Toru Koremura (Matthew Bremner)

Back in August 2011 I posted ‘All the lone people’, which had been inspired by a sad discovery not far from my home the month before – the 2003 death of Natalie Wood, which had gone unnoticed for eight years.

Just then at Roads & Kingdoms, I read Matthew Bremner’s ‘The Lonely End’, a grim and sad yet compelling article about kodokushi (“lonely death”), the Japanese term for people who die alone and remain undiscovered for a long period of time. ‘The Lonely End’ also features Toru Koremura (pictured above), who runs one of 10 companies in Japan that deal with the aftermaths of kodokushi.

You can also read more about kodokushi at Wikipedia.