In recent weeks, three cases of kodokushi, or "lonely deaths," have been covered extensively in the news. One involved a Saitama Prefecture family of three whose bodies were found in their apartment several months after the electricity and gas were turned off for nonpayment. Police assumed they had starved. The other cases involved two sisters in their 40s who likely froze to death in a Sapporo apartment; and the discovery of the bodies of a 45-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son in Tachikawa, Tokyo. (Japan Times)
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