Scott North, a sociologist at Osaka University, argues that this extreme divergence could be the result of experts including some forms of suicide (of which there are around 27,000 cases a year in Japan) into the category of kodokushi. However, other experts estimate the number is nearer 30,000 a year. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, there were some 3,700 “unaccompanied deaths” in Japan in 2013. Inaccurate statistics abound, with confusing definitions of what is and isn’t considered kodokushi being created in the process. With one of the fastest aging populations in the world and traditional family structures breaking down, Japan’s kodokushi phenomenon is becoming harder to ignore-not that the government and the Japanese people don’t do their best to sweep it under the carpet. With no other options he picked up the phone and gave the company a call. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. So he turned to the Internet, and after hours of fruitless searching found a company called Risk-Benefit, run by a man named Toru Koremura. But what did that really mean for Suzuki, and how was he going to deal with it? Like most Japanese, he had heard of the “lonely death” but had not really believed in it he certainly didn’t know what to do in such circumstances. He heard whispers of kodokushi, a word bandied about since the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995, when thousands of elderly Japanese were relocated to different residences and started dying alone, ostracized or isolated from family and friends. In Japan, suicide can dramatically reduce the value of a property, and although this wasn’t suicide, his neighbors had seen enough the gossip would spread fast. He didn’t know who to call or how to deal with the situation. Suzuki was now left to his festering property and precarious financials. Article content YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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