Does landscape have memory? Can past events—historical facts and cultural fictions—impregnate a site, marking it so deeply that those who pass through it feel its pull, creating attraction and desire, so the landscape itself becomes a...
moreDoes landscape have memory? Can past events—historical facts and cultural fictions—impregnate a site, marking it so deeply that those who pass through it feel its pull, creating attraction and desire, so the landscape itself becomes a magnet––a lure into the abyss? Put another way: does landscape have a soul?
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper looks at the interplay between national history, memory and cultural representations of the world’s second most popular suicide destination: Aokigahara Jukai, the sacred ‘suicide forest’ lying at the base of Mount Fuji.
Through the lens of Japanese cinema, the paper brings together Pierre Nora’s work on cultural memory and Maurice Pinguet’s text on voluntary death in Japan, to examine the Japanese acceptance of self-annihilation throughout history. From the samurai practice of seppuku, through to ubasute and shinju—lovers’ suicide—it questions whether a history of voluntary death narratives creates loci memoriae—memory places that mark a landscape or a landmark as a suicide destination, codifying and transforming a very public place into possibly the most private space of all—the environment in which someone chooses to end their life.
Key Words: Voluntary death, cultural memory, suicide sites, Golden Gate Bridge, Japan, Japanese cinema, Aokigahara Jukai.
