"The general concept of family in Japan has fallen apart. The overall number of people who are alone is growing..."

"... so it’s inevitable that the number of people dying without anyone’s support is also growing.... Their ties are all related to their work, so [when they retire] it’s hard for them to jump into the local community... It’s so easy for them to fall into self-neglect and become isolated, and there’s nobody to stop that from happening."

Said Masaki Ichinose, of the Center for Life and Death Studies at the University of Tokyo, quoted in "CLEANING UP AFTER THE DEAD/As family dynamics change in Japan, more people are living by themselves — and dying alone" in The Washington Post (replete with descriptions and photographs depicting the living spaces of those whose dead bodies were discovered long after they died).

The second-highest-rated comment is: "A company that cleans up after dead people is named 'Next.' I know death comes for all of us, but that seems pretty cold." That gets the response "Time to fill that space with the next tenant."