A pensioner’s suicide has meaning for us all.
A shocking self-immolation by a pensioner has highlighted the despair of many older people in Japan’s cities. A few minutes before Haruo Hayashizaki of Suginamihe poured petrol over himself, the 71-year-old called his landlord to say that he could not pay his rent. He had previously told his sister that he didn’t have enough money to live on, adding: ‘Do they just want us old ones to drop dead quickly?’
His despair is typical of the poverty and desperation that lies beneath the soaring ‘grey’ crime wave in Japan, which sees far more elderly people committing crimes than teenagers. When a nation whose culture has traditionally revered its elderly abandons them, it’s clear that something dangerous and significant is happening.
