Aokigahara

It grew on the Aokigahara lava flow, erupted from a fissure on that flank between 864 and 866 CE, which reached Lake Motosu and split an older lake into the two now called Shoji and Sai. It is not the volcano's last eruption: that was Hoei, in 1707. The soil is barely there, leaf litter and humus over bare lava, and the canopy is dominated by hinoki cypress and Tsuga sieboldii rather than the deciduous trees the climate would predict, which is where the name Jukai, sea of trees, comes from. Despite the label primeval, the forest has been worked: the average hinoki is about 113 years old, hinoki was felled here from the Edo period into early Meiji, and charcoal kilns have been found among the trees. Aokigahara is prefectural forest and the strictest class of protected zone in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park; leaving the marked boardwalks is prohibited. Since 2008 the municipalities, the prefecture and local businesses have run a daily outreach and support programme in the forest.

Aokigahara begins as an accident of drainage. In June of the year 864 a fissure 5.7 km long opened on the north-western flank of Mount Fuji and went on erupting for more than two years. The Japan Meteorological Agency's chronology of Fuji's historical activity records the outcome flatly: lava flowed from near Nagaoyama, the arm running north-west reached Lake Motosu and split the old lake called Se-no-umi into the two now named Shōji and Sai, and houses were buried. The Geological Survey of Japan puts the Jōgan eruption at AD 864–866 and gives its output as roughly 1.3–1.5 km³ of magma. What grew back sits on that rock and behaves accordingly. Yamanashi Prefecture's own eco-tour guideline defines the area as "roughly 30 square kilometres of so-called primeval forest spreading over the Aokigahara lava flow", between about 900 and 1,300 m, straddling the village of Narusawa and the town of Fujikawaguchiko. A permanent study plot run by ecologists from Ibaraki University found the soil almost nonexistent — leaf litter and humus over bare lava, with almost no horizon structure — and the canopy dominated not by the deciduous trees the regional climate should produce but by hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa), 45.4 % of basal area, and Tsuga sieboldii, 26.3 %. Which brings up the thing least often said about Aokigahara: it is not untouched. The same study cites Kiyofuji's 1991 age survey, in which the oldest hinoki was about 240 years and the average only 113, and historical documents showing hinoki were felled here from the Edo period into early Meiji. Tsuga, useless as timber, was mostly left — which is why tsuga over 300 years old survive and hinoki does not. And the remains of charcoal kilns have been found inside the forest: broadleaves were burnt to charcoal on the spot and carried out, a use that continued widely until recent decades. The two municipalities put it in one line of their own handbook: "in the past it was a forest that supported the lives of local people." Nor is it national forest, as is usually assumed: Aokigahara is Yamanashi prefectural forest, part of the onshirin estate granted to the prefecture in 1911, and it heads the Ministry of the Environment's table of Special Protection Zones for Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park at 1,225 hectares, every parcel publicly owned. It had been a National Natural Monument since February 1926, well before the park itself. The dark reputation is the newest layer, and the one where the sources stop agreeing. It is routinely traced to a Seichō Matsumoto novel, but two different novels get the credit and neither attribution survives the record. Nami no Tō ("Tower of Waves") was serialised in Josei Jishin and published by Kobunsha in 1960, the year under which the National Diet Library catalogue holds that edition. Kuroi Jukai — literally "black sea of trees", which is presumably why it gets swept in — was published by Kodansha, also in 1960, and Kodansha's own synopsis places it at a bus crash near Hamamatsu and inside a newspaper office. It has nothing to do with Fuji. Bungeishunju's current edition of Nami no Tō summarises the plot as a doomed affair between a young prosecutor and the wife of a man implicated in a ministry corruption case, and never mentions the forest. Against that, the two local governments date the change themselves, and not to 1960. Their handbook says the forest "became famous as a place of suicide from the Shōwa 40s" — that is, 1965–1974, a decade or more after either book. By 1988 a psychiatrist at Yamanashi Medical College, Yoshitomo Takahashi, could open a paper in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior by stating the association as established background. In July 1993 Ohta Books published Wataru Tsurumi's Kanzen Jisatsu Manyuaru, 198 pages, still advertised by the publisher in its own words as "a suicide device made of words"; between 1999 and 2023 at least five prefectures — Kanagawa first, on 22 October 1999 — designated it a publication harmful to young people. What is documented in detail is the response. In June 2008 the municipalities, local businesses and the prefecture formed the Inochi wo Tsunagu Aokigahara Network Conference, chaired by the mayor of Fujikawaguchiko. Its outreach programme, catalogued by Japan's national suicide-prevention centre, puts two teams of two paid staff on patrol every day of the year, roughly 09:00 to 17:00, around the caves, car parks and boardwalks, backed by shopkeepers, the bus and taxi companies, a drug-rehabilitation NPO on night rounds, a police box in the summer holidays and, since FY2024, drones after dark. The published results are counted in people helped: 346 approached and 48 taken into protection in FY2020; 2,359 approached and 525 taken into protection between FY2012 and FY2019 — at zero cost to the municipalities. The other half of the answer is about narrative. Yamanashi's Third Suicide Prevention Plan (2024–2028) commits two named departments in writing: forestry policy "will dispel the image of a 'famous suicide spot', including by not permitting the use of prefectural land such as Aokigahara Jukai for the filming of films or television programmes that risk encouraging suicide", and tourism confirms the prefectural film commission will not support such shoots. The prefecture's own 2025 booklet is titled The Truth About Aokigahara Jukai: moss, lava caves, guides and food, in which the word "suicide" does not appear once.

Aokigahara is public forest and visiting it is an ordinary thing to do. It is also the first entry in the Special Protection Zone table of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park — 1,225 hectares, wholly public land, alongside a contiguous 1,311-hectare Class-1 zone — and a National Natural Monument, so the rules are firmer than for most walks. The park was designated on 1 February 1936. The rule about routes is a prohibition with its reasons printed beside it. The prefecture's own visitor booklet gives two reasons in one sentence: "there is a danger of catching your foot in lava holes hidden by fallen leaves and falling", and "from the standpoint of environmental protection, leaving the trail and entering is prohibited". The official eco-tour guideline, in force since 2004, tells participants to "never leave the routes designated in these guidelines" and then names them: the Shōji-guchi trail, the maintained boardwalks including the Tōkai Nature Trail, and the forest roads. It caps groups at 20-25 people with about one guide per ten, asks walkers to go single file, and bans marking trees with tape or paint outright. Anything beyond those routes requires a permit from the prefecture's Fuji-Tōbu forestry office. Also posted: no fires, no collecting plants, no damage to moss or rock. The two show caves are lava tubes of the same flow, and their operator published all of this on 22 September 2026. Fugaku Wind Cave runs 201 m with a ceiling up to 8.7 m, averages 3 °C, and takes about fifteen minutes to walk; its basalt walls absorb sound, so the interior does not echo. Narusawa Ice Cave runs 153 m, is 1.5 to 11 m wide and 1 to 3.6 m high, averages the same 3 °C, and loops, so the circuit closes on itself in six or seven minutes. Admission at both is ¥350 for adults and ¥200 for children of primary-school age and under, dropping to ¥250 and ¥100 for groups of fifteen or more, with school rates of ¥200 for secondary pupils and ¥100 for primary. Opening is at 9:00 all year; closing moves in six steps — 17:30 from 1 August to 15 October, 17:00 to 15 November, 16:30 to 15 February, 16:00 to 28 February, 16:30 to 15 March, 17:00 to 31 July — under the operator's own caveat that hours change with the weather and the state of the caves. Car parks hold 150 cars and 10 coaches at the wind cave, 100 and 10 at the ice cave. The ice cave sits at the eastern entrance of Aokigahara and was declared a natural monument by the Ministry of Education in 1929; the wind cave stored silkworm eggs as a natural refrigerator until the early Shōwa years. Addresses and telephones are published: 〒401-0332 Yamanashi, Minamitsuru-gun, Fujikawaguchiko-machi, Saiko Aokigahara 2068-1, 0555-85-2300; and 〒401-0320 Yamanashi, Minamitsuru-gun, Narusawa-mura 8533, 0555-85-2301. Getting there is thirty minutes by local bus from Kawaguchiko Station, alighting at the Fūketsu or Hyōketsu stops, or twenty minutes by car from the Kawaguchiko interchange on the Chūō Expressway. A two-day Retro Bus pass covers the Kawaguchiko and Saiko-Aokigahara loops. A point of World Heritage bookkeeping: Mount Fuji was inscribed in 2013 with 25 constituent assets, and the two famous caves are not among them. What is inscribed nearby are the three lakes this flow made or bounded — Sai, Shōji and Motosu, assets 1-7 to 1-9 — and the Funatsu and Yoshida lava tree moulds, assets 21 and 22. One activity is refused outright. Yamanashi Prefecture does not permit entry for the purpose of filming films, television programmes or streamed video that risk encouraging suicide, and the prefectural film commission will not support such shoots on prefectural land. That is standing written policy, published in the local network conference's handbook and restated in the prefectural plan for 2024-2028. The forest is also worked, every day, by people whose job is to talk to whoever seems to need it. The Aokigahara ふれあい声かけ事業 puts two pairs of dedicated municipal staff on patrol by car and on foot, roughly 09:00 to 17:00, on a 365-day rota across Narusawa and Fujikawaguchiko; nearby shops pass on what they notice. The published results: 346 people approached and 48 protected in the 2020 financial year, and 2,359 approached and 525 protected across 2012 to 2019. The programme costs the two municipalities nothing, being carried by the national grant for local suicide countermeasures, and its contacts are printed in the case file: Narusawa's welfare and health section on 0555-85-3081, Fujikawaguchiko's welfare promotion section on 0555-72-6028. The network conference behind it was founded in June 2008 and is chaired by the mayor of Fujikawaguchiko. The lines those teams hand out, together with the Spanish one, were checked against their operators' own pages on 22 September 2026. Spain — 024. The Ministry of Health describes it as "un servicio de alcance nacional (accesible desde todo el territorio nacional), gratuito, confidencial y disponible las 24 horas del día, los 365 días del año", whose users are "las personas con conducta o ideación suicida, así como los familiares o allegados de víctimas de suicidio o de personas con ideación suicida". There is an online chat run with the Red Cross and access in sign language by video interpretation. Japan — #いのちSOS, 0120-061-338, listed by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as free and open 24 hours, 365 days. The same ministry lists the Kokoro no Kenkō Sōdan Tōitsu Daiyaru on 0570-064-556, whose hours vary by prefecture and which carries a call charge. Japan, in English — TELL Lifeline, 0800-300-8355, toll free. TELL puts it plainly: "Whoever you are, whatever you are going through, if you are living in Japan our trained Lifeline Support Workers are here for you." Phone hours run continuously from Saturday 09:00 to Monday 23:00, then 09:00-23:00 Tuesday to Thursday and 09:00-02:00 on Friday; the chat service opens daily at 16:00.