

That’s the background for the story: Russia sent their convicts to war in trade of a “get out of jail”-card.
The guy was in jail for killing his wife. He took the deal and was sent to war. He got shot, got sent home as a free man, and immediately started killing people again.
It’s not a single case. It’s likely that convicts are taking the deal, not just to get out of jail, but also so they can go back and get revenge over those that put them in jail in the first place.
Honestly, the bamboo “forest” isn’t worth a visit. I wonder if they post this news just to attract more tourists. The same story has been posted year after year.
It’s just a place where someone once planted a lot of bamboo thinking they’d need it as a ressource. They didn’t need it so they just left it there.
It dates back about a thousand years, so I guess it’s “natural” now, but it’s basically the remains of a human made plantation, albeit old.
The famous path through it is about a hundred meters long and a great spot to take that photo. I didn’t feel immersed in the forest at all, because the entry and exit is visible through the entire “attraction”.
There’s a nice temple with an impressive garden close by and some random rich rock star dude also build a mansion with a garden on top of the mountain next to the forest, and that’s it.
The whole thing felt like the kind of place that you only want to go if you’re a tourist with nothing better to do.
Kyoto is still worth visiting as a whole. The thousand gates on mt. Inari is a much better use of your time.