The suicide controversy and the whitewashing controversy

As a person of color with depression I think both criticisms are ridiculous.

One, the whitewashing criticism. The Suicide Forest is infamous in Japan. A Japanese person would have grown up with enough wariness that they wouldn't just go trotting into a forest that is famous for its dead bodies. A white girl, however, has grown up with no such fear of this forest. It's just a forest to her. So obviously when her sister goes missing in this forest, she's not going to think twice about running in to look, because she has no been instilled with any sense of fear of its lore. Would you be 100% comfortable with boating in the Bermuda Triangle? No? Because you've grown up recognizing it as a place where bizarre and unexplainable occurrences have taken place, so even if you don't necessarily believe in it, you'll always have that small knot in your gut that something could go wrong. A person who is coming from a culture with no such familiarity with the Bermuda Triangle will not be as naturally hesitant to boat there.

Two, the disrespect to suicide victims. Please read up on your culture before you make this comment because this movie is centered around the ACTUAL lore of the forest. The lore is that the reason there are so many suicides in this forest is because the forest has taken a sort of life of its own, and feeds off the despair of those who enter, which is the driving force behind the suicides. If you have a critique of that, your issue is with the cultural lore, not the film. The film is centered around the lore, not the other way around. Really. Read up on the forest. I think you'll be really interested.