urban legends ✓

the japanese suicide film ☹

Unlike most items on this list, the story of Tengoku ni Musubu Koi—the Japanese suicide film—doesn't have a specific source it can easily be traced back to. Instead it seems to have built up over the years, to the extent that it's hard to tell where reality ends and fiction begins.

The story goes that, in 1932, two Japanese student lovers committed suicide by leaping into a volcano. When the public became enthralled by their story, famed director Heinosuke Gosho hurried to do a movie version. Known as A Love That Reached Heaven, his movie was a monster smash hit, becoming popular with couples across the country. All this is true. Now here comes the creepy bit. According to various histories, couples watching the film would become so enamored by it that they began killing themselves in the auditorium.

Not just one or two, but hundreds. Most versions of the story have it that ushers were forced to patrol the aisles in case anyone committed suicide during the screening; yet many, many hundreds still managed to die.

There seems to be no reliable record of this tumultuous time. The closest is a reference in a book on Gosho, which states that a few lovers were inspired to jump into the volcano by his film—hardly the nationwide theater bloodbath of legend, but still, you wouldn't catch us watching it.