The mystery of Japanese longevity solved

[Taka]

The Myth of Japanese Longevity

Japan has long been thought to have one of the longest life
expectancies in the Westernized world, with one of the highest
centenarian populations of any modern culture. But it looks like this
is almost certainly a myth.

Approximately 234,000 people listed on Japanese government records as
being aged 100 or older are actually missing and undoubtedly long
dead. In 2010, Japanese officials uncovered about 77,000 missing
residents listed as at least 120 years old, and 884 were on the
records as 150 or older.

Japan's Justice Ministry blames "poor bookkeeping" for most of the
cases. Which is, of course, ludicrous. The Japanese, as a whole, are
not known for poor bookkeeping. More to the point, every city, town,
and village in Japan records births, marriages, and deaths (among
other events) in a koseki, or family register. The koseki system was
instituted throughout Japan in the 1870s. The koseki is supplemented
by a regular census taken every five years. The idea that a quarter
million people could go missing in a system so census-oriented beggars
belief.

What's actually happening, of course, is welfare fraud. The case of
Sogen Kato, "Tokyo's oldest man," illustrates what's going on. In July
2010, police requested a birthday visit of Sogen Kato, ahead of
Japan's Respect for the Elderly Day in September. Kato was born July
22, 1899, which would have made him 111. The police were repeatedly
turned away by Kato's family. Eventually, officials entered Kato's
bedroom and found his mummified body, dead for 30 years, on the bed.
The family had been living off Kato's never-ending pension the whole
time.

In August 2010, a few weeks after the Kato incident, Tokyo police
located the remains of a woman thought to be 104 years old in the
backpack of her 64-year-old son, who never reported his mother's
death. He had been living on his mother's pension for at least nine
years, probably longer.

The fact that there are 234,000 unrecorded deaths in the Japanese
population means the often-touted life-expectancy figure of 82 years
for Japan now has to be considered suspect. CIA's web page on Japan's
death rate shows Japanese mortality as having dropped by 10% in one
year, in 2012. This is also suspect, obviously. If U.S. mortality were
to drop 10% in one year it would be a major headline news story. For
mortality to suddenly drop by 10% in a country of 127 million people
(who smoke like fiends) simply isn't credible.

No one thought anything of it when Japan's centenarian population
tripled in the space of ten years. Now we know the truth. The Japanese
aren't living longer. They're just lying about their parents' age.

SOURCE: http://asserttrue.blogspot.jp/2013/03/the-myth-of-japanese-longevity.html

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Japan pension probe finds five-year-old corpse at home

A 58-year-old woman has admitted to keeping her father's corpse hidden
at home for five years, in Japan's latest case of suspected pension
fraud, local media reported Wednesday.

The man's decomposing body was discovered after a welfare official
visited a home in Izumi, near Osaka, in western Japan, as part of a
nationwide search to verify the whereabouts of elderly people, the
reports said.

The reports did not say whether the woman, who was not named, had been
arrested or charged but public broadcaster NHK quoted her admitting to
police that she had hidden the body.

"I found my father dead in his bed about five years ago when I
returned home. I hid the body in a bag when it started decomposing
after I left it as it was," NHK quoted the woman as telling police.

The woman's father was named as Asakichi Miyata, a former banker who
was believed to have been paid a pension which his daughter continued
to receive, Kyodo news agency reported, quoting city and police
officials.

Osaka police were not immediately available to confirm the reports.

The welfare official had visited Miyata's house as part of a
nationwide drive for face-to-face meetings with Japan's elderly after
the discovery of a 30-year-old, mummified body of a man thought to
have been alive at 111.

Tokyo police arrested the man's daughter, 81, and granddaughter, 53,
last Friday on suspicion of receiving his pension payments, worth nine
million yen (106,000 US dollars).

That case has prompted officials to check on hundreds of aged people,
especially centenarians, listed as still alive in Japanese official
records.

So far about 200 centenarians have been found to be missing from
places where they were last registered.

In another case, the remains of a Tokyo woman believed to be 104 were
found stuffed into her son's backpack, where they had been for more
than a decade.

SOURCE: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20100902-290067/Japan-pension-probe-finds-five-year-old-corpse-at-home

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Japan: leading the world in longevity — or pension scams?

It looks as though hundreds of centenarians carried on the health
ministry’s books, and helping to raise Japan’s average life expectancy
through the roof, are missing:

The story unfolded in late July when police discovered that Sogen
Kato, who would have been 111 and was thought to be Tokyo’s oldest
man, had actually been dead for 32 years, his decayed and partially
mummified body still in his home.

Police are investigating his family for possible abandonment and
pension fraud.

That discovery led officials around the country to check up on the
centenarians in their own districts, and what they found has been
shocking.

The woman listed as Tokyo’s oldest, Fusa Furuya, born in July 1897, is
also missing. Her last registered residence was long ago converted
into a vacant lot.

SOURCE: http://www.volokh.com/2010/08/13/japan-leading-the-world-in-longevity-or-pension-scams/

[Taka]

1,000′s of Japans Centenarians Died Decades Ago, Average Life
Expectancy “worse than we thought”…

In another example of vital statistics being grossly distorted by a
combination of poor record keeping and possibly people with a selfish
agenda, it is being reported in the Guardian and elsewhere that
possibly hundreds of thousands of people over age 100 in Japan are
actually dead, but unreported. Investigations are now underway to
determine how much of this problem is due to record keeping problems
and how much to family members failing to report the deaths of their
elderly relatives in order to continue to collect their pension
benefits by fraudulent means.

There are more than 77,000 Japanese citizens reported to be over age
120, and even 884 persons AGED OVER 150 YEARS OF AGE, who are still
alive according to government rolls.

While we in the US wouldn’t bat an eye if we heard this story coming
out of the Chicago area of Cook County, Illinois, given the number of
dead people still actively voting in elections there, there are at
least 230,000 people in Japan over age 100 who simply cannot be
located by any means. This large centenarian population is largely
responsible for the very high average life expectancy in Japan
(currently listed by the World Bank as 82.6 years, more than four
years greater than the US average of 78.4 years (this is including
dead voters in Chicago)), as well as any senior citizens under 100 who
are actually dead but have not been reported as such on government
records.

NOTE: Even if persons over 100 aren’t counted in life expectancy
statistics, as is claimed later in the article, the problem doesn’t
just begin at age 100, it is clear that whatever problems are at the
root of these errors, they extend to a large number of people below
age 100 who are also dead but are listed as alive on government
records.

This distortion in Japan’s real average life expectancy is a great
example of how a large body of statistics can be spoiled by poor
record keeping or outright fraud.

Where this becomes problematic for us in the US is that Japan’s high
life expectancy has been repeatedly used by the left as “facts” to
support their demands for universal health care as well as various
changes in the dietary, smoking, and exercise habits of Americans,
frequently associated with proposals for large amounts of government
regulation and taxation of the lives of private citizens and
regulation and banning of various legal products (soda pop, breakfast
cereals, beef, etc). We should look on the exposure of this
statistical error as an object lesson we can apply to other public
policy issues that so-called scientists attempt to promote ‘solutions’
to problems that they claim exist, based on faulty facts.

SOURCE:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/13/1000s-of-japans-centenarians-died-decades-ago-average-life-expectancy-worse-than-we-thought/

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More than 230,000 Japanese centenarians 'missing'

More than 230,000 elderly people in Japan who are listed as being aged
100 or over are unaccounted for, officials said following a nationwide
inquiry.

An audit of family registries was launched last month after the
remains of the man thought to be Tokyo's oldest were found at his
family home.

Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for
decades.

Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least
150 years old if still alive.

The Justice Ministry said some of those unaccounted for may have died
as long ago as World War II, possibly during the post-war turmoil.

Others may have emigrated without reporting their status to local
authorities, or relatives simply did not report the deaths.

The inquiry followed the discovery of the mummified remains of Sogen
Kato, who was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo.

However, when officials went to congratulate him on his 111th
birthday, they found his 30-year-old remains, raising concerns that
the welfare system is being exploited by dishonest relatives.

Reports said he had received about 9.5m yen ($109,000; £70,000) in
pension payments since his wife's death six years ago, and some of the
money had been withdrawn.

Japan has one of the world's fastest ageing societies, with one in
five over the age of 65.

Last year's Health Ministry report said Japan had 40,399 people aged
100 or older with known addresses.

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071

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Missing Centenarians in Japan

In 2010 a big deal was made about “missing centenarians” after Tokyo
prepared to give an award to its oldest “living” man—111-year-old
Sogen Kato—and found he was a mummy that had been dead for 30 years.
No death announcement was made it seems so family members living at
the house where the body was found could collect his pension checks
(more than $100,000 in pension funds had been deposited into his bank
account, from which a large amount had been withdrawn).

Kato’s daughter and husband, both in their 80s, and two
grandchildren, 49 and 53, lived in the house, They said Kato “wanted
to be a living Buddha” and they left him alive in his room. The 81-
year-old daughter and a 53-year-old granddaughter were later arrested
on charges of pension fraud and given suspended prison sentences. The
judge in the case said, “The defendant committed a malicious crime
with selfish motivation of securing revenue for her family. However
she had given back the pension benefits and expressed remorse for the
crime.” Authorities then found many similar cases of relatives
collecting pension payments on behalf of aged residents who were
missing or dead. In most cases, the older relative had moved away, but
relatives failed to report this to keep collecting pension payments.

After the Kato debacle the Tokyo government then prepared to give an
award to Tokyo’s oldest living person, 113-year-old Fusa Furuya, and
found that she hadn’t lived at her address for decades and nobody knew
where she was (a daughter said she last time she talked to her mother
was in 1990). In other cases: the house listed as the residence of a
106-year-old Nagoya woman had been torn down and replaced with a
parking garage many years ago and the bones of a woman registered as
being 104 years old were found in the backpack of her 64-year-old son
in Ota Ward, Tokyo. The son said his mother died in 2001 and he
received ¥1.2 million in pensions until May 2004, when he moved to a
new apartment.

After all this a survey of local records was undertaken. It found
over 234,000 centenarians were unaccounted for despite still being
registered alive under the family registry system. Of these over
77,000 were listed as being at least 120 years old and 884 were listed
as being over 150. A man in Nagasaki was listed as being born in 1810,
making him 200 if he were indeed alive. The longest-lived person
recorded in modern times is a Frenchwoman who died in 1997 at age
122.

In Gumma Prefecture 184 people were listed as being over 150. A large
portion of the Japanese missing centenarians were listed on
residential registrars as “living with kin.” Many were still listed
simply because no one had every reported their death, with some having
disappeared in World War II.

Impact of the Missing Centenarians

The revelations of the missing centenarians were a shock of a country
that had traditionally prided itself for looking after its elderly.
The whole episode got a fair amount of international media coverage
and brought attention to Japan’s record-keeping practices. It also
raised questions about the welfare of elderly in Japan and brought
doubts about Japan’s reputation for having the world’s longest living
people.

Some blamed the problem on the increasing isolation of the elderly
and increasing isolation of a society as a whole that lets people slip
through the cracks, without even the closest family members knowing
where they are.

Martin Fackler wrote in the New York Times, “The sheer size of the
problem underscores the challenges Japan faces in caring for its
growing numbers of elderly — or in these cases, just keeping count of
them.” “I can feel that these people were probably isolated from the
rest of society,” Japan’s justice minister, Keiko Chiba, said, “given
that we do not even know if they were dead or alive.” The ministry
said the findings would not affect Japan’s average life expectancy
figures — which are the highest in the world, at nearly 83 years —
because those figures were based on census data, not the records in
question. [Source: Martin Fackler, New York Times, September 10,
2010]

Reasons for Missing Centenarians in Japan

The Justice ministry blamed poor bookkeeping and lax communication
for most of the cases, saying that the individuals had apparently died
or moved away, but that no one had bothered to update the records.
Although Japan keeps a number of records on individuals though the
family registrar and tax, pension, health care and residency records
local government are also restricted by tough privacy laws.

In Japan, births and deaths are recorded using a family registry
system introduced in the Meiji period in the 19th century. There were
reports of officials failing to log deaths on registrars and people
who died alone, unnoticed. Many local government said they didn’t
follow up on missing centenarians because they lacked the manpower and
time to do so.

There were a number of cases where local governments didn’t bother to
do house checks and relied on nursing care and health care insurance
programs for information—and when they did investigate the cases
themselves they didn’t go far with their investigations. In some cases
the residence of the missing centenarians were checked and no one was
found living there or relatives said they had no idea where the
missing persons were yet the persons’ name were kept on government
registers.

Local governments said they were hampered by outdated records privacy
issues, not having the means to deal with cases that involve moving
from one prefecture to another, not having the personnel to
investigate all the cases, and the practice of keeping names on
registrars if there was any possibility that a centenarian being
checked was alive. One official in Tokyo told the Yomiuri Shimbun,
“Even if we try to speak to such centenarians face-to-face, we don’t
have any authority to forcibly meet and confirm their existence if
family members living with them refuse access.”

One local government welfare worker who was in charge of
investigating the elderly said that found old people sometimes refused
to open their doors, even when they were home. When contacted by
telephone she said they often said things like: “He’s fine, So please
don’t visit our home.”

SOURCE: http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=2776&catid=18

[Taka]

IF YOU'RE born in Japan today you can expect to live well past 80, the
highest life expectancy in the world. If you make it to age 65, you
can expect almost three full decades of retirement. Coupled with a low
birth rate, Japanese longevity spells demographic trouble. It, in
part, accounts for the large saving rates in Japan and is a drag on
the economy.

But things may not be as bad as we thought. Life expectancy may in
fact be a bit lower. It turns out hundreds of thousands of Japanese
centenarians may not have actually lived that long. In at least a few
cases, relatives lived with decomposing corpses for decades in order
to collect pension income.
“An audit of family registries was launched last month after the

remains of the man thought to be Tokyo's oldest were found at his
family home.
Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for
decades.
Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least
150 years old if still alive.
The Justice Ministry said some of those unaccounted for may have died
as long ago as World War II, possibly during the post-war turmoil.
Others may have emigrated without reporting their status to local
authorities, or relatives simply did not report the deaths.
The inquiry followed the discovery of the mummified remains of Sogen
Kato, who was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo.
However, when officials went to congratulate him on his 111th
birthday, they found his 30-year-old remains, raising concerns that

the welfare system is being exploited by dishonest relatives.”

You wonder, if this is true on a large scale, what the impact of this
has been. In addition to the costs of paying pensions to people who
are dead, does this mean we've over-estimated Japanese life expectancy
(almost a quarter million missing centenarians is not trivial)? Life
expectancy impacts saving rates, pension contributions and insurance
premiums.

Once during an audit of a European insurer, (who was charging a small
fortune for a basic annuity) I noticed a 1% probability of living to
110 in the life tables the insurer used to price the annuity
(annuities are more expensive the longer the insurer expects you to
live). “Where do you they think they are, Japan?” I chuckled (I know
bad pension economist humour). Guess even in Japan those probabilities
need not apply.

SOURCE: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/09/pensions

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Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone

TOKYO — Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest
people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet
and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.

That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one
of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more
than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue
collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.

Alarmed, local governments began sending teams to check on other
elderly residents. What they found so far has been anything but
encouraging.

A woman thought to be Tokyo’s oldest, who would be 113, was last seen
in the 1980s. Another woman, who would be the oldest in the world at
125, is also missing, and probably has been for a long time. When city
officials tried to visit her at her registered address, they
discovered that the site had been turned into a city park, in 1981.

To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281
Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older.
Facing a growing public outcry, the country’s health minister, Akira
Nagatsuma, said officials would meet with every person listed as 110
or older to verify that they are alive; Tokyo officials made the same
promise for the 3,000 or so residents listed as 100 and up.

The national hand-wringing over the revelations has reached such
proportions that the rising toll of people missing has merited daily,
and mournful, media coverage. “Is this the reality of a longevity
nation?” lamented an editorial last week in The Mainichi newspaper,
one of Japan’s biggest dailies.

Among those who officials have confirmed is alive: a 113-year-old
woman in the southern prefecture of Saga believed to be the country’s
oldest person, at least for now.

The soul-searching over the missing old people has hit this rapidly
graying country — and tested its sense of self — when it is already
grappling with overburdened care facilities for the elderly, criminal
schemes that prey on them and the nearly daily discovery of old people
who have died alone in their homes.

For the moment, there are no clear answers about what happened to
most of the missing centenarians. Is the country witnessing the
results of pension fraud on a large scale, or, as most officials
maintain, was most of the problem a result of sloppy record keeping?
Or was the whole sordid affair, as the gloomiest commentators here are
saying, a reflection of disintegrating family ties, as an indifferent
younger generation lets its elders drift away into obscurity?

“This is a type of abandonment, through disinterest,” said Hiroshi
Takahashi, a professor at the International University of Health and
Welfare in Tokyo. “Now we see the reality of aging in a more urbanized
society where communal bonds are deteriorating.”

Officials here tend to play down the psychosocial explanations. While
some older people may have simply moved into care facilities, they
say, there is a growing suspicion that, as in the case of the
mummified corpse, many may already have died.

Officials in the Adachi ward of Tokyo, where the body was found, said
they grew suspicious after trying to pay a visit to the man, Sogen
Kato. (They were visiting him because the man previously thought to be
Tokyo’s oldest had died and they wished to congratulate Mr. Kato on
his new status.)

They said his daughter gave conflicting excuses, saying at first that
he did not want to meet them, and then that he was elsewhere in Japan
giving Buddhist sermons. The police moved in after a granddaughter,
who also shared the house, admitted that Mr. Kato had not emerged from
his bedroom since about 1978.

In a more typical case that took place just blocks from the Mr.
Kato’s house, relatives of a man listed as 103 years old said he had
left home 38 years ago and never returned. The man’s son, now 73, told
officials that he continued to collect his father’s pension “in case
he returned one day.”

“No one really suspects foul play in these cases,” said Manabu
Hajikano, director of Adachi’s resident registration section. “But it
is still a crime if you fail to report a disappearance or death in
order to collect pension money.”

Some health experts say these cases reflect strains in a society that
expects children to care for their parents, instead of placing them in
care facilities. They point out that longer life spans mean that
children are called upon to take care of their elderly parents at a
time when the children are reaching their 70s and are possibly in need
of care themselves.

In at least some of the cases, local officials have said, an aged
parent disappeared after leaving home under murky circumstances.
Experts say that the parents appeared to have suffered from dementia
or some other condition that made their care too demanding, and the
overburdened family members simply gave up, failing to chase after the
elderly people or report their disappearance to the police.

While the authorities have turned up a large number of missing
centenarians, demographic experts say they doubt that discoveries of
the living or the dead would have much impact on Japan’s vaunted life
expectancy figures; the country has the world’s highest life
expectancy — nearly 83 years — according to the World Bank. But
officials admit that Japan may have far fewer centenarians than it
thought.

“Living until 150 years old is impossible in the natural world,” said
Akira Nemoto, director of the elderly services section of the Adachi
ward office. “But it is not impossible in the world of Japanese public
administration.”

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html?_r=0

[Taka]

Japan may soon lose top longevity ranking

Japan has long been the world leader in longevity, but some experts
are now suggesting that the island nation may soon face a drop in the
rankings.

“In an era of economic stagnation, political turmoil, aging
populations, and inadequate tobacco control, Japan does not seem to be
effective in addressing its new set of health challenges,” wrote Dr
Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“Without concerted action, Japan, like the USA, is likely to continue
dropping in the global mortality league tables,” Murray wrote in an
issue of the medical journal the Lancet published Sept 1, that is
devoted to exploring the reasons for Japan’s health successes.

Although Japan’s decline, relative to the longevity of other nations,
will not be as severe as the relative decline of the U.S., “it is a
cautionary tale that success in the past does not guarantee top
performance in the future,” Murray wrote.

Murray’s prediction relies on, among other sources, a research paper
in the same issue entitled “What has made the population of Japan
healthy?”

In that article, researchers from the University of Tokyo found that
while Japan has achieved a record life expectancy of 86 years for
women, “Japan now needs to tackle major health challenges that are
emanating from a rapidly aging population, causes that are not
amenable to health technologies, and the effects of increasing social
disparities to sustain the improvement in population health.”

Japan’s record-breaking longevity

Murray said that the success of Japanese health care emerged after
World War II, with declining infant mortality and reduction of
infectious diseases.

That was followed by a period from 1975 to 1995, during which
mortality dropped in many nations, as well as Japan.

But in recent years, he said, “Japan has fallen behind Sweden, Italy,
and Australia for men, and behind Sweden for women. If recent trends
continue, other nations are likely to achieve lower rates of adult
mortality than Japan.”

Reasons for this fall include the country’s suicide rate, rising body
mass index and relatively high rates of smoking, Murray said.

Part of Japan’s health success has been attributed to universal health
coverage, accomplished at a relatively low price: the country spends
8.5% of its GDP on health care, while the U.S. spends 16.4%, and
Germany spends 10.7%, Murray said.

But that adds another potential reason for the fall, Murray said.

“Although Japan has a universal health care system, the quality of the
care delivered might be low,” Murray said, citing the example of
coverage for high cholesterol treatments that is much lower than in
other high-income countries.

To further increase the country’s longevity by reducing its adult
mortality, Japan may need to revamp its health care system, he said.

The oldest nation on Earth

But longer life is not the only change that has come to Japan in
recent decades. A declining birth rate and long lifespan have helped
make Japan the oldest nation on earth, with a median age above 40.

“The aging population, smoking, metabolic syndrome and suicide are all
major challenges facing the public health system in Japan,” said D
Craig Willcox, a professor of public health at Okinawa International
University and at the University of Hawaii, who co-led the long-term
Okinawa Centenarian Study.

But the nation faces the need for cultural change as well, said
Willcox, who was not involved with Murray’s article.

“Losing status among nations may upset the national pride,” Willcox
said. But “the more important issue is reforming Japanese society to
make it more age-friendly, and doing away with age discrimination,” he
said.

Willcox said he questioned whether it made sense for most Japanese
companies and institutions to have mandatory retirement age of 65
years, when 40% of the population will be beyond that age in a few
decades. He noted that this retirement age doesn’t apply to everyone
in the country.

Willcox said he believes, however, that some of the central ideas
responsible for the success of Japanese health care may help in the
United States. Universal health coverage plays an important role,
along with some other ideas.

“In Japan, people are taught to think of their health as not only a
personal issue, but also a social responsibility,” he said. For
example, towns in which not enough people get health screenings may
pay more in taxes. “If you don’t get your health exam, the whole town
could suffer, and everyone could end up paying more taxes!”

Additionally, Willcox said, the government has adapted its language in
discussing health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and some
age-related cancers, calling them “lifestyle-related diseases” instead
of “age-associated diseases,” and the public has taken to the change.

“You can see the subtle shift from something that just ‘comes along
with age’ or something you can prevent through your lifestyle,” he
said. “As a specialist in public health, I thought that was a
brilliant move.”

SOURCE: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-may-soon-lose-top-longevity-ranking