{"id":65285,"date":"2024-07-01T11:56:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T02:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/article\/2024\/jul\/01\/life-at-the-heart-of-japans-solitary-deaths-epidemic-i-would-be-lying-if-i-said-i-wasnt-worried"},"modified":"2024-07-01T11:56:59","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T02:56:59","slug":"life-at-the-heart-of-japans-lonely-deaths-epidemic-i-would-be-lying-if-i-said-i-wasnt-worried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=65285","title":{"rendered":"Life at the heart of Japan\u2019s lonely deaths epidemic: \u2018I would be lying if I said I wasn\u2019t worried\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some 68,000 people are expected to die alone and unnoticed in Japan this year, police say, as the population continues to age<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe occasionally greet each other, but that\u2019s all. If one of my neighbours died, I\u2019m not sure I would notice,\u201d says Noriko Shikama, 76. She lives alone in a flat Tokiwadaira, in Tokyo\u2019s commuter belt and has come to the Iki Iki drop-in centre to catch up with residents over cups of coffee served by volunteers.<\/p>\n<p>Here, amid the everyday discussions about the merits or otherwise of dyeing grey hair, people also share news about the latest lonely death, or <em>kodokushi<\/em> \u2013 officially defined as one in which \u201ca person dies without being cared for by anyone, and whose body is found after a certain period\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/article\/2024\/jul\/01\/life-at-the-heart-of-japans-solitary-deaths-epidemic-i-would-be-lying-if-i-said-i-wasnt-worried\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some 68,000 people are expected to die alone and unnoticed in Japan this year, police say, as the population continues to age\u201cWe occasionally greet each other, but that\u2019s all. If one of my neighbours died, I\u2019m not sure I would notice,\u201d says Noriko Shik&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1068,1777,697,88,1747,79,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-communities","category-death-and-dying","category-housing","category-japan","category-loneliness","category-society","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65286,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65285\/revisions\/65286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}