"Who gave the OK for cremation?" Where did my brother disappear to? April 4th 20:55

After all, something unusual is happening...

the accumulated mail.

From the window, you can see a mountain of books piled up.

However, there is no sign of anyone living there.

Where on earth did he go?

(“Good Morning Japan” will be broadcast on April 5th at 7:00 am)

The “disappearance” of a historian

The first person to notice something strange was an old friend.

It was April 2022.

I lost contact with Hajime Imanishi (73), a former university professor.

Kazuo Hori is a fellow scholar of Imanishi, and they have known each other for 50 years.

Mr. Imanishi is a researcher of popular history.

I heard that after he retired from a university in Hokkaido, he was living alone at his home in Kyoto.

Just this past New Year, he exchanged New Year's cards and phone calls with Mr. Imanishi.

This is Mr. Imanishi, who has been actively engaged in research even after his retirement. He may even be doing some research overseas.

With that in mind, I didn't take it seriously at first.

However, it has been three months since we lost contact.

It was really strange...

I decided to take the plunge and visit Mr. Imanishi's home in Kyoto.

Then, a lot of mail piled up in the mailbox.

Oh, this wasn't just a coincidence - Mr.

Hori immediately rushed to the nearby police box.

``I have not been able to contact any of my acquaintances, and my house is in a state of disrepair, so please investigate,''

I appealed to the police, but after looking at the ledger and looking into it, I received the following reply.

``Police cannot say anything to third parties.'

' ``If you want to investigate, why don't you get a lawyer?''

Still, Mr. Hori refused.

``Could you please take a look at it?''

Shiburu went to Mr. Imanishi's house with a police officer and inspected the surrounding area.

You can see books stacked up from the window. However, there is no sign that people are living there.

When we asked local residents together with police officers, we received the following answers:

``I was taken

to the hospital by ambulance on the morning after New Year's Day, and that was it.'' Unable to enter his home, he wondered if he could somehow contact his relatives.

Mr. Imanishi must have had a brother.

As I investigated, I was able to contact Mr. Imanishi's brother and his wife.

The lights are on in the house

His younger brother Keiichi Imanishi and his wife Junko lived in the same city, Kyoto, about 10 minutes away by car.

``If Hori-san didn't tell me, I really wouldn't have known.'' When

the couple heard from Hori, they were shocked. I immediately went to check on the safety of his older brother, Hajime.

The first person who went to check on the inside of the house was his wife, Junko.

Junko

: ``I went right there on my bike and saw that the lights and hallway lights were on.I thought, ``Huh?'' and flinched for a moment.The house was locked.I had kept the duplicate key. So I went inside.I thought maybe he was coming back, so I called out, ``Brother-in-law! Brother-in-law, are you there?''But there was no reply.For some reason, the kitchen window was closed. It was open.”

If he was rushed to the hospital, the ambulance crew may have climbed out of the window.

Junko called the fire department.

However, she says she was not given any details there.

She then went to the police and asked, and they were able to tell her the hospital where she was taken.

She called the hospital and they said, ``She'll have a doctor coming tomorrow so please call me.''

the last osechi

Junko also helped Hajime look for a house when he returned to Kyoto from Hokkaido. Her parents had already passed away, and since she was not married and lived alone, she occasionally went to check on her.

On Obon and New Year holidays, she and her husband would eat together with Hajime. Junko looks back on the situation as follows.

Junko

: ``My brother-in-law knows a lot of things, from really difficult things to things in the entertainment world. I would make some food and check on her regularly. She didn't seem to be feeling well, so I told her, ``Please don't push yourself too hard.''

On New Year's Day that year, Junko also delivered osechi.

"Is my brother dead?"

He was transported and there is no sign of him returning home. When her younger brother Keiichi heard about the situation from Junko, he thought to himself, ``Maybe my brother has already died...''

The older brothers, Hajime and Keiichi, born in 1948, were nine years apart. I remember when I was young, my older brother was a junior high school student and loved judo and professional wrestling.

When he entered high school, he suddenly became a ``bookworm'' and pursued an academic career.

Keiichi

: ``My purpose in life was books, I didn't drink alcohol, I didn't have a driver's license, and I felt like I was a natural scholar.My older brother was working at a university in Hokkaido, and I was also a working adult. We didn't have many opportunities to talk to her when she became a mother, but my brother loved my mother and would often come back to Kyoto."

This time, Keiichi called the hospital claiming to be his own brother.

``Is my brother dead?''

However, the hospital did not provide any information for a while.

It was only after Keiichi applied to the hospital for a ``death certificate'' to be issued that the information was finally obtained.

``Cause of death: acute myocardial infarction.''

My brother had indeed passed away at this hospital.

A week has already passed since Mr. Hori visited his house.

``What was my brother like at the end of his life?''

she asked when she received the death certificate at the hospital.

However, she said that her doctor had already retired and did not know.

Unrelated Buddha

``What happened to my brother? Where did he end up?''

There was no contact from the government or anyone else. Keiichi and his friends had no choice but to investigate further on their own.

Three weeks later, I arrived at a columbarium managed by Kyoto City. It was also a place where people who became ``unrelated Buddhas'' regardless of their religious sect were enshrined.

Keiichi visited the ossuary office within the park.

``Is Hajime Imanishi here?''

The person in charge looked at his computer and shook his head without saying anything.

His brother had already been cremated and reduced to bones.

He was, after all, buried as a "person without relatives."

``Can't we at least remove the remains?''

but the office staff answered that it was impossible.

Why was there no communication?

``That's so stupid...''

At first, I was just surprised, but once I calmed down, a number of questions came to mind.

``Even though he was nearby, why hasn't he heard anything?'' `

`Who gave permission for cremation?'' ``

How did my brother meet his end?''

``Why can't the remains be removed?''

I asked the government. However, there was no detailed explanation. Together with his friend Hori, we investigated the circumstances.

Two years have passed since then.

And this February. Kyoto City has told Keiichi and his wife that they will set up a place to explain the circumstances of Imanishi's death.

"truth"

``I would like to explain it to you in chronological order.''

The people who came out were the section chief and section chief of the ``General Affairs and Disaster Prevention Division'' of the Daigo Branch of Fushimi Ward Office, Kyoto City. Neither of them were in charge at the time.

The chief begins to explain the process.

``At 10:02 a.m. on January 6, 2021, the person in his home called 119 because he was having difficulty breathing. When the emergency services arrived, the front door was locked and they called 911. When the victim refused to respond, they broke a window and found him lying in a state of cardiac arrest inside his home.At 10:29, he was rushed to the hospital.He was resuscitated at the hospital. However, the hospital was unable to confirm his identity because he had passed away, and because it was his first visit, he did not have any belongings with him, and they did not know his relatives.''

So why did it come to be that I had no relatives?

Kyoto city officials had been checking family register information to confirm the family's information. However, I could not find any information about his younger brother Keiichi.

The problem was the scope of the family register information investigated.

His older brother, Hajime's legal address had changed several times due to moving and other reasons, but at the time, staff only looked into family register information that was within Kyoto.

However, the brother was listed in the previous family register information from when the family was outside of Kyoto.

Chief

: ``We decided to search within the city limits.Their parents had passed away, they were not married, and they had no children, so we told them that they had no relatives.'' I have made a judgment.”

“No rules” funeral

What was the basis for the decision?

Regarding burials conducted by municipalities, the law states:

Cemetery Burial Law (Article 9, Paragraph 1)

If there is no one to bury or cremate the corpse, or if it is unknown, the mayor of the municipality of the place of death must do so.

On the other hand, in cases where it is unclear whether a person has relatives, there are no specific regulations regarding the extent to which a person should investigate whether or not they have relatives.

Therefore, the reality is that the scope of the investigation is left to the discretion of each local government.

A Kyoto city official gave the following explanation to the younger brother and his wife.

Manager

: ``I guess you could call it a manual, but in other words, there was no clear regulation on how far to investigate.As a result, even though your brother was in the neighborhood, we were unable to address the issues. I think that was something.”

Officials explained that the length of time the investigation would take was another barrier.

While family register searches in Kyoto City can be completed in about three days, searches in other cities usually take about two weeks.

Chief

: ``We are in a situation where it is quite difficult to keep (the body) for a long period of time, so in cases like this where the investigation takes time, we will cremate the body first and then interment it for a short period of time. After that, if we receive a request, we will work with you individually to pick it up.''

The staff member then apologized, stating that the explanation given by the person in charge at the ossuary that ``the remains cannot be removed'' was incorrect.

The discussion lasted two hours.

Keiichi and others told the staff:

``I have put in a lot of effort and been at the mercy of dishonest responses, and to be honest, I have felt angry at times.However, I don't feel like pursuing personal faults now.At the very least, I would like to see a system in place to prevent something like this from happening again."

The reality of a “high mortality society”

In this case, the body was mistakenly cremated as a person with no relatives, even though there were relatives nearby.

As the investigation progressed, it became clear that various confusions other than this one were occurring, as the government had not set clear rules.

The number of people who died last year in 2023 was approximately 1.59 million (preliminary figures). The number continues to increase as the population ages, and is nearly double the number in 1989, the highest ever.

According to national estimates, as the birthrate declines and the population ages, the number of deaths per year is expected to continue to exceed 1.5 million until around 2070, and the number of deaths of people without relatives is also on the rise.

How should the government handle bodies that are said to have no relatives?

There have been cases where legal systems and systems have not been able to keep up with the reality of a ``high-death society'' and this has become a problem.

It was abandoned for over 3 years

That was in 2022.

In Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, it was discovered that 19 bodies with no relatives or no claimants had been left at funeral companies without being cremated for a long time.

Some of the bodies had been left there for more than three years.

Nagoya City was forced to apologize at a press conference, saying,

``It disrespects the dignity of the dead...''

Why did this happen?

A city official explains the reason.

A person in charge of Nagoya City said,

``There was a lot of work to be done, but no one told me to do it as quickly as possible,' and I ended up putting one thing on the back burner, which is why the work was delayed. I think that may be one of the reasons."

According to the city, the number of funerals held for unclaimed bodies has more than quadrupled from 58 in 2014 ten years ago to 256 in 2020. However, the number of staff responding to the outbreak has remained largely unchanged.

Increasing number of refrigerators

The site where bodies were stored was also under strain.

"When we had the most, we couldn't even put them in the refrigerator, and there were about 10 bodies and 10 people outside. We had no choice but to put them in coffins and keep them in our room. in"

This is what the president of a funeral company in Nagoya says.

We accept requests from police and local governments to store and carry out funerals for bodies that have no relatives or who cannot claim them.

"He's still in there. He has no one to take him in. More than half of us are in that condition."

Of the more than 300 funerals it handles each year, approximately 60% are bodies without relatives.

There are three refrigerators in total to store bodies. It can hold the bodies of up to 13 people, but there are times when it becomes full, so they are considering adding more.

President

: ``It's rare for someone to leave my home after a day or two. Usually, it's about a week to a month. For some people, it takes about 3 months, 3 and a half months. At the hospital. Even a corpse that has passed away starts to deteriorate after about three months, so I think that's the limit for three months."

On the day I was reporting, the body of an orphaned man in his 70s who had died in Nagoya had been hurriedly brought in.

President

: ``I think it will continue to increase.It won't decrease.It's no use saying what's wrong with it.It's because society is becoming like that.Well, I don't know what the world, everyone, should say.'' , I guess I'm doing my best to take care of myself.''

Before execution, before execution, interment of ashes

Governments are also being forced to take unprecedented measures.

``This is the status of the paperwork for person number 34. Currently, the paperwork has been completed, and the status here shows that the remains have been interred.''

The city of Nagoya, where the problem was discovered, was forced to revise its guidelines in order to deal with the increasing number of funeral-related administrative procedures, which numbered 100 to 200.

The changes are 1. “Clear documentation” of responsibilities and deadlines, 2. There are two main types of "visualization" of processes.

Even though it is called a family register investigation to find relatives, there is a strong possibility that information may be overlooked by staff with little knowledge or experience. Therefore, the responsibility was clarified as a "duty assigned" to the General Affairs Division of the ward office.

At the same time, in order to avoid burdening one employee with the burden, progress status and funeral schedules were visualized using data and shared with superiors and other employees at all times. In terms of procedures, the government has set a deadline of ``two weeks'' in principle for confirming the intentions of heirs and other related parties.

As a result, the administrative process, which previously took ``an average of 5.3 months'' from notification to funeral execution, was shortened to ``an average of 2.8 months'' last year. However, it seems that the goal of ``one month in principle'' has not been reached.

Daisuke Kutsuna, Assistant Director, Ward Administration Division, City of Nagoya (at the time of interview)

``Previously, it was up to the person in charge in each ward, but we are working on introducing a new management table to be able to manage progress in an organized manner. I would appreciate it if the government could provide guidance and guidelines and take measures to reduce the financial burden of funeral costs."

When the “premises of modern Japan” collapse

Experts point out that the very nature of society is now at a major turning point.

Professor Shinya Yamada of the National Museum of Japanese History, who is knowledgeable about the origins of funerals, says the following.

Professor Shinya Yamada

: ``In the first place, modern Japan's legal system was based on ancestral rituals, and the premise was that the deceased should be taken care of by their families or bereaved families, and that it was only an ``exception'' that the government would deal with it.However, In modern times, these ``exceptions'' are becoming the majority.''

The "Cemetery Burial Law" was enacted 76 years ago (1948), shortly after the war.

According to Professor Yamada, the existence of unclaimed bodies was rare at the time, and the law was created from the perspective of ``public health,'' with little consideration for welfare, such as respect for the dignity of the dead.

Furthermore, he points out that as more and more people live alone, a system based on family funerals will no longer survive, and that it is important to shift to a system centered on the individual.

Professor Shinya Yamada

: ``I think the government needs to take the lead in establishing guidelines and rules for properly transporting people who have passed away, even if they were alone.At the same time, I think the government needs to take the lead in establishing guidelines and rules to ensure the proper transportation of people who have passed away, even if they were alone.At the same time, I think the government needs to take the initiative in developing guidelines and rules to ensure that people who have passed away are properly transported. I think this needs to be discussed by society as a whole."

“There is no such thing as a meaningless life”

``This is a report as a break.''

March 5th this year. After finishing talks with the Kyoto City government, the younger brother of the late historian Hajime Imanishi, Keiichi, his wife Junko, and his friend of 50 years, Hori, visited the ``unrelated'' cemetery where Hajime was buried. visited.

Keiichi

: ``I don't know what I should have done differently, but I think it's good that I was able to at least tell Kyoto City to put in place a system to prevent something like this from happening.''

Mr. Hori, who accompanied us, also spoke about his feelings for Mr. Imanishi.

Hori

: ``Mr. Imanishi was not only known for his accomplishments as a scholar, but from a young age he lived with the belief that he wanted to correct the injustices of the world.It's a coincidence, but even at the time of his death, he raised a very important issue.'' I believe that he has sounded the alarm."

One of Hajime Imanishi's books is called ``Local Society in Modern Japan.''

In the afterword of this book, Mr. Imanishi mentions his late father's funeral and leaves the following words about his origins as a historian and his family.

Lastly, on a personal note, my father Hisaichi passed away at the age of 84 while I was proofreading this book. Although he was a kind person, he was weak-willed and could not resist Bakuchi's temptations to the end. She was fired from her company many times and was burdened with debt.

If I were to use the current term, I would probably call myself a ``loser'' in life, but there is no such thing as a ``meaningless life'' in any human's life. This is the origin of my folk history.

Moreover, in the end, thanks to Junko, who is a friend of his younger brother Keiichi, we were able to see off his father warmly. When I see her friends who are busy caring for their parents, I can only thank Junko for her kindness.

(From “Local Society in Modern Japan” “Afterword”)

Interview postscript

``Was my brother's dignity preserved?''

Our interview began with Keiichi and his friends' desire to ascertain the truth. We have come this far while facing the absurdity of the family not being able to witness the final scene of the funeral and interment.

How can we protect the dignity of the dead? Through my interviews, I feel that we are living in a very difficult time and society. I don't think there is an easy answer.

However, I have a promise with Keiichi and his friends that the interview will not end here. If you have seen or heard of a similar experience, or if you have any troubles surrounding funerals or interment, please let us know.

For information, please click here [NHK News Post]

Social Affairs Department Reporter

Kota Iida

Joined the agency in 2009

After working in the Chiba and Akita bureaus and the network news department, he is currently at his

current position Continuing to report on the issues of elderly people without relatives.

Nagoya Broadcasting Station reporter

Shintaro Toyoshima Joined

the station in 2019

After working at the Yokohama bureau and Odawara bureau, he has been in charge of Nagoya city administration since August 2022

, and currently covers incidents and accidents.

Director of Good Morning Japan

Shiro Imai Joined

the agency in 2019

After working at the Hiroshima Bureau, he currently works at the agency

Covers a wide range of topics including regional issues, wars, and disasters

Network Reporting Department Reporter

Soraya Sugimoto Joined

the station in 2015

After working at the Kumamoto Bureau, he is currently at the station

Covers a wide range of issues related to the hardships of life

This time he is mainly in charge of web articles