世論 What Japan Thinks

A story this summer that started off as a tragedy when a family were found to have had their ’111 year old’ father’s bones lying around the house and turned into farce later when a 200 year old man turned up was lost old folk in Japan, the subject of a not-so-recent survey from goo Research, conducted on behalf of the Mainichi Shimbun.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 29th of August 2010 1,071 members of the goo Research online monitor group aged twenty or older completed a private internet-based questionnaire. No further demographic information was given.

I’m sure the Mainichi Shimbun must have published a fuller version of this survey.

The story had two components – first, people dying but their families not notifying anyone so that they could collect the pensions or just their general incompetence with the system for registering deaths; that is a serious social problem that needs to be addressed. Second, local governments for whatever reason not tidying up their internal paperwork, so that when people went missing such as at wartime or when they died or moved but the proper procedures were not followed, orphaned resident register entries were created but these records were never looked at until the first story broke, thus producing the flood of ancient phantoms.

Research results

Q1: What do you think is the main cause of the flood of unlocatable old folk? (Sample size=1,071)

Local, national government systems not functioning	47%
Weakening of family ties	29%
Weakening of local community ties	24%

Q2: What is your biggest worry about the unlocatable old folk? (Sample size=1,071)

Whether someone is making off with the pension money	50%
Whether they are already dead	35%
Whether they are getting proper medical attention, care services, etc	13%
Whether they have been victims of crime	2%