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More than 37,000 people living alone in Japan were found dead in their homes during the first six months of 2024 — including 130 whose bodies went undiscovered for more than a year.
The startling figures were released by Japan’s National Police Agency to highlight the problem of unattended deaths among the country’s aging population, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Thursday.
The police report tallied the results of nearly 103,000 autopsies or other death investigations conducted from January to June, NHK said.
About 30%, or 37,227 cases, involved people found dead at home after living alone.
More than 75% of that number comprised people who were 65 or older, with the largest subgroup — nearly 7,500 — made up of people who were 85 or older.
About 40% were found within one day of their deaths but almost 4,000 weren’t discovered for more than a month, including 130 who were found more than a year after dying.
The findings will be presented to a government working group that’s studying how to deal with the problem of unattended deaths, NHK said.
By 2025, the number of people 65 and older living alone in Japan is expected to reach 10.8 million, Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research said earlier this year, according to the BBC.
Last year, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the country was “standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society” due to its falling birth rate and aging population, the BBC reported at the time.
“Focusing attention on policies regarding children and child-rearing is an issue that cannot wait and cannot be postponed,” he told lawmakers.
