Making a living cleaning up after ‘lonely dead’
“The overall number of people who are alone is growing, so it’s inevitable that the number of people dying without anyone’s support is also growing.” MASAKI ICHINOSE CENTER FOR LIFE AND DEATH STUDIES
KAWASAKI, JAPAN— There was a putrid smell emanating from the apartment. There was an obvious brown stain on the futon where the body had been. The futon, the clothes, the newspapers and horse-racing stubs were covered with maggots and flies.
Still, if the man had died in the summer and rotted for months in the sweltering heat, instead of drying to a shrivel as winter approached, it could have been much worse.
“I’d say this is a four out of 10,” said Akira Fujita, leader of the crew from Next, a company that specializes in cleaning up after “lonely deaths” — where people lie dead in their apartments for long periods before being discovered.
Every country has cases where elderly people die alone, but none experiences it quite like Japan, home to the world’s fastest-aging population. More than a quarter of the population is over 65, a figure set to rise to 40 per cent by 2050.
Lonely death statistics are hard to come by — the central government doesn’t collect them — but regional figures show a sharp increase in the past decade. NLI Research Institute, a Tokyo think tank, estimates that about 30,000 people nationwide die this way each year.
As the number of lonely deaths has grown, so has the lonely-death-clea-up industry. Numerous firms offer this kind of service and insurance companies have started selling policies to protect landlords if their tenants die inside their properties. The plans cover the cost of cleaning the apartment and compensate for loss of rent. Some will even pay for a purifying ritual in the apartment once the work is done.
The owner of that apartment in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, didn’t appear to have any such insurance, so was paying Next $2,250 (U.S.) to make the tiny studio apartment rentable again.
The tenant, a 54-year-old man named Hiroaki, had fallen several months behind on his rent, so a representative from the real estate management company went by to see what was happening. (The Post agreed to withhold the deceased man’s surname, at the request of the cleaning company, to respect his privacy.)
When the representative opened the door, he found Hiroaki dead on the futon. He had probably been there about four months. His body, the futon and floor around it were completely dry.
Although flies and maggots were everywhere, the smell hadn’t been bad enough to bother neighbours or the convenience store directly below.
After the body was removed, the management company called Next. The fourman cleaning crew led by Fujita arrived with an empty truck and full-body protective wear.
The first thing they removed was the futon, which was covered with brown residue and maggots and was the main source of the smell. It was vacuumpacked into a plastic bag and carted off to the truck. The men approached their work in a no-nonsense way, not wrinkling up their noses or commenting on the squalor — just getting on with the job.
The 200-square-foot apartment was overflowing with the detritus of a lonely life: instant-noodle bowls and soft-drink bottles, empty cans of coffee, cigarette butts in ashtrays, dozens of lighters, months’ worth of newspapers, clothes in dishevelled piles.
The men filled garbage bag after garbage bag. Utility bills and other papers were stuck to the floor with dried bodily fluids, so one of the men had to use a dustpan to chip them off.
The tiny bathroom was covered with mould — the walls, the basin, inside the toilet, everything. Unidentified grime covered the doors and the kitchen sink, and all required industrial-strength cleaning liquid.
After removing all of Hiroaki’s belongings, the crew got to work stripping the wallpaper and figuring out how much of the flooring they would have to pull up.
Paperwork showed Hiroaki was 54 and divorced. He had worked as a systems engineer for 20 years, including spells at big firms such as Nissan and Fujitsu. But he was always in contract positions, meaning he had no benefits and needed welfare to supplement his low income. Passport photos he’d had taken to apply for jobs show an entirely ordinarylooking man: grey hair parted in the middle, wire-frame glasses, checked shirt.
There were photo albums, but none seemed to contain pictures of Hiroaki.
The cleaning company did not know how or why Hiroaki died at this relatively young age, but his apartment was full of prescription medicines.
Local newspapers in Japan are full of reports of these kinds of solitary deaths.
Usually men, usually elderly, they’re discovered often months after they’ve died, after their mailboxes fill up or they fall behind on their rent, or odours start creeping out from their apartments.
This growing phenomenon is the result of Japan’s aging society and changes in family structures. Three-generation households were commonplace not so long ago. Now more Japanese are remaining single, while couples are having fewer, if any, children.
“The general concept of family in Japan has fallen apart,” said Masaki Ichinose, part of the Center for Life and Death Studies at the University of Tokyo. “The overall number of people who are alone is growing, so it’s inevitable that the number of people dying without anyone’s support is also growing.”
Older men are particularly susceptible because of pride and an unwillingness to ask for help, Ichinose said.
They retire from lifetime jobs and lose the only communities they’ve ever really had. If they are widowed, divorced or unmarried, they are more likely to become isolated, added Kumiko Kanno, the author of a book about lonely deaths. “Their ties are all related to their work, so it’s hard for them to jump into the local community,” particularly if they live alone.
“It’s so easy for them to fall into selfneglect and become isolated . . .”
Some local authorities have started services to check on elderly people living alone, and they encourage neighbours to keep an eye out for each other.
Experts have differing opinions on how else to combat the problem. Ichinose says the younger generation is too interested in careers and not in having children, and that this contributes to an increasing number of people who are alone as they age. Kanno says Japanese people think they’ll continue living the same way they always have and don’t make new friends. Certainly, Hiroaki seemed to have no ties. 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. Then they were done.
It was almost as if Hiroaki had never existed.