Dying Alone in Japan: The Industry Devoted to What’s Left Behind
July 30th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
Han is director of Tail Project, a six-year-old company based near Tokyo that specializes in cleaning out and disposing of the property accumulated by the deceased, a service that’s increasingly in demand as Japan’s population ages and shrinks. For Han, today’s job is relatively simple. She and her crew of three started at 9 a.m., and the small truck waiting on the street below will be full and gone by 1 p.m. Time permitting, Han plans to accompany it to a trading company that buys spent belongings, packs them in overseas shipping containers, and exports them to buyers in the Philippines.
Companies such as Tail Project are increasingly necessary in a country where each year more people die with no one to mourn them. In 2017 there were 946,060 births and 1,340,433 deaths in Japan, marking a seventh consecutive year of population decline. By some estimates, Japan’s population could shrink by a third over the next 50 years, and there’s little chance the trend will reverse. The roots of the problem reach back to the country’s post-World War II boom years, which produced levels of consumption unprecedented in historically conservative Japan. But that lifestyle burst with Japan’s asset bubble in the early 1990s. The resulting economic insecurity is leading young Japanese people to put off marriage and children—or skip them altogether. What’s left is one of the world’s oldest societies, millions of junk-filled homes, and a dearth of heirs.
