Suicide is a snowball rolled in hell.

For a time, Godzilla lived in the active volcano of Mount Mihara, on Oshima Island. Like some suicides, Godzilla did not have many friends. He had enemies instead, including the Japanese government, which imprisoned him there in 1984.[1] Godzilla did not make Mount Mihara famous, however. This distinction goes to a 24-year old named Meiko Ukei.

In January 1933 she climbed to the top with 21-year old Masako Tomita. Meiko “announced to her friend that she intended to throw herself into the volcano. She would, she explained, be cremated instantly and sent heavenward in smoke and beauty.” The lava reaches 2,200 °F. She swore Masako to secrecy. Meiko jumped. But this kind of secret is difficult to keep. Masako told another friend.

In February, they climbed together to the top of Mihara. The friend jumped as well. Masako returned home and this time word spread. In April, six people leapt into the volcano, and twenty-five others were physically restrained.

By December, 140 people had jumped. Steamers and boats saw an opportunity and began to provide regular transport to the island. They refused to sell one-way tickets, which lays claim to a certain logic all around. Tourists came to watch. 160 jumped the next year. Jamison reports: “In January 1935, three young men jumped to their deaths within ten minutes of each other.”

In 1936, the figure was 600. Jamison quotes Ellis and Allen’s Traitors Within: “The island’s population increased greatly. Fourteen hotels and 20 restaurants opened within two years. Horses were imported to carry tourists to Mihara’s summit. Five taxicab companies opened for business … A post office was opened at the crater’s edge.” And, the pièce de résistance: “a 1,200 foot chute-the-chute down Mihara’s slope” was built “to provide the visitors a final thrill.” For all of the above, Rating: 5 Stars.

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Return of Godzilla (1984). Godzilla later escapes; see (or don’t see) Godzilla v. Biolantte (1989).
Jamison, Night Falls Fast, 146-7.

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Growing up there was one house you did not go near. Some homes house the pure horror in the memory of children. For me this was the abandoned house at the end of the block. Since I remember the house was boarded up and walled off with a chainlink fence surrounding it. The front windows were long ago broken and dull red paint pealed off and littered the flower beds below. Weeds ruled the yard and hedges spilled out through every opening in the rusty fence. No one went in or out for as long as I remember. Even the big elm tree in front corner had long ago stopped trying and just stood there waiting.

Since the house could not speak the story was passed down by generations of kids and the moral was to beware. Legend has it that this house was once pretty and well-kempt with a coat of bright red paint and carefully tended hedges and green grass always neatly trimmed. Every spring bright flowers sprung up in the garden beds and birds chirped from the branches of the yawing elm tree stretched out across the yard.

At that point it was not the house that haunted. It was the man in the house. Nobody knew the man’s name or what he did or where he came from or where he went. But any time an unsuspecting child would pass by the man would emerge from the house holding a rake or hedge clipper. Spying the innocent child he would roar out in a voice that stopped the human cub in his tracks. To a child’s eyes the man was oily dandruff and crusty teeth and dark pitted stains with a white belly oozing out the straining spaces in the front of his button-up shirt. He was a troll of a man with piercing blue eyes according to legend and so he mesmerized and commanded in his very grotesqueness.

What day is it?, the troll would thunder.

The child would answer.

And what is the date?, demanded the man.

It did not matter if the child knew because the man would then press the question. And were you born on this date today? He already sensed it. He was onto something. He was arriving at the grand discovery. The revelation. The real cause.

The answer from the child would almost always be, No.

And now he had it and this is all he needed and with that he would break into loud song. And not just any song. And not just any loud singing. Jolly singing as he raised the garden tool on high and stabbed at the heavens and he would dance a jig with rolls of fat giggling and loose change jangling in his pockets. And now the child would run like the wind down the street and around the corner as the man laughed and sang until the sound of his voice and the sight of the dancing troll finally faded into vivid memory. The singing and dancing is not the point, however. It was the song the man sang. The song sung is titled The Unbirthday Song, and it goes like this:

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you. Then it repeats itself many times. Too many times. Then there is some quick math and you have three-hundred-and-sixty-four un-birthdays, each year. And today is one of those days, for you, for you. Then there are congratulations and a wish and the candle is blown out. And that’s it.

The song appears in a movie called Alice in Wonderland. The movie is animated, which means it is a very long cartoon. It is based on a book by Mr. Lewis Carroll, titled, Through the Looking Glass. The title of the book is a play on an old genre called mirrors for princes, which purported to guide the young prince in the ways of the world and how to master them as he comes of age and assumes the mantle of leadership.

Through the Looking Glass pierces what seems to be the reflection of the real and transports a young girl, named Alice, to a fantastical realm that reveals deeper secrets behind mere appearance. In the end, when Alice awakens in the playroom with the fantastical now dissolved from all around her she is left to wonder whether it was simply a dream, though perhaps what matters in the end is that she now has puzzle pieces ready and waiting to be placed properly as she grows up and truly embarks on her journey of life.

Anyway, this is all well known. Not well known is a hidden meaning to The Unbirthday Song, a commitment you can realize only if you are willing to read beyond the lines. The commitment is simple and defining and unambiguous and it is as my most meaningful accomplishment in life, which is never to have begotten children. No child has come into this world because of me. This is my gift to the very same. It is the gift of the unbirthday, each and every day of the year, year after year. The gift is one of neverness, never to have been born, to them, to them.