Suicide Forest (4 page)

Nevertheless, of the twenty or so full-time
teachers at our school, I’d say he was the most popular among the
students—at least, he was the most requested for private lessons.
We taught everyone from kids to the elderly, either one on one or
in small groups. The majority were sleepy salary men forced by
their companies to learn English, or bored housewives wanting
someone to talk to. After years of delivering the same lessons over
and over, I sometimes dreaded certain classes with certain students
in which I would be going over past participles for the thousandth
time.

Not Neil.

He had a zany, manic energy. He was like
that kid’s television presenter Mr. Rogers, hence the moniker “Mr.
Rodgers.” This was why the students liked him so much. They knew he
was always giving one hundred percent.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” I asked
him now, mostly to shut him up. The nostalgic tune was out of place
in the forest, almost creepy.

He blinked at me. “Camping here?”

“Yeah.”

“It was your idea.”

“It was the Israelis.”

“But you and John Scott were keen for
it.”

“I thought it would be interesting.”

“And now?”

My eyes scanned the trees. “It’s still
interesting.”

“You want to back out?”

“It’s not like we’re the first people who’ve
come here to check it out. They have trails.”

“But how many people camp overnight?”

“Who’s going to know?”

“Do you think we’ll see a body?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Do you want to?”

“I’m not sure. Well, I guess. If we see one,
we see one.”

As I contemplated how honest I was being
with myself, I realized there had been another option to pass the
time until the weather cleared up. We could have stayed at a
Japanese inn with those tatami-matted floors and screen doors. I
was sure Mel and Tomo would have been up for this option. But I
didn’t know about Neil; he was notoriously cheap and had likely
agreed to camp only because it was free.

I glanced ahead again. Mel was still next to
John Scott. She was dressed in a violet K2 jacket and jeans. I had
on an identical jacket, only mine was black. We didn’t buy them to
be cute. They had been fifty percent off in some store in Shinjuku,
and neither of us had brought warm jackets with us to Japan. That
was the thing with teaching overseas: your worldly possessions were
limited to what you could pack into a suitcase or two.

Mel kept turning her head to look at John
Scott, making me wonder what they were talking about. I caught a
couple words, but that was all.

Neil resumed whistling. I asked him, “How’s
Kaori?”

“She’s taking the kid to Disneyland this
weekend.”

“How old is Ai now?”

“Four.”

“She’s going to school?”

“She’s in kindy.” He nodded at Mel and John
Scott. “How do they know each other?”

John Scott said something to Mel. She
punched him playfully on the shoulder.

“They went to high school together.”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

It was a good question. Did I like John
Scott? I had a bad habit of judging people quickly and sticking by
those judgments even when they were proven to be completely wrong.
In the case of John Scott, however, I didn’t think my initial
impression was off. He was a mouthy jock.

“What does it matter?” I shrugged. “I don’t
know him.”

Neil nodded, as if I’d made a salient point,
and began to whistle once more. I couldn’t be bothered to tell him
to stop.

Three
Japanese
hikers were coming down the trail toward us. Two men, one woman,
all attired in hiking clothes and armed with clear plastic
umbrellas.

“
Konichiwa!
” Ben called amicably.
“
Konichiwa!
”

His pronunciation was worse than mine. The
Japanese returned the greeting, smiling and bowing.

“How is your hike?” Ben asked.

They appeared confused.

“Walk?” I intervened. “Good?”

Several hesitant nods.

“Hey—
sumimasen
?” John Scott said. He
struggled expressing what he wanted to say in Japanese, gave it up,
and switched to English. “We’re looking for some other trails. Not
the main ones. You understand?”

They did not. In fact, they seemed eager to
move on.

John Scott held them at bay with: “Yo, whoa,
wait, wait, wait.” He turned to Tomo. “Translate for me.”

“Translate what?”

“What I just said. Secondary trails, off
this main one?”

Tomo seemed reluctant.

“Dude,” John Scott said. “Just ask.”

Tomo asked.

The eldest of the three Japanese—full head
of white hair, matching mustache, gold-rimmed glasses—frowned. He
shot something back. Tomo replied, holding up his hands, but was
promptly cut off. The man began shouting. I saw spittle fly from
his mouth. Every time Tomo tried to appease him, he shook his head
and his arms and raised his voice louder. I watched, dumbstruck.
I’ve rarely seen Japanese people lose their temper. They had a
saying: the nail that stands out gets hammered down—hard. This
could mean anything during a typical day. Don’t leave work before
your coworkers. Don’t make business decisions on your own. Don’t
ever, ever be late.

Don’t show your emotions.

So what was going on here? White Hair had
totally lost it. Tomo realized the futility of arguing and gave up.
I put my hand on his back and led him away. The others
followed.

John Scott said, “What the hell’s his
problem?”

Tomo shook his head. “He says we don’t be
here.”

“Why’s he here?”

“He go lava caves, ice caves.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“He thinks we look body.”

White Hair continued to yell at us.

“What’s he saying now?” I asked.

“He report us.”

“Is it illegal to go off the path?”

“Don’t think. He’s fucking crazy guy. Who
cares?”

“Fuck you, kemo sabe!” John Scott yelled
back, flicking the finger.

“Hey,” I told him, “cool it.”

“What’s your problem?”

“You’re being a prick.”

“Listen to the spaz.”

“He has a point,” I said. “Maybe we
shouldn’t be camping out here.”

“Don’t give me that shit. This is all about
us not being Japanese. Being
gaijin
. If we weren’t
foreigners, he wouldn’t have gone off on us like that. They’ve got
to get over their racism.”

“You’re just feeding into their stereotype
of the loud, obnoxious American.”

“Yeah? And he’s feeding mine. Xenophobic
asshole.”

“This isn’t your country,” I said.

“That gives him a right to spaz out?”

“You know ‘kemo sabe’ isn’t Japanese,
right?”

“What is it?”

Shaking my head, I walked on in silence.

Not
long after I’d
first arrived in Japan I was at a restaurant with a bunch of
friends. The deal of the day was all-you-can-drink shōchū, beer,
cocktails, and high balls at a self-serve counter for three hundred
yen. The catch was you only had thirty minutes to imbibe before you
had to pay again. Being unapologetic boozehounds we were
good-heartedly smashed within the hour. While taking the train home
with my Scottish roommate, I was on my cell phone, speaking loudly
to my ex, Shelly, back in the States, who’d just happened to call.
The Scot sat across from me, staring silently at the glass in his
hand, which he’d taken, full of rum, from the restaurant so he
could keep drinking. I was oblivious to the old man who’d stalked
over until he began railing me out in Japanese. I had no idea then
how big a faux pas it was to speak on your phone on the train, and
I argued back. The Scot stared up bleary eyed, said something, then
puked all over himself. To his credit he managed to catch a fair
bit of vomit in the stolen glass. The man, red-faced, stormed off
the train at the next station.

At the time I thought the guy was being an
asshole for not minding his own business. In retrospect, I realized
I was being the asshole by not conforming to Japanese societal
norms. True, he probably thought of me as a typical
gaijin
,
but that’s exactly what I was. So was he being racist? I don’t
think so. Japanese have a complex set of sensitive rules to dictate
social situations. They know those rules. Foreigners often don’t.
Hence foreigners are perceived—and treated—differently. That’s
simply Japan. You either get used to it, or you go elsewhere.

We
must have walked
for another ten minutes before we found what we were looking for.
To the left of the main trail a rope was strung horizontally
between two trees. A placard hung from the middle of it and read
“DO NOT ENTER” in English. Beyond, a narrow, lightly trodden path
snaked away deeper into the forest. The spindly saplings lining the
margins leaned inward, their branches interlocking overhead like
bony fingers, forming a forbidding tunnel.

The uneasiness I’d felt earlier was back,
more persistent, and I began second-guessing the wisdom of our
camping out here.

Mel was apparently on the same page. She
folded her arms across her chest, as if she was suddenly cold, and
said, “Don’t tell me we’re going down there?”

“Yes, of course,” Ben said.

“Why don’t we camp right here?”

“Here is no adventure.”

“I’ve had a pretty good adventure so
far.”

“People will see us.”

“Who? We’ve only passed those three
hikers.”

“We walk down the path,” Ben said, “find a
good spot to make camp.”

“That Japanese guy threatened to report us,”
Neil said. “What if he does just that and the local police come? I
don’t fancy getting arrested.”

“Arrested? For what?” John Scott said.
“Straying off the path?”

“Trespassing. They saw all our camping gear.
They can put two and two together.”

“This is public land.”

“That sign specifically says not to
enter.”

“There’s no threat of punishment.”

“What does that bit say there?” Mel said.
She pointed to a placard next to the English one. It was smaller,
the words written in kanji.

“Don’t go in woods,” Tomo translated. “You
get lost.”

“That’s all?” I said.

“See?” John Scott said.

I glanced about, searching for other warning
signs—and spotted a surveillance camera ten feet away, atop a black
metal pole. It was partly hidden behind a tree.

“What the hell’s that?” I said, pointing to
it.

Everyone looked. There were a few
exclamations of surprise.

“Who put that there?” Neil asked. “The
police?”

“Must be,” Ben said. “But it is no big
deal.”

“What do you mean?” Mel said. “They could be
watching us right now.”

“Even if they watch,” Tomo said, “they don’t
care.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They worry the suicide guys. You?
Foreigners? They know you don’t suicide, right? They don’t
care.”

“So are we agreed?” Ben said. “We go
in?”

I looked at Mel. She shrugged resignedly,
and that made up my mind too. Ben, grinning broadly, stepped over
the line, then helped Nina. As she stepped over it her shorts rode
up her legs. John Scott went next, scissor-style, then Tomo, then
Neil, who caught a foot and almost tripped. I lifted the line, and
Mel and I ducked beneath.

Leaving the main trail behind, we ventured
into the unknown.

We
walked in
silence. The time for chatting and gaiety was over. What had begun
as a novel idea, something to pass the time, had become serious
business. We might not be technically trespassing, but we were
definitely somewhere we were not supposed to be. Aokigahara was a
place where people came to die. It was home to the dead, not the
living. I think the reality of this was beginning to sink in for
all of us as we proceeded down the stick-tunnel, which was both
claustrophobic and menacing.

Nevertheless, nobody made any mention of
turning back. We were drawn forward, I suppose, by morbid
curiosity. It was human nature to want to know what was around the
next corner, regardless of what might await you.

My heart was beating faster than normal, my
senses heightened, as if I had just downed a large energy drink. My
eyes scanned the snarl of forest that bordered us on both sides,
though I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find. A dangling
noose? A body? A white-faced ghost flitting through the trees
toward us? I couldn’t hear anything besides the crackle of our
footsteps and my excited breathing. I wondered again about the
peculiar silence of the forest and said, “Hey, Tomo. Where are all
the animals?”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “What you
mean?”

“There’re no animals. No birds or
anything.”

“It fucking haunted forest, man. Birds
scared shitless. They go other forest.”

“What about the wind?” Ben said. “There is
no wind either.”

“I reckon that’s because of the trees,” Neil
replied. “They grow too thick for any wind to blow through.”

“If this trail is off limits, Tomo,” Mel
said, “then why is it here? Who made it?”

“The police. They use to find body.”

“How many do they usually find each
year?”

“One hundred. Two hundred.”

Mel stopped. “What?”

We all stopped too.

Tomo shrugged. “Sometime more, sometime
less.”

“I had no idea the number was so large.” Mel
had blanched. “I figured—I don’t know—like a handful of people
every year.”

That was closer to the dozen or two I’d
estimated the number to be.

“Japan has the highest suicide rate in the
developed world,” Neil said matter of factly.