For over half a century, thousands of life-weary Japanese have made one-way trips to Aokigahara Jukai, a sprawling woodland near the foot of Mount Fuji. It is a dark place long associated with demons in Japanese mythology — and one that has earned itself the unfortunate appellation of “Suicide Forest.” Tokyo based, award winning British photographer and writer Rob Gilhooly’s haunting, contemplative photographs depict the evidence left behind of these one-way pilgrimages to Suicide Forest - just one of the many places where over 30,000 people in Japan end their own lives each year. His images both evoke the memory of those who have died and confront the viewer with the stark indignity and brutality of suicide, which for centuries has been regarded as an honourable way to die in Japan.
“Gruesome as they are, such inglorious images were at the heart of my reason d'etre for starting a photo project about the forest. Like the Great War poets who ridiculed the notion of dying for one's country as being sweet and honorable, I could find nothing in Aokigahara Jukai – no shoes, boots, watches or other remnants of lives now discarded like newspaper wrappers in a chip shop bin – that spoke of a dignified life or death.” This exhibition is not suitable for children.
