The train coughed and shuddered to a halt at Kawaguchiko Station. Dr. Kenji Morita, biochemist and thoroughgoing skeptic, stepped onto the platform, the damp chill seeping into his bones.
He adjusted the strap of his backpack, its weight a grim reminder of his purpose. Inside: a bottle of Suntory whisky, a Swiss Army knife, and a worn copy of Camus’ *The Myth of Sisyphus*. He’d always found a certain mordant humor in existentialism; a final joke before the lights went out. Or so he thought.
Kenji, a card-carrying atheist of the Dawkins variety, found the diagnosis especially galling. Stage IV pancreatic cancer. A cosmic punchline delivered with the subtlety of a runaway pachinko machine. Except, as it turned out, the CT scan had been misread. A shadow on the pancreas, yes, but merely a benign cyst. A sword of Damocles withdrawn at the last moment. Except, he had already bought the one way ticket.
He hired a taxi – an extravagance he’d normally eschew – and directed the driver toward Aokigahara. The forest, a thriving, dense expanse of 30 square kilometers grown atop the lava spewed from Mount Fuji in the 9th century. It was, after all, the most common place to commit suicide in Japan. As the car wound its way through the foothills, Kenji stared out the window, the dense foliage blurring into an impressionistic swirl of greens and browns. He’d always prided himself on his rationalism, his unwavering adherence to empirical evidence. Now, facing a death sentence that wasn’t, he felt adrift, unmoored from the bedrock of his convictions. He had planned on oblivion; was that such a bad fate, truly?
The taxi dropped him off at the edge of the forest. A sign, attempting to dissuade those entering with ill intent, read: “Life is a precious gift.” Kenji snorted, a plume of condensation clouding the frigid air. Sentimental pap. He stepped past the sign and into the Jukai, the “Sea of Trees.”
The air grew immediately colder, the sunlight struggling to penetrate the dense canopy. The porous lava bedrock swallowed sound, creating an unsettling stillness. He consulted his compass, noting the magnetic anomalies caused by the volcanic rock, and then set off, deeper into the woods, the weight of the backpack a constant presence on his shoulders. The trees, gnarled and twisted, clawed at the sky. It was an odd and hauntingly beautiful forest to be lost in. He passed the telltale signs: discarded backpacks, tattered clothing, empty pill bottles. Grim detritus of broken lives.
As dusk began to settle, Kenji found a small clearing, a pocket of relative openness in the oppressive woods. He pulled out the bottle of Suntory and the Camus, placing them on a moss-covered rock. He took a swig of the whisky, the harsh liquor burning a welcome path down his throat. He opened The Myth of Sisyphus. Maybe it would give him one last laugh. It was the last line he would ever read.
Then, he heard it. A whisper, carried on the wind. At first, he dismissed it as his imagination, the product of stress and too much whisky. But then it came again, louder this time, a chorus of voices murmuring, pleading, lamenting. He looked around, but saw nothing, only the silent trees, their branches like skeletal arms reaching out to him.
The voices intensified, coalescing into distinct words, phrases, fragments of lives cut short. “Gomen nasai…” Forgive me. “Modorenai…” I can’t go back. “Kurushii…” It hurts. The voices swirled around him, a cacophony of despair. And then, he saw them.
Pale figures, shimmering in the twilight, their faces etched with anguish. Yūrei, the restless spirits of Japanese folklore, they drifted between the trees, their ethereal forms flickering like dying embers.
One, a woman in a tattered kimono, reached out to him, her eyes hollow sockets filled with an infinite sorrow. Another, a businessman in a rumpled suit, wept silently, clutching a photograph of a young girl. These were not the comforting ancestors of Shinto belief, but tormented souls, tethered to this world by regret and pain.
Kenji, the rationalist, the man of science, felt a primal terror grip his heart. His carefully constructed worldview shattered like glass. He’d spent his life dismissing the supernatural, scoffing at ghost stories as superstitious nonsense. But here they were, tangible, undeniable, their grief a palpable force in the cold night air. The yūrei in Aokigahara were those individuals “who suffered some sort of injustice during their lives.”
He remembered Azusa Hayano, the geologist who spent his life in the forest, encountering hundreds contemplating suicide. He remembered his words of encouragement, his simple act of human connection. Maybe, just maybe, these tormented souls needed something more than oblivion.
Kenji stumbled back, knocking over the bottle of Suntory. The whisky spilled onto the moss, a dark stain spreading across the green. He scrambled to his feet, the weight of the backpack now feeling unbearable, a burden he no longer wished to carry. He turned and fled, crashing through the undergrowth, the voices of the yūrei pursuing him, their sorrowful cries echoing in his ears. He was just another ‘salaryman’ running from death, from the dark and looming abyss.
He ran blindly, heedless of direction, driven only by the desperate need to escape. Thorns tore at his skin, branches lashed at his face, but he didn’t stop, fueled by a terror he couldn’t explain, a terror that transcended logic and reason. Finally, he burst through the treeline, stumbling onto the road, gasping for breath.
He looked back at the forest, a dark and impenetrable wall against the fading light. The voices were fainter now, but he could still hear them, a chorus of despair carried on the wind. He could envision the final walk of those who have died in Aokigahara forest—as well as the spirits that remain.
Kenji didn’t know if he believed in ghosts, not really. But he knew that he couldn’t face them, not yet. He couldn’t join their ranks, adding his own voice to the chorus of sorrow. Not when there was still a chance, however slim, to find some meaning, some purpose, in the life that had been so unexpectedly restored to him.
““We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken,” he seemed to hear, faintly.
He walked back toward the station, the cold wind whipping at his face. As he walked, he thought not of death, but of life; a life that had been given back to him, a life he now had a responsibility to live. A life he had to make count. It was time to figure out what the point of it all actually was. Maybe the cyst bursting in his gut was more than the terror of the specters he had met. Maybe. He had a hunch. A hunch which had to become more.
He would return to his lab, he decided, bury himself in his research, seek answers in the cold, hard logic of science. But this time, he would also look for something more, something beyond the empirical, something that resonated with the aching sorrow he’d heard in the voices of Aokigahara. What it all meant was something he wanted to get to the bottom of; the voices in his head, the pain in his heart, all coalesced into something resembling hope. It was time to truly live. Home was where the Hell wasn’t, at least for now.
