13 ms·

In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone

101 points by johntam 9y ago

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Isn’t there one in America also ? Is the market significantly smaller in America ?
- mathiasben 9y ago
  in American it's target is people who will die alone and the objective is cleaning up financially. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...
  - jupiter90000 9y ago
    That's one of the most disturbing stories I've read in a while. It's unbelievable, felt like I was reading science fiction. I wonder if there are ways to protect oneself in old age from being a victim of that...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Don't live in one of the states with those type of guardianship laws. Probably need to elect a President that will choose a responsible steward for the HHS so that we can actually collect data on what is happening now and act upon it to reform this situation. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-33 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-33
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      It truly is. I wonder if we're being told the whole story though: some woman shows up at another person's door with no connection at all, but has a signed court order as their guardians? It is mentioned that the couple's daughter visited almost every day. She couldn't find a lawyer to immediately file an injunction? EDIT: Yeah, looks like the authorities stepped in[0]. [0] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/grand-jury-indicts-nevada-guardian-on-more-than-200-charges/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/grand-jury-indicts-nevad...
  - imarg 9y ago
    This is horrifying.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    The main people in that story were a couple that lived independently and had a daughter that lived 10 minutes away who visited almost every day. That's insane that the guardianship happened.
    - rhombocombus 9y ago
      Terrifying. My grandparents live under my brother's care and I became physically agitated reading this, thinking about how vulnerable they are and how easily this could have happened. They lived right around the corner from the couple in this story until a few years ago.
  - yvsong 9y ago
    Is this a big government thing that violates individual freedom? I wonder how people handle this successfully and avoid abuses. Which states are better? Former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew often mentioned Asian family values. I used to think it’s a joke, but am starting to like it.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Lots of specialty clean-up firms in USA could clean up such a scene. They also do indoor firearm suicides and motel room meth labs, which are probably less common in Japan than here.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
Was that the entirety of the apartment in photos, minus the bathroom? Even by New York standards, that's pretty tiny.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Have you been in a Japanese hotel room? It’s a bed, plus about a few square feet of access pathway into the bed.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    Have _you_? I’ve stayed in both ‘international’ hotels that cater to foreigners and in business hotels which explicitly discourage foreigners by having literally everything in Japanese and they’ve all had fairly standard sized rooms for a hotel.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      To the parent's point, the one's in your description seem to all to fall on the expensive side, either for rich-ish foreigners or rich-ish Japanese.
      - jackvalentine 9y ago
        They weren't and I can't possibly fathom how you got that from the description.
        coldtea 9y ago
        From the part that mentions that they are "international hotels that cater to foreigners" -- so not some local cockroach hotel for junkies and poor people (not to mention the fact that they need to have enough money to travel to an expensive country like Japan in the first place -- 2/3rds of the world couldn't even afford the tickets with a year's salary). And from the other part that mentions "business hotels" and especially ones that "explicitly discourage foreigners". Except if those are the rare kind of business hotels for poor destitute businessmen.
mwidell 9y ago
Reminds me of this documentary about Sweden. 50% of Swedes live alone, and 25% die alone. Often it takes a long time for someone to notice, as pensions come in to the account automatically, and the rent is also paid automatically. https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-love/dox-the-swedish-theory-of-love-avsnitt-1 https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-...
- e40 9y ago
  This is why my mother sends me an email every morning. Sometimes she just says hey, but most other times she includes other info about her life or asks me questions. Her reasoning was that because she had a cat (at the time), she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly.
  - eric_h 9y ago
    > she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly. I had a great-great aunt who lived alone and hoarded cats and dogs (and many other non-living things). She was partially eaten when they finally found her. My grandparents eventually moved in to that property, and now my parents have it as a second property. Every time I visit, I still get a little shudder when I think about what it must have been like to stumble upon that scene (a weeks dead, partially eaten corpse surrounded by dozens of hungry cats and dogs...) - I'm not sure which neighbor discovered her, but that poor person... [Edit: fortunately, my parents didn't tell me the story until I was 18, I had visited my grandparents at that property every summer for most of my childhood. I imagine if they had told me earlier, my trips to the basement of that 19th century house would have been a bit more frightening]
    - wil421 9y ago
      I’ve heard similar stories and seen it mentioned on cop show. It must be pretty common. What about a device like the emergency buttons for elderly but it checks vitals? It could update loved ones daily. I bet you could use an Apple Watch.
g09980 9y ago
Recommend also reading this beautiful and very sad NYT article from a couple of months ago. "A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-d... Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Glad you posted this. I found the article from November to be quite moving. As someone who knows precious little about Japanese culture, it surprises me that someone would die alone - and then sit alone for a long time before discovery. I had always heard Japan was a very collectivist society. Does that play into this?
  - SllX 9y ago
    A collectivist society doesn't necessarily mean a supportive community. Part of being part of a collective means trying not to cause problems for the whole, even if it means some self-sacrifice on your part. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Burdens also get left behind.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    My opinion as a Westerner who has spent a lot of time in Japan: as in any crowded place, a key coping skill is the ability to ignore people who are in close proximity to you. When you’re riding on a train with people crammed up against every square inch of your body, you kind of zone out, avoid eye contact, and definitely don’t strike up a conversation. I get the strong sense that people who are alone can go though life with very few meaningful interactions, even with neighbors who live only a few centimeters away (note that the apartment in the story is 200 square feet, I’d bet that a lot of American homes have bathrooms bigger than that). Being collectivist means not taking up unnecessary psychic space in the lives of others.
oconnor663 9y ago
This is more about hospitals and less about solitary apartments, but there's a program in the US called No One Dies Alone: http://www.how-we-die.org/howwedie/story?sid=8 http://www.how-we-die.org/howwedie/story?sid=8. I'm really glad there are people like that.
epicide 9y ago
> It was almost as if Hiroaki had never existed. Bullshit. When I die, if all that is remembered of me are the things in my apartment, then it doesn't really matter if I was alone at the time or who cleans it up. I'm willing to bet he made a lasting impression on somebody. Friends, coworkers, etc. If not, then having kids or someone living with him wouldn't have mattered. I definitely get the feeling the message of this article is "make sure you have kids so you don't die alone and forgotten", which is stupid for several reasons.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > I'm willing to bet he made a lasting impression on somebody. Friends, coworkers, etc. Apparently not enough of an impression to carry on the friendship, though, right? I think the point of the article is that Japanese society has traditionally been very dependent on family and work for all of your social bonding, with much less emphasis on maintaining relationships outside of those two spheres. If he did have kids, they would likely check up on him more than once a month. It's not guaranteed, of course, but Japanese culture does seem to put more of a weight on that than American culture. The point of this article isn't "this is how it should be or suffer the consequences", it's "this is how it is, and this is one of the consequences".
  - mc32 9y ago
    It's possible relatives live in the countryside and this person outlived geographically close friends and coworkers.
  - jxramos 9y ago
    I was struck by this part "They retire from lifetime jobs and lose the only communities they’ve ever really had." I've long recognized that deep friendships are those that transcend the circumstances which brought two individuals into proximity to take a liking to each other in the first place. A friendship that is limited to the circumstances that unite people I call "circumstantial friendships".
georgeecollins 9y ago
I hope anyone reading this realizes that there will be a time in life when you should call your mother and / or call your father, once a week at least.
- melq 9y ago
  And not just to check that they aren't dead :)
- icebraining 9y ago
  For me, that time is life is "always".
- pythonboi 9y ago
  And not only parents either. I call my grandparents once a week, mainly because their weeks are filled with trips to the store or doctors appointments. But I've grown a lot closer to them and have learned a lot from their experiences and stories. My grandfather loves talking about cars and he enjoys his weekly phone call. He can't wait to tell me all about new technologies he reads about. He tells me how his car is doing and asks how my car handles. He has 5 grandchildren and I believe that I am the only one who calls every week.
booleandilemma 9y ago
Sign me up!
jxramos 9y ago
"""Fujita and his team had carted away all his belongings, ripped off the wallpaper, checked under flooring, and scrubbed and disinfected the apartment from top to bottom. They left a deodorizing machine to run inside the apartment for a few days.""" Anybody have any idea what sort of device this `deodorizing machine` would be? I'm very curious what sort of technology could pull off such a feat.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TillE 9y ago
  Probably either an ozone generator or something that sucks air through a carbon filter.
  - jxramos 9y ago
    Aha, that must be what's on the box in that last image https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/01/01092018_LonelyDeath_045.jpg&w=1484 https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://w...
dawhizkid 9y ago
Is a decent solution to encourage pet ownership (dog or cat) among the single elderly? Not only can they help alleviate feelings of loneliness while you're alive but they could theoretically be trained to get help if you fall or if you eventually pass away.
- olympus 9y ago
  Considering the few other comments about pets eating their dead owners, this plan about getting help if you die needs a bit of thought. Would you train your pet to use the phone? Could it leave your house whenever it wanted? How will you train it to get help? By playing dead a lot? I'm in favor of pets as companionship, but an emergency button around your neck seems like a better way to get help with the exception of dieing in your sleep.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  Good idea. This way, even if you die alone, you can know that you will still be providing a useful service to your pet even after you are gone, as food for it!

101 points by johntam 9y ago

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Isn’t there one in America also ? Is the market significantly smaller in America ?

mathiasben 9y ago
in American it's target is people who will die alone and the objective is cleaning up financially. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderl...
- jupiter90000 9y ago
  That's one of the most disturbing stories I've read in a while. It's unbelievable, felt like I was reading science fiction. I wonder if there are ways to protect oneself in old age from being a victim of that...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    Don't live in one of the states with those type of guardianship laws. Probably need to elect a President that will choose a responsible steward for the HHS so that we can actually collect data on what is happening now and act upon it to reform this situation. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-33 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-33
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    It truly is. I wonder if we're being told the whole story though: some woman shows up at another person's door with no connection at all, but has a signed court order as their guardians? It is mentioned that the couple's daughter visited almost every day. She couldn't find a lawyer to immediately file an injunction? EDIT: Yeah, looks like the authorities stepped in[0]. [0] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/grand-jury-indicts-nevada-guardian-on-more-than-200-charges/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/grand-jury-indicts-nevad...
- imarg 9y ago
  This is horrifying.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The main people in that story were a couple that lived independently and had a daughter that lived 10 minutes away who visited almost every day. That's insane that the guardianship happened.
  - rhombocombus 9y ago
    Terrifying. My grandparents live under my brother's care and I became physically agitated reading this, thinking about how vulnerable they are and how easily this could have happened. They lived right around the corner from the couple in this story until a few years ago.
- yvsong 9y ago
  Is this a big government thing that violates individual freedom? I wonder how people handle this successfully and avoid abuses. Which states are better? Former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew often mentioned Asian family values. I used to think it’s a joke, but am starting to like it.
jessaustin 9y ago
Lots of specialty clean-up firms in USA could clean up such a scene. They also do indoor firearm suicides and motel room meth labs, which are probably less common in Japan than here.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

Was that the entirety of the apartment in photos, minus the bathroom? Even by New York standards, that's pretty tiny.

ggg9990 9y ago
Have you been in a Japanese hotel room? It’s a bed, plus about a few square feet of access pathway into the bed.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  Have _you_? I’ve stayed in both ‘international’ hotels that cater to foreigners and in business hotels which explicitly discourage foreigners by having literally everything in Japanese and they’ve all had fairly standard sized rooms for a hotel.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    To the parent's point, the one's in your description seem to all to fall on the expensive side, either for rich-ish foreigners or rich-ish Japanese.
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
      They weren't and I can't possibly fathom how you got that from the description.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        From the part that mentions that they are "international hotels that cater to foreigners" -- so not some local cockroach hotel for junkies and poor people (not to mention the fact that they need to have enough money to travel to an expensive country like Japan in the first place -- 2/3rds of the world couldn't even afford the tickets with a year's salary). And from the other part that mentions "business hotels" and especially ones that "explicitly discourage foreigners". Except if those are the rare kind of business hotels for poor destitute businessmen.

mwidell 9y ago

Reminds me of this documentary about Sweden. 50% of Swedes live alone, and 25% die alone. Often it takes a long time for someone to notice, as pensions come in to the account automatically, and the rent is also paid automatically. https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-love/dox-the-swedish-theory-of-love-avsnitt-1 https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-...

e40 9y ago
This is why my mother sends me an email every morning. Sometimes she just says hey, but most other times she includes other info about her life or asks me questions. Her reasoning was that because she had a cat (at the time), she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly.
- eric_h 9y ago
  > she didn't want to become cat food should she died suddenly. I had a great-great aunt who lived alone and hoarded cats and dogs (and many other non-living things). She was partially eaten when they finally found her. My grandparents eventually moved in to that property, and now my parents have it as a second property. Every time I visit, I still get a little shudder when I think about what it must have been like to stumble upon that scene (a weeks dead, partially eaten corpse surrounded by dozens of hungry cats and dogs...) - I'm not sure which neighbor discovered her, but that poor person... [Edit: fortunately, my parents didn't tell me the story until I was 18, I had visited my grandparents at that property every summer for most of my childhood. I imagine if they had told me earlier, my trips to the basement of that 19th century house would have been a bit more frightening]
  - wil421 9y ago
    I’ve heard similar stories and seen it mentioned on cop show. It must be pretty common. What about a device like the emergency buttons for elderly but it checks vitals? It could update loved ones daily. I bet you could use an Apple Watch.

g09980 9y ago

Recommend also reading this beautiful and very sad NYT article from a couple of months ago. "A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-d... Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064

Overtonwindow 9y ago
Glad you posted this. I found the article from November to be quite moving. As someone who knows precious little about Japanese culture, it surprises me that someone would die alone - and then sit alone for a long time before discovery. I had always heard Japan was a very collectivist society. Does that play into this?
- SllX 9y ago
  A collectivist society doesn't necessarily mean a supportive community. Part of being part of a collective means trying not to cause problems for the whole, even if it means some self-sacrifice on your part. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Burdens also get left behind.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  My opinion as a Westerner who has spent a lot of time in Japan: as in any crowded place, a key coping skill is the ability to ignore people who are in close proximity to you. When you’re riding on a train with people crammed up against every square inch of your body, you kind of zone out, avoid eye contact, and definitely don’t strike up a conversation. I get the strong sense that people who are alone can go though life with very few meaningful interactions, even with neighbors who live only a few centimeters away (note that the apartment in the story is 200 square feet, I’d bet that a lot of American homes have bathrooms bigger than that). Being collectivist means not taking up unnecessary psychic space in the lives of others.

oconnor663 9y ago

This is more about hospitals and less about solitary apartments, but there's a program in the US called No One Dies Alone: http://www.how-we-die.org/howwedie/story?sid=8 http://www.how-we-die.org/howwedie/story?sid=8. I'm really glad there are people like that.

epicide 9y ago

> It was almost as if Hiroaki had never existed. Bullshit. When I die, if all that is remembered of me are the things in my apartment, then it doesn't really matter if I was alone at the time or who cleans it up. I'm willing to bet he made a lasting impression on somebody. Friends, coworkers, etc. If not, then having kids or someone living with him wouldn't have mattered. I definitely get the feeling the message of this article is "make sure you have kids so you don't die alone and forgotten", which is stupid for several reasons.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
> I'm willing to bet he made a lasting impression on somebody. Friends, coworkers, etc. Apparently not enough of an impression to carry on the friendship, though, right? I think the point of the article is that Japanese society has traditionally been very dependent on family and work for all of your social bonding, with much less emphasis on maintaining relationships outside of those two spheres. If he did have kids, they would likely check up on him more than once a month. It's not guaranteed, of course, but Japanese culture does seem to put more of a weight on that than American culture. The point of this article isn't "this is how it should be or suffer the consequences", it's "this is how it is, and this is one of the consequences".
- mc32 9y ago
  It's possible relatives live in the countryside and this person outlived geographically close friends and coworkers.
- jxramos 9y ago
  I was struck by this part "They retire from lifetime jobs and lose the only communities they’ve ever really had." I've long recognized that deep friendships are those that transcend the circumstances which brought two individuals into proximity to take a liking to each other in the first place. A friendship that is limited to the circumstances that unite people I call "circumstantial friendships".

georgeecollins 9y ago

I hope anyone reading this realizes that there will be a time in life when you should call your mother and / or call your father, once a week at least.

melq 9y ago
And not just to check that they aren't dead :)
icebraining 9y ago
For me, that time is life is "always".
pythonboi 9y ago
And not only parents either. I call my grandparents once a week, mainly because their weeks are filled with trips to the store or doctors appointments. But I've grown a lot closer to them and have learned a lot from their experiences and stories. My grandfather loves talking about cars and he enjoys his weekly phone call. He can't wait to tell me all about new technologies he reads about. He tells me how his car is doing and asks how my car handles. He has 5 grandchildren and I believe that I am the only one who calls every week.

booleandilemma 9y ago

Sign me up!

jxramos 9y ago

"""Fujita and his team had carted away all his belongings, ripped off the wallpaper, checked under flooring, and scrubbed and disinfected the apartment from top to bottom. They left a deodorizing machine to run inside the apartment for a few days.""" Anybody have any idea what sort of device this `deodorizing machine` would be? I'm very curious what sort of technology could pull off such a feat.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TillE 9y ago
Probably either an ozone generator or something that sucks air through a carbon filter.
- jxramos 9y ago
  Aha, that must be what's on the box in that last image https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/01/01092018_LonelyDeath_045.jpg&w=1484 https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://w...

dawhizkid 9y ago

Is a decent solution to encourage pet ownership (dog or cat) among the single elderly? Not only can they help alleviate feelings of loneliness while you're alive but they could theoretically be trained to get help if you fall or if you eventually pass away.

olympus 9y ago
Considering the few other comments about pets eating their dead owners, this plan about getting help if you die needs a bit of thought. Would you train your pet to use the phone? Could it leave your house whenever it wanted? How will you train it to get help? By playing dead a lot? I'm in favor of pets as companionship, but an emergency button around your neck seems like a better way to get help with the exception of dieing in your sleep.
grkvlt 9y ago
Good idea. This way, even if you die alone, you can know that you will still be providing a useful service to your pet even after you are gone, as food for it!