Aaron, this is what I leaned from several webpages.Aokigahara Jukai is a huge forest (3000 ha) at the foot of Mt. Fuji. People began connecting this forest to suicide when Seicho Matsumoto wrote "Nami no To (Tower of Wave)" for a weekly magazine in 1959-60. A housewife had an extramarital affair with the DA who prosecuted her husband, commited a suicide at Aokigahara. In 1960, Shochiku made a film on this story and ever since a lot of TV dramas were aired.
In 1971, as public attention to Aokigahara was rising, the local police launced an all-out search, which was widely covered by the media and increased the number of suicides against the intension of the police.
There're several myths about Aokigahara, such as, "Once you are in, you can never go out" "Even a compass/GPS cannot work" "Airplanes are not allowed to fly over as their instruments go out of control." But none of them are true. For example, airplaces are not allowed to fly over Aokigahara as it is near military base.
