kodokushi;the lonely death phenomenon
Translated from Japanese, the word kodokushi (“kodokushi” or “kokodushi”) means “lonely death”. This is the name of the phenomenon when people die at home, forgotten by everyone. Their bodies are discovered only after many months.
The word “kodokushi” is most often used when a person died at home due to illness or an accident and no one noticed his death. However, there is no single definition of this term, and experts disagree on what kind of death should be considered as kodokushi.
For example, how many days should pass before a corpse is found, should suicide be included in these statistics, etc. Let’s find out more about this phenomenon.
There is an even more terrible definition of this term, in fact, it is a silhouette of a human body, formed as a result of fluids flowing out of a corpse during its decomposition and imprinted where death found the unfortunate.
There was even a business for cleaning the home after the death of a person and sorting the things left after him. Workers who move furniture for families of mourners say they often come across kodokushi like this. One private company estimates that in about 300 cases out of 1,500 such orders, they came across such sad symbols of human loneliness.
Once in Saitama Prefecture, the police found the bodies of three kodokushi at once. The bodies lay in the house for several months. The fact that the entire family living in the house died became known only after they were turned off for non-payment of gas and electricity.
That’s right – kodokushi never pay for gas. The kodokushi phenomenon was first described in the 1980s. According to statistics, in 2009 alone, about 32,000 old people died alone in Japan.
Usually, kodokushi become people aged 65 and older. In 2006, almost five percent of all funerals in Japan involved the burial of discovered kodokushi.In 2008, more than 2,000 bodies were found in Tokyo, lying lifeless in their apartments for several months.
The main reason for the kodokushi phenomenon is the growing social exclusion. People do not maintain ties with friends, neighbors, and relatives and become isolated in their little world, where death eventually overtakes them. Many Japanese devote their entire lives to work. They do not start a family and after retirement, they are left completely alone.
Most of the cases occur with closed men around 50 years old who have little contact with society. There are also a lot of deaths of old people – the usual image of a large family that absorbs several generations, living under one roof, is already outdated, now old people very often live alone.
It also happens with temporary or contract workers – many men and women in this category of the labor force never marry or marry, and when they die alone, no one knows about their death. Now in Japan, there are entire firms that are engaged in the fact that they “clean up” houses from kodokushi. There was either no one to bury their bodies, or relatives “loved” their grandfather or grandmother so much that they disdained to take care of the deceased.
One day in Sapporo, the police found the bodies of two kodokushi sisters. Both were 40 years old. Most likely, they froze to death in their apartment. How long they spent in the house is unknown. According to official data from 2009, of the total number of men in central Tokyo who died at the age of 65-69 (among them the highest percentage of kodokushi), 8.4% were detected more than two days after death. And 5.7% – after four days or longer. Nearly 4% of the 1,000 older men who have died have been left unattended for more than eight days.
According to a rough estimate by the Nissei Research Institute (NLI Research Institute), in the same year, the number of kodokushi throughout Japan reached 16,000. This included deceased men and women aged 65 years and older, after whose death more than four days had passed. And if we add here those who were discovered two or three days after their death, then this number rises to 27 thousand. It is expected that such cases are on the rise.
One of the reasons for kodokushi is the increase in life expectancy in Japan (today – over 80 years), which in other countries is most often seen as a positive factor. However, as it turned out, longevity does not necessarily bring joy.
According to Japan’s National Institute for the Study of Population and Welfare, if in 2010 the percentage of people living alone was 32.4% of the total number of families, then this figure is expected to rise to 37.2% in 2035. In general, as I noted earlier in my article “Herbivore Men”, now in Japan, not everyone has a life partner. According to the 2010 census, 20.1% of Japanese men and 10.6% of women over the age of 50 have never been married or married.
It is expected that in 15 years 30% of men and 20% of women will be left without a family for life. In the near future, the number of single people will inevitably increase, in particular among middle-aged and elderly men and among older women who have outlived their husbands. If earlier the percentage of families consisting of four people (parents and two children) was the highest in Japan, now this is no longer typical for the country. More and more families are childless or with one parent. The number of divorces is also on the rise. But even if there are children, they do not necessarily stay with elderly parents.
Unlike the last century, a young couple tends to prefer to live separately. In many families, elderly people are cared for by quite elderly people (most often a spouse, but children or daughter-in-law can also be aged if parents are over 80-90). Therefore, there were cases when a person died of hunger, being left without the attention of the only, often elderly family member who provided assistance and care, but unexpectedly died himself.
The risk of kodokushi is much higher in the stronger sex. More than 2/3 of single deaths occur among men. This is because most “traditional” Japanese men spend time in their own companies and often don’t know who else to hang out with other than colleagues. And when men stop working, many are at risk of exclusion from society. This does not only apply to retirees.
After all, we no longer have a lifetime employment system, and people of all ages can lose their jobs at any moment. In addition, unlike women, for many men, household chores are unusual. If a family man’s wife suddenly dies or leaves him, his situation may deteriorate dramatically. So in Japan, it is considered good luck if a person spends the last minutes of his life in a habitable house without much suffering.
But it happens that a lonely old man is found only a few weeks after death, when the neighbors begin to complain about the bad smell. Interestingly, kodokushi led to the formation of a new business.
In Japan, many agencies began to appear that not only provide cleaning services after the death of a person but also sort and throw away the things of the deceased instead of relatives. Some believe that the reason for the kodokushi phenomenon is that the Japanese are not accustomed to thinking about death. In Japan, it is not customary to talk about it or deal with the dead.
