have undone this revision, because the video is an excellent look at the forest, and the suicide patrol that works there. I'd please like to have this decision to remove the link justified, because it's a very good video. kevyn (talk) 18:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Signs in Japanese and English
Every picture iv'e seen of the signs show them only in Japanese yet the article states they are in Japanese and English is this true? I can't understand why signs in Japan would be in English or if they are why it's such an important fact to have more than once in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Owain meurig (talk • contribs) 21:40, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

(Slightly off-topic) Speaking from personal experience (though i obviously never actually did commit suicide), the "despite numerous signs, in Japanese and English, urging people to reconsider their actions." line made me chuckle at first, then it made me start to think. Either the somewhat poor wording is just a coincidence, or it illustrates a bit of how the majority of suicidal persons think in a very different way than "normal" and how hard it is for others (or even for people like me that have or is on the way of recovering from depression, which i suppose is the leading cause for suicide) to grasp that. Maybe i'm just rambling, but it seems like an interesting thing to think about. AIKÄRBÄST (talk) 23:20, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

500 bodies / 30 annual bodies removed
I finally removed the unreliable information about 500 bodies and approximately 30 annual bodies, because there is no such info in the article cited. I've noticed that multiple websites started to refer to this information, which is wrong. There are no such stats and the arbitrary numbers of 500 and 30 are not supported by any data. I moved the reference to Daily Telegraph article elsewhere, because it contains some relevant data, but not the numbers. Marcos &#91;Tupungato&#93; (talk) 20:29, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with this removal. Wrong information should always be removed.Millertime246 (talk) 20:31, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Mythology
'The forest, which has a historic association with demons in Japanese mythology' - Could this be expanded upon by someone knowledgeable about the mythology of the forest? Whilst all the talk about suicides is fascinating I believe more could be said about the mythology and the article mentions 'Ice Cave and Wind Cave.' being popular tourist attractions but does not elaborate further. I think this could really add to the article. I'd add more but I know nothing about the forest apart from the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.30.248 (talk) 19:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. I think there is far too much emphasis on the suicides. While important, there seems to be far more to this forest and I'd like to read about it. It would be kind of like an article on Yellowstone focusing mostly on deaths in the pools of boiling water and a vague mention of the park's geography. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.83.90.27 (talk) 15:31, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

suicide
is this some kind of local sport or something? considering the phrase "The annual body search, consisting of a small army of police, volunteers, and attendant journalists, began in 1970.", I'm not trying to offend people... just curious Pyromania153 (talk) 20:01, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The novel
Could someone please elaborate how the 1960 novel "Tower of Waves" thematized suicide in the Aokigahara forest? That info is missing from the article. Thanks. Maikel (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Bad/dead links
The Japan Times citation links are defective. 76.117.247.55 (talk) 20:13, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 January 2016
Please change: "Suicide Forrest by Jeremy Bates is a horror novel that takes place inside the forrest." To: "Suicide Forest by Jeremy Bates is a horror novel that takes place inside the forest."

Incorrect Spelling.

Blacktopburnout (talk) 23:31, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done --allthefoxes (Talk) 22:56, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Moving media to new page
The media section of this article is getting ridiculous. More than half of it (or even 3/4 of it) is related to media, not about the forest itself. Can the section be move to a new page? 42.61.169.71 (talk) 14:52, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

The name in Japanese ?
Has the forest ever been or is it ever called "Suicide Forest" in Japanese, or has the name been coined in recent times and especially in Anglo/American countries ?Noseball (talk) 19:24, 23 July 2016 (UTC)