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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| Dad, poor Dad, I've hung you in the closet and I'm feelin' so sad... | |
| 2011-01-11 | |
| Police in Japan were questioning a man for abandoning a corpse after his father's mummified remains were found in a wardrobe in the apartment they shared, local media reported. The 55-year-old man reportedly admitted to police that he put the body of this father, Mitsuo Sonoda, into the wardrobe, The Mainichi Daily News reported. "More than five years ago, during the winter, I came home and found my father in his bed. He wasn't moving. I left him there for a week, but he started to smell, so I put him in the wardrobe," he was quoted as telling Sherlocks. The son continued to pocket pension payments made to his father, who he shared the Kyoto apartment with for 10 years. Police said the remains of the senior citizen - who would have been 92 years old - were found after his son's ex-wife visited the apartment January 4 and told police she "could find no sign" of her former father-in-law. The responding officer noticed a strange smell coming from the wardrobe and found the mummified remains inside. Japan is battling to establish the whereabouts of hundreds of senior citizens who authorities believe could be dead, despite their families still claiming pension payouts.
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Japan is caught in a weird social condition right now. To start with, like the US they have a baby boom bubble approaching retirement age, which means an enormous pension bubble has been promised but cannot be delivered. Likewise, many of their younger people were unable to emulate that combination of prosperity and economic security, even with a good education and willingness to work. Their economy had just changed. This has meant hundreds of thousands of them (as in the US), are dependent on the prosperity and security of the former generation, not just the boomers, but the elderly generation before them. But in Japan, agoraphobia has become a lifestyle for many. So much so that many adults, still living with their parents, spend all day in their room in the home, venturing out only at night, to open all night convenience stores. When their parents die, they are caught out. Many are reliant on their parents pension to survive; others, whose parents had savings enough for a substantial inheritance, still cannot abide the change in the way they live, that would come from reporting their death. But it is soon to come crashing down around all of them. The boomers will lose their pensions, because they cannot be paid, the otaku, or house dwellers will have to reemerge with the boomers into grinding poverty. Staggeringly high levels of unemployment. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-01-11 10:07 |
| #3 ..."More cases" is right - it's been found (and kept very very quiet by the Japanese) that some of the longest-lived citizens they've been so proud of actually died years ago, and the kids have been cashing the checks. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2011-01-11 09:24 |
| #2 Andrew McArthy and Jonathan Silverman were unavailable for comment. |
| Posted by: Lowspark 2011-01-11 03:34 |
| #1 Coming up next, "Weekend at Mitsuo's", followed by local news... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2011-01-11 00:04 |