JAPAN: Death on the Mountain

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Men have died, and worms have eaten them, But not for love.

This cynical couplet from Shakespeare's As You Like It would shock the traditionalists of Japan, who cherish in song and story the tales of true lovers pledged in death. Last year 3,000 Japanese girls between the ages of 15 and 24 killed themselves, and 1,000 of these died in suicide pacts with their lovers. Last week Japan was sentimentally creating a new legend about a new pair of star-crossed lovers.

The girl was 19, and a princess—Aishinkakura Eisei, niece of Henry Pu Yi, the Japanese puppet "Emperor of Manchukuo [Manchuria]," who is now a prisoner of the Chinese Reds. The boy: spectacled Takemichi Okubo, 20, the son of a railroad executive. Both were students at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.

But the princess' mother disapproved of their getting married (she thought Okubo had "bad manners"). One day last month the young couple entrained for scenic Izu Peninsula, traveled by taxi halfway up storied Amagi Mountain. When Aishinkakura was missed, her mother sent police searching for the couple; later she took to the radio to broadcast her promise to permit the marriage. But there are no radios on Amagi Mountain. After wandering in the misty forest until dusk, the lovers took clippings from their hair and fingernails and wrapped them in white paper as mementos for their families. Okubo changed into a new pair of shoes he had bought for the occasion. Pillowing Aishinkakura's head on his left arm, he shot her in the temple, then killed himself. When their bodies were found, rain had washed away the blood.

The Teichiku Record Co. planned to bring out a disk entitled In the Rain at Amagi ("In the drizzling darkness of Amagi/Searchers call for the vanished two"), with a companion tune on the other side called Two Stars Over Amagi ("0 sad, the two lovers gone/Before the spring came") but, disturbed by accusations of "bad taste," decided against releasing the record. The Shin-Toho film studio has announced it has started production of a movie, Suicide on Mount Amagi, the story of the two young college students, with the first screening scheduled for Jan. 29.

Other Japanese took the example more literally: by week's end, at least seven more young couples (including two classmates from Gakushuin) had already attempted or succeeded in suicide pacts.