A couple of items today. First, I’d like to share something with you. A while back I wrote about the eerie place called Aokigahara, Japan’s Suicide Forest, located below Mt. Fuji. At the time I fully expected that I’d hear from a gentleman named Byron Earhart. One of my long-time writers and a good friend (and yes, a distant relation to Amelia Earhart), Byron is considered one of the world’s greatest authorities on Japanese sacred sites. I finally did hear from him, and this is his interesting perspective:
Mt. Fuji looms above Aokigahara.
Some years ago I visited Aokigahara while doing research for my book on Mount Fuji (Mount Fuji: Icon of Japan). My project was to survey the religious and aesthetic symbolism of the mountain. Our group of a professor and grad students from Keio University had gone by bus halfway up Fuji, to the fifth station, but weather conditions were bad, and we were told by authorities we could not ascend to the peak. So we descended via the old and deserted route from the fifth station. When we entered the thick forest, the grad students got nervous, antsy. In a small clearing the students saw two crossed sickles (like for cutting grass) placed high in a tree. All the students shouted out, “NOROI” (curse). They were more than academically interested in this “hex” sign. Someone had come here to invoke a curse.
H. Byron Earhart
All Japanese people recognize what Victor Turner would call the “liminal” character of Aokigahara. My strange field of specialty, Japanese sacred mountains, taught me that any mountain in Japan can be considered sacred, and mountains often are where spirits of the dead reside. Fuji is the “number one” sacred mountain in Japan, but also set aside as a favorite suicide site. Many Japanese have asked me why it is that the forest around Fuji is so popular for suicide. There is no simple answer, but here are some of the apparent factors. In part it represents a common theme of mountains as the boundary between this world and the otherworld. In part, it is the dense forest that crowds in on a person, usually with a cold, damp fog or mist that envelops you. The place has an eerie “feel.”
If you ever go to Mount Fuji, the usual route is a bus trip to the fifth station, then hiking to the summit (with a brief rest in a hut near the summit), welcoming the rising sun, and then descending to the fifth station for the bus back to Tokyo. If you want a very different, challenging, even spooky experience, go by bus to the fifth station, and then hike down the ancient, rather neglected (and difficult) path.
In addition to his many textbooks, Byron is the author of a novel titled, No Pizza in Heaven: Book 1 of the Twin Destiny Trilogy. I had the great pleasure of working with Byron on this story. Check it out.
WAS THIS REALLY NECESSARY?
The New York Daily News reported that a planned prequel to the 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, has caused social media to blow up in protest. Let me add my voice to that. I mean, can’t they leave well enough alone? And this comes so soon after the death of Gene Wilder, who WAS the eccentric candy factory owner. Hollywood should have learned from the disappointing remake in 2005, which starred Johnny Depp—an actor known for eccentric roles. But no-oo, this has apparently been in development for a while by Warner Bros.
The prequel, according to Variety, will focus on Wonka’s adventures during his younger days—maybe how he saved the Oompa-Loompas or something. I don’t know…it just seems wrong. To me—and to so many others—Gene Wilder will always be Willy Wonka. There are some originals that you cannot improve upon, and this is one of them. And to reiterate: the timing just sucks. (Thus ends my rant du jour.)