The Suicide Boom

In August, 2011, my friend disappeared.

He was found two weeks later. During those two weeks, he was visiting places called "suicide spots", such as the Aokigahara and Tojinbo. He was looking for a place to die.

He seemed to be recovering afterwards, with the support of friends and family, but, in the end, he left this world in August, 2015. Without talking to anyone, and leaving nothing.

The way he took his life was by a suicide method which was often talked about at the time.people thought it is easy and painless way.

Our psyche is sometimes deprived of its life by the "mind virus" which affects it.

Since Goethe published "The Sorrows of Young Werther" in 1774, suicides imitating the protagonist of the novel occurred one after another among young people.

Love suicides became frequent in the early 1700s in Japan.

At the time, the chain of love suicides spreading almost like an infectious disease was called the "love suicide tuberculosis".

History repeats itself, and emotions almost similar to an admiration for suicide continued being fueled afterwards.

It spreads like a virus throughout society, from the brain of one person to another.

In 1974, sociologist David P. Phillips named the phenomenon which causes these imitative suicides "the Werther effect".

In 2000, WHO published "How to report suicide cases in ways which prevent suicide". In other words, a guideline on suicide media reporting.

Among the items listed in the guideline as those which may "cause a chain of suicides" are posting photographs and wills, and reporting details concerning the location and method, but, from that time to the present age, things such as these have been reported numerous times for suicides of famous people and suicides which gather people's attention.

Words and tales accompanying suicide change in form and spread, influencing people's behavior when they face difficulties.

When mentally unstable and in the gap between "I want to die" and "I want to live", the "inevitable end" death lets us see presents a temptation.

I'm not saying that suicide is necessarily a bad thing, but there are no possibilities if you aren't alive.

Through this project, I'm considering how we're influenced by people other than ourselves, and how photographs and various other visual expressions and stories affect suicide. Suicide story is the subject of an enormous amount of attention as a story to be consumed.but we should consider about "invisible danger" of this impact of "story".