Police in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, have arrested a 56-year-old woman, her 32-year-old daughter and 29-year-old son for failing to report the death of her 84-year-old husband and continuing to collect his pension.
According to police, Masahiro Tamura died at home in January, but his wife Michiko, daughter Yuko and son Akinori did not report his death, Sankei Shimbun reported. Instead, they left the body in a room and continued to collect Tamura’s monthly pension.
One of Tamura’s relatives, concerned at not being able to contact him for a long time, called 110 and asked police to check on him. Police visited the house at around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday and found Tamura’s decaying corpse wrapped in a futon.
Police said Tamura’s wife told them her husband died of natural causes and that they didn’t report his death because the family needed the money from his pension.
© Japan Today
42 Comments
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LifeAlertAus
Sadly, this is very common in Japan. This is why you need life insurance! If you have life insurance and you die, your family is taken care of at least for a few years after you pass. It isn't even expensive to have!
wayan Ubud
they all need must be psychotic to leave their dad rot in a futon in a room next door.
commanteer
Generally true, but these were three people, all of working age. Two of prime working age. I find it hard to believe they couldn't make ends meet all living together like that.
foreignbrotherhoodarmy
Just greedy and insane.
Meiyouwenti
I would like to correct one inaccuracy in the article. Japanese pensions are paid bimonthly, not monthly.
MarkX
LifeAlertAus, sadly life insurance here is not the pot of gold you think it is. In many cases it turns out to be a much smaller amount. I don't condone what they did, and wonder why the two children are not helping the mother and relying on their dead father's pension.
602miko
They were all young and healthy why not find a job? How they can live with the dead body inside their home?
LifeAlertAus
@Markx
If you have good life insurance, and make sure to read the find print, there will be no worries. I pay 5000 AUD a month and I am covered for 700,000 AUD. This covers all kinds of cancers, etc. I am sure there is GOOD life insurance in Japan.
bokuda
They must be living in poverty to have done this.
This situation would never happen in a first world country.
The Japanese dream is gone.
sir_bentley28
This is all too common here. This problem needs to be addressed. Don't just arrest them (of course I don't condone them defrauding the system to get free money! The kids are young and able to get money themselves. Then again.......corona happened), they need counseling for the months of dperession they have been through (living with a corpse of their loved one) and perhaps lower the funeral costs to an affordable rate to prevent people from living with a rotting corpse which causes other mental problems.
Paul
Two working age children plus mother needing money this way, only means that neither were working. Everyone relied on his pension. Lazy as f....
bokuda
Mix a mental breakdown, with poverty, and crazy expensive prices of funerals.
...and corona.
Cannot blame them.
LifeAlertAus
@Zichi
If the wife wanted money, she could have gotten a job. Gone are the days of the Japanese housewife who just collects/spends the husbands money.
Yubaru
Wow, "Mom" here was at a minimum 24 years old when she had her daughter, with this guy, who would have been 52 at most, IF in fact these two are his biological children.
LifeAlertAus
Obviously she didn't work. If she did the low low pension money would not be needed. Laws need to be changed if a wife divorces and gets 50%. We have laws that stop that from happening, and America does as well. Any developed country has laws that make sense. The kids were grown up, she could easily get a full time job. Instead she prob chose to take care of her GROWN children.
Mickelicious
I wish.
At the risk of assumption, what can we glean from the age difference in the couple, and the kids' possible attitudinal traits inherited from the mother? Unevidenced speculation, of course, but just curious.
Joe Blow
Happy Father's Day I guess.
Ego Sum Lux Mundi
Guess some people would rather live with a rotting corpse than get off their lazy entitled arses and work for a living. Unbelievable.
Flute
@LifeAlertAus, 602miko &co
What do you actually know of this family ? You are imagine stuff not in the article. Does not seems to difficult to go for generalities or hypothesis form, other were able to it in the same trade.
And even of Japan situation ? Married woman still tend to have difficulties to find and kept their job moreover a full time one. They are expected to be the carer of the family and available for it, so less possibility to get full-time job. If you got a arbeito, you mostly have no pension/health insurance rights (you can be added to the spouse if low income or if lucky your company will choose to enroll you).
https://www.jpsmart-club.com/pension/
https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a04601/
https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-the-workforce-japan/
Kumagaijin
Huge problem in Japan and the government needs to figure out a way to prevent this, like allowing family members to continue collecting pensions or a portion of it if they are financially distressed. How much is it going to cost the tax payer to prosecute them all? Probably more than the pension they collected.
NOMINATION
How do we know this man wasn't her 2nd or 3rd husband?
dagon
If private equity had not pillaged pension funds and the gig economy made retirement benefits a distant memory, maybe there would not be this desperation to get the pension payments from an older generation(alive or not) who worked under equitable pension schemes.
AMS
I had been in many countries and seen how people suffered to survive daily. Japan is such a blessed country where it's easy to find a job, save money....
So I still cannot understand how people can keep a dead body in the same living area because of pension money....
Anonymous
One of the hazards of marrying a much younger woman: having to continue working even after you die.
Anonymous
Right. Better check cold storage facilities.
Nohara
When the husband was 28, the wife was a newborn. Obviously this has been the plan all along.
Tom Doley
Another one? It’s seems easy to rort the system if everything is so analogue.
Frapoke
Aha, that’s why japan has so many 100+ ;-)
Yubaru
things have changed over the last 100 years!
justasking
Because funeral in Japan costs a fortune. 10M yen.
LifeAlertAus
@expat
I made a mistake. I was trying to say ¥5000 a month equivant, but I said AUD by mistake. lol.
Mark
Just Unbelievable, they were living off him while alive, and wanted to do it while he's dead.
Japan is really scary .