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Police in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward have arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of abandoning the body of his 89-year-old father at their home.
According to police, Koichi Yoshimura, who has no fixed occupation, was arrested on Aug 26 after his father’s decomposing body was found in the Japanese-style room of their house, Fuji TV reported. A neighbor had contacted a nearby police box to complain of an offensive odor coming from the suspect’s home around noon on August 26.
Yoshimura told police his father died at the beginning of August after choking while drinking. He was quoted as saying he had been living with his father for 10 years and that “If I notified the authorities, he would be cremated and I didn’t want to be separated from him.”
Police said Yoshimura told them he sometimes slept together with his father’s corpse and went about his daily life despite the decomposing body in the home.
© Japan Today
20 Comments
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Cosmos1
People grieve in different ways.
wanderlust
My brother-in-law still sleeps with most of his mother's ashes by his pillow. Refused to inter them after her cremation. Nothing surprises me here anymore.
kawabegawa198
Pretty much every day there is a story in Japan about someone abandoning a corpse.
timeon
This is straight out of a horror movie.
"he sometimes slept together with his father’s corpse"
serendipitous1
If it's not skeletons in the closet, it's skeletons in the tatami room.
Kabukilover
Name a typical Japanese crime? Living with corpses. William Faulkner wrote a story about that called “A Rose for Emily.”
DNALeri
The son needs psychiatric help.
Matt Hartwell
Both sad and beautiful in a sense at the same time.
This man is 52 years old and given his fathers DNA may have another 30 years left. I hope he can find some consistent work and good friends to see out that time. No mention of a wife? Where is the rest of his family?
Robert Wilson
I would never do that...but very sad and I understand. Peace to both of them.
Vince Black
Everyday we read something like this? What's wrong with these people?
quercetum
At least Norman kept it in the fruit cellar.
englisc aspyrgend
Sad, gruesome and smelly, but very sad.
mtuffizi
sad, hope he has less pain and get it over as time pass.
dj621962
It's probably nothing to do with dad (RIP) himself, and all to do with keeping dad's pension money appearing in his account every month.
thepersoniamnow
I can’t fathom the thought of passing my relatives bones around with chopsticks after watching them get burnt to ashes. Japan can be slightly macabre sometimes...
different strokes for diff folks.
I do kind of feel sorry for this guy though. If he is not being evil or doing wrong and is just heartbroken...well how sad is that? And now he’s under arrest. He should have known better, but he is no criminal in my book if that’s all he did.
macv
Hitchkok
Disillusioned
I'm not surprised mental health care is insufficient in Japan. This kind of weird behaviour is considered normal. No harm, no foul!
wtfjapan
“If I notified the authorities, he would be cremated and I didn’t want to be separated from him.”
I wonder if he was still collecting his fathers pension!?
Cricky
Norman! (Shinzo) having a corpse in the house I'm thinking would make me personally uncomfortable. But I'm not Japanese so each to their own I guess. Every time I see or smell Tatami I immediately think of a corpse.