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

http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/the-lonely-end/

by Thevet • 11 years ago

167 162 11 years ago

littletimmy2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

littletimmy2• 11 years 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.

no1youknowz• 11 years ago

I don't understand it either. Why is it frightening?

I also didn't quite understand the family comment either. Whose family are you talking about?

When you are born, you have your mom (and possibly Dad) around you. But as you grow older, Mom and Dad will pass away and you'll thus be alone. Unless you have kids, you'll die alone.

Even if you do have kids, life happens. I know plenty of people who don't talk to their kids or they hate their mom or dad and there is no relation. Thus some people have died alone.

I think some people have this fantasy, that they are on their death bed and there is 3 generations weeping around them.

Sorry, but is this even true any more? Quite honestly for me. I'm quite happy to leave as unnoticed.

Oh and another thing. Friends. Unless you make seriously good friends and not those on facebook or acquaintances. They may be around you a long time. But I have rarely met someone in their 50s/60s that still knows their childhood friends.

So strike that one off the list. I think a life well-meant is what you did with it. Rather than who is in it.

tokipin• 11 years ago

At the moment of death you're having your last memories, so dying alone is like going into the abyss alone forever. Dying with people is like going into the abyss with that company forever. Or something like that. It could be even more subtle than this. I'm speaking psychologically of course. Replace the abyss with whatever.

This may seem odd in logical terms but it seems to be a common understanding, and it's found in movies, books, etc.

[edit]It might be analagous to children who don't want to fall asleep without an adult with them. They are scared by the darkness and don't want to go through something scary alone.

e40• 11 years ago

Because death is final and there is no pain afterwards. A long, slow decline is a form of mental torture. I think that's what the GP meant.

ekianjo2• 11 years ago

Dying alone is more frightening than death itself.

Maybe, but most people mentioned in the article apparently die from heart attacks, and you don't know when it's going to happen - so it's not like you "know" and expect death to come around the corner. It could have literally happened when that person was shopping out, too.

acveilleux• 11 years ago

It seems like the deceased in the article had nothing left to do but to wait for that death. Actually sounds worse then the death itself to me.

pcrh• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

Unless you were born in a vat, you probably didn't enter the world alone.

cko• 11 years 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".

tomjen32• 11 years ago

I came into this world naked, screaming and covered in blood. I would prefer going away a bit more dignified.

civilian• 11 years 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.

kentt2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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'.

sliverstorm3• 11 years ago

Both are needed.

teek• 11 years ago

Japan is incredibly stubborn and ignorant when it comes to addressing core social and psychological problems in their society. It isn't even recognized by most of the population so when people begin to complain of their own social issues or depression, people around them will slowly distance themselves from that person. As a result, most people will choose to hide their issues until it is unbearable. At the point they feel they cannot continue is when they do something drastic which includes suicide.

If you bring the problem to light, people will just shy away from the debate (Japanese avoid arguments at all costs) and act ignorant. So to anyone that understands Japanese culture, Koremura's response is understandable. At least in the position he is in, he can do something.

lani2• 11 years ago

How about a startup where one can dial a 1-800 number from Japan and get someone in ,say, Europe, who is also bored, and the two can rant to each other about how bad things are , and then go back to their lives ? International PainBuddy program, Dial-An-Agony . 1800-call-pain !! Best part, we pay a couple of life coaches to analyse some rants and provide anonymous advice

velodrome• 11 years ago

Solution: Meetups. I am not sure if you remember an article from last year about elderly Koreans (in NY) who would do weekly meetups to check on each other...Maybe something like this can work in Japan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/nyregion/fighting-a-mcdona...

smil2• 11 years ago

How has your country (you must be American) distinguished itself by doing these same core social and psychological issues? Or are Americans stubborn and ignorant?

keithpeter3• 11 years ago

"Japan is incredibly stubborn and ignorant when it comes to addressing core social and psychological problems in their society."

Not just Japan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-33...

Politicians in the UK talk about community this and community that but in practice we are losing the ties between neighbours/families.

A_COMPUTER• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai

impendia• 11 years ago

I lived in Japan for two years, and studied the language, and it was amazing how that sentence always brought any discussion to a conclusion.

Grammatically, its negation would be "Shikata ga aru", but I never heard this said once.

mjklin• 11 years ago

Ah, this must be the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese "mei banfa" (没办法), probably the national slogan. Oh, they are building a dam and you need to move your house twenty metres up the hill? "Mei banfa".

navbaker• 11 years ago

Wow, I knew this phrase from the Metasploit encoder, but never knew that it had such deep cultural meaning!

gcv• 11 years ago

English has an equivalent: "it is what it is". It also stops solution-seeking dead in its tracks. A hateful little phrase.

FrankenPC2• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

Couldn't agree more.

"How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from?"

Spooky232• 11 years 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.

vezzy-fnord2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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?

Klinky2• 11 years ago

What kind of mental gymnastics are involved in portraying the people who aren't sinking $200K into a child as decadent?

reddytowns• 11 years ago

Having children is the single most damaging thing to the environment a person will realistically do in their lifetime.

Edit: why all the downvotes?

NPSpace• 11 years ago

Really have to qualify your comment. All horrible people will eventually become elderly. Despite the "wisdom" that such people may have, many have an incredible ability to wreak havoc in the lives of others... to the point of being a net negative on future generations.

FrankenPC2• 11 years ago

You bring up a good point. There's no qualification test for wisdom. Is someone a bitter dogmatic psycho? Or are they warm and truly emotionally intelligent? No way to know. One problem is that there is no real regard for wisdom in modern American society. We value youth and energy over wisdom and depth. So, why even be bothered to think about such things?

ekianjo2• 11 years ago

The elderly provide an unbelievable amount of wisdom

Sorry, no. It's not because you grow grey hair that you get gifted wisdom or anything. There's a bunch of older people who are actually assholes, too. Getting old does not make your into a Saint.

Turing_Machine2• 11 years ago

Assholishness and wisdom seem to be orthogonal to me. Most of us could probably name a dozen famous people off the tops of our heads who were both wise and unpleasant (most famously, Isaac Newton... arguably in the running for the smartest person who ever lived, but kind of a dick in his interpersonal relationships).

Old people have survived, which represents a first cut against doing foolish things, ranging from driving too fast to smoking to getting in bar fights. Barring cognitive decline, it makes perfect sense that older people should be, on average, more wise than younger ones. Plus some people do actually manage to learn a few things over the course of their lives. :-)

omegaham2• 11 years ago

There's a great short story called "The Last Answer," by Isaac Asimov.[1] In it, a scientist dies and is preserved by a "god" to think for eternity. He is quickly horrified by this and declares that he won't do it.

Murray said, “Consider, then, that my thoughts may be useless to you. If I come up with nothing useful, will it not be worth your while to – disassemble me and take no further trouble with me?”

“As a reward? You want Nirvana as the prize of failure and you intend to assure me failure? There is no bargain there. You will not fail. With all eternity before you, you cannot avoid having at least one interesting thought, however you try against it.”

You might be an asshole. You might be a fool who has wrecked his life and screwed everything up. However, you've lived for many decades. I'm sure that you have something interesting, valuable, or insightful to share. It would be extremely difficult to imagine a life where that's not the case.

[1]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_AxwTK5W6b4aG9ZUVRVcnJMN2M...

themodelplumber• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

tomcam• 11 years ago

Thank you for sharing. My heart is with you. Why don't you plan to marry?

taternuts• 11 years ago

To some that question is the same as "Why don't you plan on being a billionaire?"

Tistel• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

deeteecee• 11 years 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 :)

JesperRavn2• 11 years 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

[1] I don't want to pick on anyone, but there are already some great examples in the thread.

seivan• 11 years ago

I downvoted you, not because I disagree, but because I think this is a desperate attempt at censorship. We're not allowed to talk about X because of Y.

I actually agree with this being a phenomenon that is occurring all around the developed world though. Just avoid your thinly veiled accusation of racism.

JesperRavn2• 11 years ago

The kind of political correctness that exists around "racism" does not apply to Asians, so there is not issue with censorship. As long as you are not using racial slurs, you can say whatever you like about Asian culture without fear of repercussions in our society. So there is no need to fear that my comment will encourage censorship.

On the other hand, I am accusing people of bias, and if you disagree you will have to show how my claims are wrong. Don't tell me what to do in a patronizing way either.

jpatokal• 11 years ago

Japan's problems related to the aging aren't unique and quaint at all, they're just ahead of the curve.

Most of the developed world has fertility below the replacement rate: where Japan is today, South Korea will be in a decade's time, and China and great big slabs of Europe will follow soon after. (America looks set to avoid this for time being though, largely thanks to immigration.)

tsotha5• 11 years ago

People look at Japan because most first world countries are going to have the same sorts of problems in 20 years. There's no reason to bring in terms that don't fit.

auganov• 11 years 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.

unabst4• 11 years ago

But the word is helping spread the word. That is the beauty of it.

unabst4• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

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

justifier• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

mc323• 11 years 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.

SixSigma3• 11 years 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.

minikomi• 11 years ago

There's a boiling water pot in Japan which will send an sms to you when it's used - since making tea / miso soup is so integral to the lives of especially the elderly here. The idea is if you don't get your morning SMS from gradma's pot something might be up.

Edit : this is the pot http://www.mimamori.net/service/index.html

stickfigure• 11 years ago

Cue 80s tv advertisement: "I've fallen but I can't get up"

mattm• 11 years 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.

mc323• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

the article said there is a big shortage and a long waiting list.

jodrellblank• 11 years 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?

cousin_it2• 11 years 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.

polarix3• 11 years 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_it2• 11 years 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.

reagency3• 11 years 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.

anovikov4• 11 years 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.

unabst4• 11 years 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... 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... http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-column-miller-a... 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...

anovikov4• 11 years ago

In every culture or country, the elderly will have a higher chance to live alone than the population in general, simply because they spouses have died. I thought that was pretty logical, and unavoidable.

Again, the article in question did not tell much about the very old people. 60 year old man with a heart condition? In a country where life expectancy at birth for males is 81.13 years? He wasn't old at all, he could marry and live a happy life for another about 30 years, that's what life expectancy for males at 60 in Japan is. This is not about ageism, nor about treatment of the eldery. It is simply about how people are systematically depressed and feel lost, having worked for industrial super-machine their whole life - a machine which is now gone.

facepalm3• 11 years 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_2• 11 years ago

Bridge, or chess, or mah-Jong, or any number of other games. Sudoku, different solitaire variations, crosswords...

facepalm3• 11 years ago

Sure, but they might lack the social aspect of MMORPGs (guilds?)?

And what would be good sites for those games?

Futurebot• 11 years ago

Loneliness is deadly: 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/...

It's everywhere.

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

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