Nearly 40K Found Dead in Japan in 2024 Lived Alone

Japan's National Police Agency recently carried out investigations, including autopsies, on more than 100,000 people who died in the island nation during the first half of 2024, and some alarming numbers have emerged from that probe. Per Japanese broadcaster NHK, about one-third of them, or 37,277 people, were found dead at home while living alone. The Japan Times notes that about 75% of the deceased, or about 28,000, were age 65 or older.

Perhaps most disturbingly, nearly 4,000 of the bodies weren't found for more than a month after the individuals' deaths, with 130 of them not discovered for more than a year. The police agency hopes its report will offer some insight in Japan on its elderly population that lives alone and on the country's loneliness and isolation issues in general.

The elderly isolation issue in particular has been a challenging one for Japan, which the United Nations says boasts the world's oldest population, per the BBC. The nation's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research says about 10.8 million seniors 65 and older are on track to be living alone by the year 2050, while the overall figure for households with one occupant is set to reach 23.3 million by the same year. The police agency will hand over the results of its recent research to a government organization analyzing unattended deaths. (More Japan stories.)