In Japan, 119 is the emergency number to call if you need the fire department or paramedics. Generally, it’s not something you’re supposed to call to report an unpleasant odor, but that’s what happened on Monday morning in Hiroshima City.
At about 7:40 in the morning, a local 119 dispatcher received a call from Toshiko Ujibe, a woman who lives in the city’s Asaminami Ward. “There’s an unpleasant odor coming from my son’s corpse,” the 76-year-old Ujibe explained, “and I don’t know what to do.”
Judging that the smell itself wasn’t the real problem that needed to be dealt with, the operator dispatched both the fire department and the police to the woman’s apartment, which she had shared with her 53-year-old son. When they arrived, they found the man in his bedroom, deceased and lying face up on his futon. Upon questioning, Ujibe said that her son had died sometime in the middle of the month, and an examination of the body revealed multiple lacerations on his neck.
Investigators are unsure if the cuts to the neck were inflicted before or after the son passed away. Common sense would suggest, though, that the woman would not have contacted the authorities herself and told them about her son’s body if she had killed him, and the lacerations bring to mind an incident from last fall in which a Japanese man was found to have cut up the body of his father, who had passed away in their home, and hidden the pieces in his attic, having been hesitant to report his death.
With the specific cause and time of the son’s death still being determined, the mother is not currently a suspect in his death. She has, however, been placed under arrest for corpse abandonment by nature of not reporting her son’s death in a timely manner.
Sources: NHK via Hachima Kiko, Nitele News 24, FNN Prime
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- External Link
- https://soranews24.com/2021/05/26/japanese-woman-asks-for-advice-on-how-to-deal-with-smell-of-sons-corpse-gets-arrested/
25 Comments
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kurisupisu
Live bodies bleed.
Corpses do not.
Mystery solved...
Darius
Insane
HoldingYouAccountable
How do soooo many Japanese people not know what to do when someone dies? I just don't get it.
Aly Rustom
WTF?????
lucabrasi
Febreze
maree
Someone asked this question here before, but I am gonna repeat it: is there an estimate on how many people in Japan are currently living with a corpse? The madness...
Ricky Kaminski13
Grim.
Capuchin
I think the issue is more related to the expense. As with anything pertaining to ceremony in Japan companies have found ways to price gouge people into the ground in the name of "tradition".
ThonTaddeo
This corpse "abandonment" thing, as a catch-all way to arrest people who might or might not be connected with a death, is really getting stretched to the breaking point here. The corpse was right there with her; she didn't "abandon" it. Change the law to something like "untimely notification of a death".
John Noun
Maybe an air freshener?
krustytheclown
Truth is stranger than fiction.
shogun36
It's because someone has to actually tell them that something has happened.
They can't figure out things on their own.
But in this case, the dead can't talk.
Therefore, no one tells them.
And as a result, nothing actually happened.
Jind
Is there a problem or financial costs that some people in Japan do not report when someone dies?
Sven Asai
Yes, what to do in such a case? There quickly have to be some explaining manga books and stage performances by cute mascots to spread the knowledge about it. lol
Danielsan
Although they shared the same home, it is possible that they led separate lives and rarely spoke. The poor woman was probably unaware that he was even home until the odor told her otherwise. And at her age, she may have dementia or extreme forgetfulness, which explains her behavior.
virusrex
Obviously the woman is not in a sound state of mind (else she would not have called the police), at least she does not seem to understand the consequences of her actions. So this may just be another example of the lack o appropriate mental health services in the country causing a quite negative situation.
cleo
There's nothing wrong with the law, just the translation. 死体遺棄(shitai iki) translates literally according to the dictionary as 'abandonment of a corpse', but is the term used for the act of failing to deal with a corpse in an appropriate manner. It covers everything from dumping a murdered body in the woods to leaving a body to rot in the bed in which it died of natural causes.
This lady did not abandon her son's body in the English sense of the word, but she did 遺棄するit as understood in Japanese, in that she did not contact the necessary people at the appropriate time to have the body dealt with in an appropriate manner.
RoccoL
As macabre as it sounds, a Japanese psychologist friend of mine told me that it’s quite common to hear about families leaving a deceased body at home in Japan whilst the family continue to collect payments from the government e.g. pensions etc.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
It seem that there are real problems in Japan with emotional health and also empathy. There’s no shortage of cognitive “read the room” empathy but a real lack of compassionate/affective empathy.
Anonymous
The only question: Is it reasonable to charge a corpse both room and board?
Zaphod
kurisupisu
The article only says cuts, it does not say they were bleeding. I hope you are not officially in charge of solving mysteries.
finally rich
seriously.. why????
they walk among us
starpunk
How could she live with the stench after two weeks like that and wouldn't it have been noticable beyond the apartment?
Tiffy-Amber Dorkson
Has there been any update on this case? I really want to know if the cuts were before or after his death because I am SHOOK