01-05-2014, 10:08 PM
About the Japanese tourist, there is a forest at the base of Mt Fuji where people go to kill themselves. I admit that I am cultivating a stereotype about Japanese people being prone to suicide but they do have a high suicide rate because conformity is so much a part of their culture and if you don't fit n it is hard on you as an individual. I don't know if the "suicide forest" thing is unique to Japan but I thought about it right off when learning of the Japanese visitor being missing in that area. If you google japanese suicide forest you will see lots of pics of people who have hung themselves and are still hanging there after what is obviously a long time.
Of course if it is not the missing Japanese tourist then that background is irrelevant.
My gut tells me that if you were trying to cover up a murder you might likely throw the body in the ocean but you would not hang it in a tree. If you did murder someone by hanging or simply hung them afterwards you would do so because you wanted the body found that way and most people would not stage the scene in such an out of the way place. The body did after all remain un-found for some months. For those reasons at this point I strongly suspect that it was a genuine suicide. I acknowledge that neither I nor anyone else really has any business harboring excessively strong opinions on this matter because we are all rather distant spectators who are not in possession of the facts. My strongest criticism of what I have read on these pages is that there are so many strongly worded opinions when none of us has the wherewithal to have such opinions.
Of course if it is not the missing Japanese tourist then that background is irrelevant.
My gut tells me that if you were trying to cover up a murder you might likely throw the body in the ocean but you would not hang it in a tree. If you did murder someone by hanging or simply hung them afterwards you would do so because you wanted the body found that way and most people would not stage the scene in such an out of the way place. The body did after all remain un-found for some months. For those reasons at this point I strongly suspect that it was a genuine suicide. I acknowledge that neither I nor anyone else really has any business harboring excessively strong opinions on this matter because we are all rather distant spectators who are not in possession of the facts. My strongest criticism of what I have read on these pages is that there are so many strongly worded opinions when none of us has the wherewithal to have such opinions.