Aokigahara Forest

Aokigahara ("Sea of Trees") covers roughly 35 square kilometres of forest grown atop a hardened lava field left by an eruption of Mount Fuji in 864 CE. The volcanic rock beneath the forest floor is rich in magnetic iron deposits, which can cause compasses to behave erratically — a phenomenon long cited, somewhat inaccurately, as a reason hikers become lost (the effect is generally too weak to significantly affect modern handheld GPS). The dense, largely soundless tree cover and uneven volcanic ground give the forest a disorienting, muffled quality that has shaped its reputation for centuries.

In Japanese folklore, the forest has long been associated with yūrei — the spirits of the dead — partly through its connection to ubasute, a purported historical practice of abandoning elderly or infirm relatives in remote places during times of famine, though historians debate how widely this was actually practised. The forest gained a modern association with suicide following the 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai ("Black Sea of Trees") by Seichō Matsumoto, after which the site recorded a marked rise in cases. Since 2004, Japanese authorities have stopped publicising annual body-recovery figures in an effort to reduce the forest's notoriety, and signs at the forest's edge urge visitors in distress to seek help and reconsider.