14 ms·

The Lonely End: in aging Japan, thousands die alone and unnoticed

167 points by Thevet 11y ago

cousin_it 11y ago
That's a big problem with technological progress. It fulfills more and more of our needs, making it harder and harder to fulfill our need to be needed. Sure, you can give everyone basic income and robot caretakers, but people who aren't needed by other people will still suffer. I would much prefer it if society somehow changed itself to want and need all of its members, not just the young productive desirable ones. That's a kind of utopia I've never read about, it just kind of crystallized in my mind after years of thinking about this.
- polarix 11y ago
  That sounds insanely dystopian to me, for the fact that any member of that society is viscerally dependent on others -- anyone who claims to value freedom needs to think again. Being needed is crucially instrumental toward controlling one's own experience in the current environment. But why would it ever be a terminal value?
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    If it's only an instrumental value, how do you work around it? Put people in holodecks and give them illusions of loving friends? Or modify people's minds to make them content with not having any loving friends, because they already have guaranteed food/shelter/entertainment? I think many people wouldn't agree to either of those alternatives. They want to "actually" have someone who cares about them, whatever that means.
    - polarix 11y ago
      They might be given that kind of control without their will. Sorry to get all Jed-McKenna-Theory-Of-Everything here, but no being has proof that they are not in such a situation. In fact it is arguably the only consistent possibility. Expect that pure power would eventually (partially) allow itself to experience a situation without the ability to recall its own construction of that situation. (Imagining temporal bounds for that situation can be a helpful way of thinking about it from the human perspective, but of course temporality is a construction within the limited frame rather than something inherent.)
  - reagency 11y ago
    Why should freedom be a terminal value? Freedom is an instrument to attain your goals, not a goal in itself. A rock has freedom.
    - polarix 11y ago
      That is the right question.
fimbaz 11y ago
"Koremura wears his white overalls and an inscrutable expression." poor choice of words methinks.
anovikov 11y ago
It doesn't seem to have much to do with the eldery age, or even (physical) sickness. None of the people described have been at very old age, or terminally sick. This is just an illustration of how limited is society based on collectivism, obedience and hard work. It helped them out a great lot in the industrial age, and even then made many of them mentally broken, or outright sick, and completely stopped working in the post-industrial era.
- unabst 11y ago
  > how limited is society based on collectivism, obedience and hard work. So you are implying a society based on independence, rebellion, and slacking would do better at treating its elderly? Whether a culture cares for its elders only has to do whether they care for their elders, and in Japan they do. Making any other association is racism. The fact is only because they care have they associated a dreadful term "lonely death" that anyone can relate with and fear, and have made it the center of social debate. The fact is the US doesn't talk about this problem. They don't even have a word for it. But statistically more seniors live alone at 28% vs 20%. In fact, I don't know of a culture that cares more for their elderly than Japan. They care so much that the way they've highlighted the problem has made western headlines. If that isn't proactivism at its finest, I do not know what is. They're even voluntarily combing neighborhoods to identify elders living alone so that the police and local help workers can be aware. Yes, there is ageism in the workplace, and there are those that are blatantly ageist, as there are anywhere, but Google has been cited for ageism, and to many they epitomize modern western corporate (IT) culture. Granted, the west certainly provides more tools to do something about professional ageism, but to generalize that obedient, hard working people go crazy and die alone in a culture that couldn't care less is the exact opposite of what is really happening. I would add that the younger generation are less obedient and do not work as hard. There is a word they gave this problem too, and it is yutori-sedai. refs: http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-17-14-facts-about-senior-isolation/ http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-17-14-facts-about-senior... http://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/w-2013/gaiyou/s1_2_1.html http://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/w-2013/gaiyou/s1_2_1... http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-02-28/in-japan-the-rising-cost-of-elder-care-and-dying-alone http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-02-28/in-japan-the... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-aging-idUSKBN0EG1ZM20140605 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-a... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-aging-idUSKBN0EG1ZM20140605 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-a... https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%86%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%A3 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%86%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A%E4...
facepalm 11y ago
If only there was something like World Of Warcraft that is suitable for the elderly. I'm not joking. I keep wondering if I should introduce my grandma to such a game, but I live far away and they all seem too complicated. Would be happy about suggestions.
- evan_ 11y ago
  Bridge, or chess, or mah-Jong, or any number of other games. Sudoku, different solitaire variations, crosswords...
  - facepalm 11y ago
    Sure, but they might lack the social aspect of MMORPGs (guilds?)? And what would be good sites for those games?
    - evan_ 11y ago
      > they might lack the social aspect of MMORPGs (guilds?)? The first games I listed are highly social though with a relatively small number of players in a single session. > And what would be good sites for those games? local community centers, senior living centers, coffee shops, parks, private residences, etc.
      - facepalm 11y ago
        I meant online games. A lot of elderly people are not really mobile anymore, after several falls and broken hips.
Futurebot 11y ago
Loneliness is deadly: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/08/dangers_of_loneliness_social_isolation_is_deadlier_than_obesity.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... The "epidemic of loneliness" has spread to many places. If you haven't read "The Lonely American" I implore you to do so if you care about this topic at all. An incredibly sobering read. Book blurb: "In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely-yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history—fully 25 percent of households consist of one person only. In The Lonely American, cutting-edge research on the physiological and cognitive effects of social exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple effects of loneliness in areas as varied as physical health, children's emotional problems, substance abuse, and even global warming. Surprising new studies tell a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes happiness, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. Loneliness doesn't apply simply to single people, either—today's busy parents 'cocoon' themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of social contact, and unhealthily relying on the marriage to fulfill all social needs." Here's an article for Britain: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-loneliness-epidemic-more-connected-than-ever-but-feeling-more-alone-10143206.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... It's everywhere.
littletimmy 11y ago
This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.
- abawany 11y ago
  I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    Primarily because it is the mark of a life not well lived. Having family, friends etc are essential to a good life for most people.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      Who are any of us to judge what a life well lived is to anyone else?
      - iamdave 11y ago
        Somehow I don't think that's what anyone is doing here.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        Society. The very notion of "well" etc (and most things we believe to be "good" or "ethical") comes from shared culture, else it's totally arbitrary personal preference. It's not about "logical objective reasoning" either. Treating people bad for example. Nothing "logical" about it being more wrong that treating them nice (especially if it benefits you to do so). But the culture we co-created and live in makes it wrong (and that's a good thing).
        ams6110 11y ago
        Society has been trending towards "arbitrary personal preference" in many areas lately. Conversely, society has condoned and even encouraged things that are horribly unfair. So I don't see why we would carve out an exception for judging the "well-lived-ness" of a person's life based on society's precepts about the number or closeness of friends and family.
pcrh 11y ago
>We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone. ...or... >For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  Unless you were born in a vat, you probably didn't enter the world alone.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    I came into this world naked, screaming and covered in blood. I would prefer going away a bit more dignified.
  - cko 11y ago
    I interpret it as "we enter the world greeted by a bunch of strangers" and "when we die no one follows us to the other side".
civilian 11y ago
> His epiphany came when his current partner told him how she had lost her grandmother. Unlike Koremura’s loss, her grandmother had died alone—a kodokushi. It was seeing the deep regret in her, and accepting his own ennui, that made Koremura finally take action. He left his job as a stockbroker and set up his own removal company dedicated to the cleanup of kodokushi victims. He wanted to give something back to the generation of his grandmother, and he also wanted to change who he was. “I was ready for the prospect of change, but looking back, perhaps I wasn’t quite so ready for how different my life was to become,” he remembers. It's odd that Toru Koremura's reaction to lonely elderly deaths was to go into the corpse-cleaning-up business, rather than starting a social outreach program for the lonely elderly. I understand there's dignity in how we treat the dead, but it doesn't solve the problem at all.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kentt 11y ago
  I think this is very cultural. It's about honouring them in their death. Though I understand, that does sound off to my western mind.
  - cubancigar11 11y ago
    I think the problem is present in all the countries where traditional marriage system has been broken. The only difference between USA and Japan will be that you can find old-homes very easily in USA. Japan being a very conservative country that prides itself over 'protecting' all the bad symptoms of its culture will not solve this problem because, ironically, they think that this is what makes them 'Japanese'.
    - kaitai 11y ago
      I don't think it's related to "traditional marriage systems," but instead to social nets and expectations about who will do the caring. For instance, in Scandinavia marriage rates have simply plunged over the last few decades -- fewer and fewer people get married, even though they are still getting together. But social safety nets ensure that taking care of children or older relatives is not such a financial burden as in Japan. Marriage isn't necessary to supporting elders or children in Scandinavia. In Japan, though, there is very little government support. Families are the main line of support, and it is expensive!
FrankenPC 11y ago
In my mind I see this as a social health crisis. The elderly provide an unbelievable amount of wisdom to the next generation. By abandoning them, we abandon our children's future. I think of the elderly as an essential vitamin for children. They impart valuable social memes and at the same time tell the children, by there mere existence in their lives, that we value our family and when the children's time comes to age and pass away, they can expect to be valued as well. In other words, by abandoning our elderly, we're sending a clear message to our children that human life has no inherent value if you can't produce. No wonder children in industrialized nations can't seem to feel a sense of belonging.
- vishaldpatel 11y ago
  Couldn't agree more. "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from?"
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Society is bizarre in innumerable ways. The number of people who I know that have contempt for children or people having children is repugnant to me. I think the disdain for the young and old is a sign of decadence.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    More often than not it's contempt for bad parenting, really. Overenthusiastic natalism can be a negative, as taboo as it is to suggest it.
  - NhanH 11y ago
    Is it the contempt for children, or the contempt for people who believes that having children is the only way to live a life?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
themodelplumber 11y ago
I used to help out in roujin hoomu (homes for the elderly) when I was a missionary in Japan. Meeting Japanese people who worked there and really gave a care was a huge experience for me. They genuinely tried their hardest to make the experience pleasant in these under-budgeted, dreary places. While we Americans were just a temporary sideshow, they were there to help for as long as they could live off the salary. Makes me sad but also a bit hopeful that those waves could build up over time. If I ever go back I will happily exchange my fascination with Manga or cool stationery or whatever for some more time trying to help out.
rjuyal 11y ago
This is scary. This is the first time I read such article. I live alone, never married ( no plans to marry either ), have no friends. I have a decent job though. This article scares me.
- Tistel 11y ago
  Me too. I live in a city far from where I grew up. Good job. Lots of money. Don't know a soul.
  - branchless 11y ago
    Do something like go joint meetup.com. If you job isn't something like brain surgeon or another essential item then it's the old adage: nobody ever wished they had spent more time at work on their death bed.
    - robocat 11y ago
      > go joint meetup.com Not really a fan of that advice (although better than no action) - I believe it is difficult to avoid shallow connections with a shifting group of people. I personally (A) choose to share accommodation (shared house), (B) live in a part of the city that has that community feel (not the "best" neighborhood). Now meaningful long-term connections just happen without trying (in fact it would take effort to avoid it).
- deeteecee 11y ago
  same here.. except for the friends part. i feel happy with a lot but the difference is ive thrown myself into japan and dont have really close friends. that sucks that the article scares you, stay strong my friend. my room in japan actually has started to look like the picture i saw in the article. back in the states, i was a much cleaner person but now i find it almost impossible and stuff is just lying around everywhere... the similarity is a little scary there but i just laughed it off like i usually do. im hoping ill be fine :)
- tomcam 11y ago
  Thank you for sharing. My heart is with you. Why don't you plan to marry?
JesperRavn 11y ago
Why are there so many stories HN on social problems in Asia? I would have expected that smart people on HN would make some effort to understand Orientalism[0]. In the case of this story, this is a phenomenon that is occurring all around the developed world. Japan is in many ways just another developed country. But through the eyes of Orientalism, Japan's problems are unique and quaint, and the objective Westerner can dispose some sage wisdom[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism [1] I don't want to pick on anyone, but there are already some great examples in the thread.
- auganov 11y ago
  I particularly don't like how many will insist on using the original Japanese term as if it was untranslatable, inapplicable to the outside world.
  - unabst 11y ago
    But the word is helping spread the word. That is the beauty of it.
- unabst 11y ago
  There certainly are cases of orientalist depiction in journalism, but I don't feel that is the case here. It could simply be the case that the volume of their social debate is loud enough that it is being picked up by other countries, because, as you say, it is a common problem. As it turns out, senior isolation is at 28% in the US vs 20% in Japan. In the US, we don't even talk about it. To me, that is a far more serious problem.
  - SolaceQuantum 11y ago
    I would argue that it's not because the volume of the social debate is louder in Japan than the states. It's because of a tendency to see another country's problems from outside the country allows journalism articles like this. I'm sure there are plenty of articles in other countries talking about how Americans are having an elderly crisis that no one is talking about, as well. Certain things like leaving your elderly in a retirement home away from the family are downright unthinkable. My parents (Chinese, I'm a 1st gen Chinese American) have told me they don't want me to treat them like the Americans treat their parents (e.g. putting your grandma in a nursing home to rot alone). I'm sure they get this from their own Chinese media sources.
fuzzythinker 11y ago
A very good related movie: Departures http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238
justifier 11y ago
is this a causation correlation issue of generations? could i die alone without any great effort to do so having grown up on the internet? i have seen promotional material for teaching seniors computer skills.. and there seem to be so many similar services and efforts that a search was unable to lead me to the specific video.. the internet is filled with a mess of stuff but within there are many communities covering very many interests why imagine yourself alone?
- mirimir 11y ago
  I didn't grow up on the Internet, but I have gotten a lot older on it. I'm married and social, so I probably won't die alone, unless I flee and hide ;) But it's clearly much easier to meet people online who share my interests.
chvid 11y ago
The article is written is if this is unique to Japan. But lonely deaths, unnoticed for months happens every day in every (modern) society. And it is mostly men.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Sad but not uncommon I think. There was a guy who had a radio show that interviewed people with odd jobs. One such jobs was sort of like Toru's but was "special cleaning". Basically the guy started a business to clean up crime scenes. But found that most of his business came from landlords and others discovering deceased elders in their rooms. His suggestion was to crawl your grandparents from time to time to say hi. Several times he had cleaned up places where the person had simply fallen and then died where they were because they could not get up to get any help. This is probably especially challenging with people who don't have relatives or the relatives never check up on them.
- mc32 11y ago
  This could be addressed with monitoring. We have more and more alternatives to choose from. Either from external sensors (movement within the house, toilet usage, phone activity, bank account activity; or, alternatively, from devices worn by the people. This would be a great use of the IoT.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    While I'm not saying no time monitoring, I would still prefer a visit from a human being. Recently my gran lost her heating & cooking for two days because her necklace went faulty and reported a false positive carbon monoxide incident.
    - mc32 11y ago
      Human contact is good, but you can't have person there 24x7, a monitor never tires, and you can address false positives by relying on multiple signals/sensors.
      - SixSigma 11y ago
        It was one of two carbon monoxide monitors, false positives are treated as failure of the second device to detect - which is, of course, the safest way.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- mattm 11y ago
  This is definitely not the case. I question how many elderly people (80+) you actually know in your life and see on a regular basis.
mattm 11y ago
My wife is a hospice nurse here in Japan visiting terminally ill patients at their homes. She comes home with many different stories. Some people are incredibly wealthy but their family doesn't want anything to do with them so they basically wait to die alone. Some people are poor and mentally ill and are basically living in dumps with rodents running around. Some people do have good situations in which they are cared for and can die surrounded by loved ones. My wife is the only person I've met who wants to die young (around 40 or 50). Death is usually hidden from our lives - especially when we're young and only comes up infrequently. While some people who are poor do use their service due to government subsidies, a lot of people don't and there is no public service for the elderly. Stories like this will become much more common over the next 20 years as a huge proportion of the Japanese populations passes on.
- mc32 11y ago
  Instead of the elderly living in homes/apartments by themselves, why not try to get them to live in elderly communities where they can engage with other elderpeople and have caregivers oversee their journey into eol. @timhon, I meant as a society, why not invest in elderly communities. Their pop is only going to get older, so it behooves them to address this option. As, a side note, there is a curious phenomenon of relatives going along with the rouse of their dead elders living so they can cash their checks. Seems to be in the news on occasion.
  - timhon 11y ago
    the article said there is a big shortage and a long waiting list.
  - jodrellblank 11y ago
    Why not put untouchables in communities where they can engage with other untouchables, with software monitors which call robot helpers if there's a problem and they are dying of loneliness and despair unacceptably quickly. As long as it all happens to them, at a distance, and we're not having to get involved, eh?
    - 11y ago

167 points by Thevet 11y ago

That's a big problem with technological progress. It fulfills more and more of our needs, making it harder and harder to fulfill our need to be needed. Sure, you can give everyone basic income and robot caretakers, but people who aren't needed by other people will still suffer. I would much prefer it if society somehow changed itself to want and need all of its members, not just the young productive desirable ones. That's a kind of utopia I've never read about, it just kind of crystallized in my mind after years of thinking about this.

polarix 11y ago
That sounds insanely dystopian to me, for the fact that any member of that society is viscerally dependent on others -- anyone who claims to value freedom needs to think again. Being needed is crucially instrumental toward controlling one's own experience in the current environment. But why would it ever be a terminal value?
- cousin_it 11y ago
  If it's only an instrumental value, how do you work around it? Put people in holodecks and give them illusions of loving friends? Or modify people's minds to make them content with not having any loving friends, because they already have guaranteed food/shelter/entertainment? I think many people wouldn't agree to either of those alternatives. They want to "actually" have someone who cares about them, whatever that means.
  - polarix 11y ago
    They might be given that kind of control without their will. Sorry to get all Jed-McKenna-Theory-Of-Everything here, but no being has proof that they are not in such a situation. In fact it is arguably the only consistent possibility. Expect that pure power would eventually (partially) allow itself to experience a situation without the ability to recall its own construction of that situation. (Imagining temporal bounds for that situation can be a helpful way of thinking about it from the human perspective, but of course temporality is a construction within the limited frame rather than something inherent.)
- reagency 11y ago
  Why should freedom be a terminal value? Freedom is an instrument to attain your goals, not a goal in itself. A rock has freedom.
  - polarix 11y ago
    That is the right question.

fimbaz 11y ago

"Koremura wears his white overalls and an inscrutable expression." poor choice of words methinks.

anovikov 11y ago

It doesn't seem to have much to do with the eldery age, or even (physical) sickness. None of the people described have been at very old age, or terminally sick. This is just an illustration of how limited is society based on collectivism, obedience and hard work. It helped them out a great lot in the industrial age, and even then made many of them mentally broken, or outright sick, and completely stopped working in the post-industrial era.

unabst 11y ago
> how limited is society based on collectivism, obedience and hard work. So you are implying a society based on independence, rebellion, and slacking would do better at treating its elderly? Whether a culture cares for its elders only has to do whether they care for their elders, and in Japan they do. Making any other association is racism. The fact is only because they care have they associated a dreadful term "lonely death" that anyone can relate with and fear, and have made it the center of social debate. The fact is the US doesn't talk about this problem. They don't even have a word for it. But statistically more seniors live alone at 28% vs 20%. In fact, I don't know of a culture that cares more for their elderly than Japan. They care so much that the way they've highlighted the problem has made western headlines. If that isn't proactivism at its finest, I do not know what is. They're even voluntarily combing neighborhoods to identify elders living alone so that the police and local help workers can be aware. Yes, there is ageism in the workplace, and there are those that are blatantly ageist, as there are anywhere, but Google has been cited for ageism, and to many they epitomize modern western corporate (IT) culture. Granted, the west certainly provides more tools to do something about professional ageism, but to generalize that obedient, hard working people go crazy and die alone in a culture that couldn't care less is the exact opposite of what is really happening. I would add that the younger generation are less obedient and do not work as hard. There is a word they gave this problem too, and it is yutori-sedai. refs: http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-17-14-facts-about-senior-isolation/ http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-17-14-facts-about-senior... http://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/w-2013/gaiyou/s1_2_1.html http://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/w-2013/gaiyou/s1_2_1... http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-02-28/in-japan-the-rising-cost-of-elder-care-and-dying-alone http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-02-28/in-japan-the... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-aging-idUSKBN0EG1ZM20140605 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-a... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-aging-idUSKBN0EG1ZM20140605 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-a... https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%86%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%A3 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%86%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A%E4...

facepalm 11y ago

If only there was something like World Of Warcraft that is suitable for the elderly. I'm not joking. I keep wondering if I should introduce my grandma to such a game, but I live far away and they all seem too complicated. Would be happy about suggestions.

evan_ 11y ago
Bridge, or chess, or mah-Jong, or any number of other games. Sudoku, different solitaire variations, crosswords...
- facepalm 11y ago
  Sure, but they might lack the social aspect of MMORPGs (guilds?)? And what would be good sites for those games?
  - evan_ 11y ago
    > they might lack the social aspect of MMORPGs (guilds?)? The first games I listed are highly social though with a relatively small number of players in a single session. > And what would be good sites for those games? local community centers, senior living centers, coffee shops, parks, private residences, etc.
    - facepalm 11y ago
      I meant online games. A lot of elderly people are not really mobile anymore, after several falls and broken hips.

Futurebot 11y ago

Loneliness is deadly: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/08/dangers_of_loneliness_social_isolation_is_deadlier_than_obesity.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... The "epidemic of loneliness" has spread to many places. If you haven't read "The Lonely American" I implore you to do so if you care about this topic at all. An incredibly sobering read. Book blurb: "In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely-yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history—fully 25 percent of households consist of one person only. In The Lonely American, cutting-edge research on the physiological and cognitive effects of social exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple effects of loneliness in areas as varied as physical health, children's emotional problems, substance abuse, and even global warming. Surprising new studies tell a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes happiness, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. Loneliness doesn't apply simply to single people, either—today's busy parents 'cocoon' themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of social contact, and unhealthily relying on the marriage to fulfill all social needs." Here's an article for Britain: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-loneliness-epidemic-more-connected-than-ever-but-feeling-more-alone-10143206.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... It's everywhere.

littletimmy 11y ago

This is so sad. Dying alone is more frightening than death itself. It is articles like this that force me to stop working so hard and spend more time with family.

abawany 11y ago
I genuinely want to know: why is that frightening? I have thought through this a few times and I did not come to this conclusion at all.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Primarily because it is the mark of a life not well lived. Having family, friends etc are essential to a good life for most people.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Who are any of us to judge what a life well lived is to anyone else?
    - iamdave 11y ago
      Somehow I don't think that's what anyone is doing here.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Society. The very notion of "well" etc (and most things we believe to be "good" or "ethical") comes from shared culture, else it's totally arbitrary personal preference. It's not about "logical objective reasoning" either. Treating people bad for example. Nothing "logical" about it being more wrong that treating them nice (especially if it benefits you to do so). But the culture we co-created and live in makes it wrong (and that's a good thing).
      - ams6110 11y ago
        Society has been trending towards "arbitrary personal preference" in many areas lately. Conversely, society has condoned and even encouraged things that are horribly unfair. So I don't see why we would carve out an exception for judging the "well-lived-ness" of a person's life based on society's precepts about the number or closeness of friends and family.

pcrh 11y ago

>We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone. ...or... >For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.

yellowapple 11y ago
Unless you were born in a vat, you probably didn't enter the world alone.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  I came into this world naked, screaming and covered in blood. I would prefer going away a bit more dignified.
- cko 11y ago
  I interpret it as "we enter the world greeted by a bunch of strangers" and "when we die no one follows us to the other side".

civilian 11y ago

> His epiphany came when his current partner told him how she had lost her grandmother. Unlike Koremura’s loss, her grandmother had died alone—a kodokushi. It was seeing the deep regret in her, and accepting his own ennui, that made Koremura finally take action. He left his job as a stockbroker and set up his own removal company dedicated to the cleanup of kodokushi victims. He wanted to give something back to the generation of his grandmother, and he also wanted to change who he was. “I was ready for the prospect of change, but looking back, perhaps I wasn’t quite so ready for how different my life was to become,” he remembers. It's odd that Toru Koremura's reaction to lonely elderly deaths was to go into the corpse-cleaning-up business, rather than starting a social outreach program for the lonely elderly. I understand there's dignity in how we treat the dead, but it doesn't solve the problem at all.

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kentt 11y ago
I think this is very cultural. It's about honouring them in their death. Though I understand, that does sound off to my western mind.
- cubancigar11 11y ago
  I think the problem is present in all the countries where traditional marriage system has been broken. The only difference between USA and Japan will be that you can find old-homes very easily in USA. Japan being a very conservative country that prides itself over 'protecting' all the bad symptoms of its culture will not solve this problem because, ironically, they think that this is what makes them 'Japanese'.
  - kaitai 11y ago
    I don't think it's related to "traditional marriage systems," but instead to social nets and expectations about who will do the caring. For instance, in Scandinavia marriage rates have simply plunged over the last few decades -- fewer and fewer people get married, even though they are still getting together. But social safety nets ensure that taking care of children or older relatives is not such a financial burden as in Japan. Marriage isn't necessary to supporting elders or children in Scandinavia. In Japan, though, there is very little government support. Families are the main line of support, and it is expensive!

FrankenPC 11y ago

In my mind I see this as a social health crisis. The elderly provide an unbelievable amount of wisdom to the next generation. By abandoning them, we abandon our children's future. I think of the elderly as an essential vitamin for children. They impart valuable social memes and at the same time tell the children, by there mere existence in their lives, that we value our family and when the children's time comes to age and pass away, they can expect to be valued as well. In other words, by abandoning our elderly, we're sending a clear message to our children that human life has no inherent value if you can't produce. No wonder children in industrialized nations can't seem to feel a sense of belonging.

vishaldpatel 11y ago
Couldn't agree more. "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from?"
Spooky23 11y ago
Society is bizarre in innumerable ways. The number of people who I know that have contempt for children or people having children is repugnant to me. I think the disdain for the young and old is a sign of decadence.
- deleted 11y ago
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- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  More often than not it's contempt for bad parenting, really. Overenthusiastic natalism can be a negative, as taboo as it is to suggest it.
- NhanH 11y ago
  Is it the contempt for children, or the contempt for people who believes that having children is the only way to live a life?
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themodelplumber 11y ago

I used to help out in roujin hoomu (homes for the elderly) when I was a missionary in Japan. Meeting Japanese people who worked there and really gave a care was a huge experience for me. They genuinely tried their hardest to make the experience pleasant in these under-budgeted, dreary places. While we Americans were just a temporary sideshow, they were there to help for as long as they could live off the salary. Makes me sad but also a bit hopeful that those waves could build up over time. If I ever go back I will happily exchange my fascination with Manga or cool stationery or whatever for some more time trying to help out.

rjuyal 11y ago

This is scary. This is the first time I read such article. I live alone, never married ( no plans to marry either ), have no friends. I have a decent job though. This article scares me.

Tistel 11y ago
Me too. I live in a city far from where I grew up. Good job. Lots of money. Don't know a soul.
- branchless 11y ago
  Do something like go joint meetup.com. If you job isn't something like brain surgeon or another essential item then it's the old adage: nobody ever wished they had spent more time at work on their death bed.
  - robocat 11y ago
    > go joint meetup.com Not really a fan of that advice (although better than no action) - I believe it is difficult to avoid shallow connections with a shifting group of people. I personally (A) choose to share accommodation (shared house), (B) live in a part of the city that has that community feel (not the "best" neighborhood). Now meaningful long-term connections just happen without trying (in fact it would take effort to avoid it).
deeteecee 11y ago
same here.. except for the friends part. i feel happy with a lot but the difference is ive thrown myself into japan and dont have really close friends. that sucks that the article scares you, stay strong my friend. my room in japan actually has started to look like the picture i saw in the article. back in the states, i was a much cleaner person but now i find it almost impossible and stuff is just lying around everywhere... the similarity is a little scary there but i just laughed it off like i usually do. im hoping ill be fine :)
tomcam 11y ago
Thank you for sharing. My heart is with you. Why don't you plan to marry?

JesperRavn 11y ago

Why are there so many stories HN on social problems in Asia? I would have expected that smart people on HN would make some effort to understand Orientalism[0]. In the case of this story, this is a phenomenon that is occurring all around the developed world. Japan is in many ways just another developed country. But through the eyes of Orientalism, Japan's problems are unique and quaint, and the objective Westerner can dispose some sage wisdom[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism [1] I don't want to pick on anyone, but there are already some great examples in the thread.

auganov 11y ago
I particularly don't like how many will insist on using the original Japanese term as if it was untranslatable, inapplicable to the outside world.
- unabst 11y ago
  But the word is helping spread the word. That is the beauty of it.
unabst 11y ago
There certainly are cases of orientalist depiction in journalism, but I don't feel that is the case here. It could simply be the case that the volume of their social debate is loud enough that it is being picked up by other countries, because, as you say, it is a common problem. As it turns out, senior isolation is at 28% in the US vs 20% in Japan. In the US, we don't even talk about it. To me, that is a far more serious problem.
- SolaceQuantum 11y ago
  I would argue that it's not because the volume of the social debate is louder in Japan than the states. It's because of a tendency to see another country's problems from outside the country allows journalism articles like this. I'm sure there are plenty of articles in other countries talking about how Americans are having an elderly crisis that no one is talking about, as well. Certain things like leaving your elderly in a retirement home away from the family are downright unthinkable. My parents (Chinese, I'm a 1st gen Chinese American) have told me they don't want me to treat them like the Americans treat their parents (e.g. putting your grandma in a nursing home to rot alone). I'm sure they get this from their own Chinese media sources.

fuzzythinker 11y ago

A very good related movie: Departures http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238

justifier 11y ago

is this a causation correlation issue of generations? could i die alone without any great effort to do so having grown up on the internet? i have seen promotional material for teaching seniors computer skills.. and there seem to be so many similar services and efforts that a search was unable to lead me to the specific video.. the internet is filled with a mess of stuff but within there are many communities covering very many interests why imagine yourself alone?

mirimir 11y ago
I didn't grow up on the Internet, but I have gotten a lot older on it. I'm married and social, so I probably won't die alone, unless I flee and hide ;) But it's clearly much easier to meet people online who share my interests.

chvid 11y ago

The article is written is if this is unique to Japan. But lonely deaths, unnoticed for months happens every day in every (modern) society. And it is mostly men.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Sad but not uncommon I think. There was a guy who had a radio show that interviewed people with odd jobs. One such jobs was sort of like Toru's but was "special cleaning". Basically the guy started a business to clean up crime scenes. But found that most of his business came from landlords and others discovering deceased elders in their rooms. His suggestion was to crawl your grandparents from time to time to say hi. Several times he had cleaned up places where the person had simply fallen and then died where they were because they could not get up to get any help. This is probably especially challenging with people who don't have relatives or the relatives never check up on them.

mc32 11y ago
This could be addressed with monitoring. We have more and more alternatives to choose from. Either from external sensors (movement within the house, toilet usage, phone activity, bank account activity; or, alternatively, from devices worn by the people. This would be a great use of the IoT.
- deleted 11y ago
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- SixSigma 11y ago
  While I'm not saying no time monitoring, I would still prefer a visit from a human being. Recently my gran lost her heating & cooking for two days because her necklace went faulty and reported a false positive carbon monoxide incident.
  - mc32 11y ago
    Human contact is good, but you can't have person there 24x7, a monitor never tires, and you can address false positives by relying on multiple signals/sensors.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      It was one of two carbon monoxide monitors, false positives are treated as failure of the second device to detect - which is, of course, the safest way.

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mattm 11y ago
This is definitely not the case. I question how many elderly people (80+) you actually know in your life and see on a regular basis.

mattm 11y ago

My wife is a hospice nurse here in Japan visiting terminally ill patients at their homes. She comes home with many different stories. Some people are incredibly wealthy but their family doesn't want anything to do with them so they basically wait to die alone. Some people are poor and mentally ill and are basically living in dumps with rodents running around. Some people do have good situations in which they are cared for and can die surrounded by loved ones. My wife is the only person I've met who wants to die young (around 40 or 50). Death is usually hidden from our lives - especially when we're young and only comes up infrequently. While some people who are poor do use their service due to government subsidies, a lot of people don't and there is no public service for the elderly. Stories like this will become much more common over the next 20 years as a huge proportion of the Japanese populations passes on.

mc32 11y ago
Instead of the elderly living in homes/apartments by themselves, why not try to get them to live in elderly communities where they can engage with other elderpeople and have caregivers oversee their journey into eol. @timhon, I meant as a society, why not invest in elderly communities. Their pop is only going to get older, so it behooves them to address this option. As, a side note, there is a curious phenomenon of relatives going along with the rouse of their dead elders living so they can cash their checks. Seems to be in the news on occasion.
- timhon 11y ago
  the article said there is a big shortage and a long waiting list.
- jodrellblank 11y ago
  Why not put untouchables in communities where they can engage with other untouchables, with software monitors which call robot helpers if there's a problem and they are dying of loneliness and despair unacceptably quickly. As long as it all happens to them, at a distance, and we're not having to get involved, eh?
  - 11y ago