
In Japan, there's an industry devoted to cleaning up after people who died alone - johntam
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feature/so-many-japanese-people-die-alone-theres-a-whole-industry-devoted-to-cleaning-up-after-them/?utm_term=.6e543bc7e6d4
======
g09980
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-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-
deaths-the-end.html)

Discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822064)

~~~
Overtonwindow
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?

~~~
URSpider94
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.

------
mwidell
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-...](https://www.svtplay.se/video/10458343/the-swedish-theory-of-love/dox-
the-swedish-theory-of-love-avsnitt-1)

~~~
e40
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.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Off Topic:

 _This is why my mother sends me an email every morning._

Should be the other way around. Parents watched us every hour when growing up,
as adults we should be the ones checking on them constantly.

In the West I rarely hear people who talk about their parents with great love
and care. Instead I see parents praising their children all day long. These
kids grow up feeling like a prize and they do not develop enough appreciation
for the hard work it took their parents.

Growing up in Africa it felt like, as a child, you owed everything to your
parents and they did you a favor taking care of you. While extreme, in the
long run people take care of their parents and you will not hear of older
people being alone let alone die alone.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It doesn't really matter if mom initiates the email exchange or child does.
The important detail is daily communication from the elderly parent confirming
they are alive and functional. If child sends email, the elderly parent still
needs to reply or you have no mechanism to check if they are okay.

~~~
coldtea
The point was not about the mechanism, but caring.

------
georgeecollins
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.

~~~
pythonboi
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.

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

~~~
ggg9990
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
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
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
They weren't and I can't possibly fathom how you got that from the
description.

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
jackvalentine
I think maybe we have a mismatch of cultural expectations. When I traveled in
America I saw a lot of those junkie hotels - they're simply not really even
thought of as viable hotels in my country. When you drive America you see
America is _poor_.

An actual example from two of the categories I've actually stayed in.

ANA Crowne Plaza Okayama - $116AU a night. Not shockingly cheap, but cheap
nonetheless.

PRINCE something something, in Osaka. 6000JPY a night on a public holiday.

No matter your definition of cheap, they're not 'expensive' hotels.

------
oconnor663
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.

------
jxramos
"""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.

~~~
TillE
Probably either an ozone generator or something that sucks air through a
carbon filter.

~~~
jxramos
Aha, that must be what's on the box in that last image
[https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-
apps/imrs.php?src=http://w...](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)

------
dawhizkid
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
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.

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

~~~
mathiasben
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-
elderl...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-
their-rights)

~~~
jupiter90000
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...

~~~
stevenwoo
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)

------
epicide
> 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
> _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".

~~~
jxramos
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".

------
booleandilemma
Sign me up!

