“Yikes. This is like right out of a horror movie.”

Hikikomori, people who spend nearly their entire lives in their rooms, is a phenomenon especially prevalent in japan. While it’s difficult to get exact numbers, estimates say that there are at least over one million hikikomori in Japan, bringing with them a wealth of difficulties.

Being taken care of by their parents all day every day brings with it plenty of problems by itself, but there’s also several other complications… such as what they do when their parents pass away. This is a big issue, so much so that a few years ago the Nagoya government released a guide for hikikomori on what to do when their parents die.

Unfortunately, that information doesn’t always reach the intended audience.

Recently, the dead body of Satoe Tanaka, an 83-year-old woman, was found in the house where she and her son Hisataka lived just the two of them in Togane City, Chiba Prefecture. According to police, Hisataka was living as a hikikomori in the house, and his mother’s corpse had been left inside after she originally passed away over a year ago last July.

▼ Just… there are no words.

 

Police were alerted to the potential problem after city officials had been trying to contact Satoe for almost two years with no response. Details of why they were contacting her have not been released, nor why she didn’t reply for presumably a year before her death, but it could’ve been over simple managerial things such as taxes, insurance, or bills that eventually piled up.

As for the reason why Hisataka left her dead body inside the house for over a year, he had this to say: “I found her dead, and I didn’t know what to do to take care of it, so I left her there.”

Here’s how Japanese netizens reacted online to the disturbing story:

“Yikes. This is like right out of a horror movie.”
“Did he just ignore her body? Did he stare at it? I’m not sure which is worse….”
“And what about the smell? What did he do about that?”
“I feel like we might be hearing more stories like this from now on.”
“All he had to do was call an ambulance. Even a first grader can do that.”
“I mean, he obviously didn’t do anything because he wanted to keep collecting her pension money.”

Unfortunately that last netizen may be correct. Like most hikikomori, Hisataka was unemployed, living off his parent’s pension money. If that were to go away, he would’ve had no other way to continue his lifestyle, so in his twisted mind it wasn’t even a decision.

We saw a similar case to this a little less than a year ago, but here’s to hoping that some way is found to deal with these types of situations besides just releasing guides.

Source: Nippon Televeision network Corporation via My Game News Flash
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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