Japan’s CREEPIEST House Hid a Secret for 32 Years

Hey guys! We’re now live on Spotify 🎧 https://open.spotify.com/show/033KQbE... Thank you so much for your support! ❤️ your support means the world. https://buymeacoffee.com/hollows On the evening of 26 July 2010, police officers and council staff stood in the entrance hall of an ordinary house in Adachi, north Tokyo, for about an hour. They were asking to see the oldest registered resident of the ward, a man who would have turned 111 four days earlier. His family told them he was asleep upstairs and did not want visitors. They were standing about two metres from him while they said it. He was on the ground floor, in a six mat room immediately off the front door, and he had been there since November 1978. This is the story of Sogen Kato, of the room nobody opened for thirty two years, and of what happened when Japan went looking for everybody else. The state paid him a survivor's pension after his wife died, posted him gift vouchers with a letter from the mayor, listed him as the oldest person in his ward, and asked him whether he consented to having his name published. All of it went to a room with dust on the floor. The reason nothing ever fired is not a mystery, and it is the most unsettling part. In 2006 Japan scrapped the annual form in which pensioners confirmed they were still alive, because survival would now be verified automatically. But the system had no way of confirming that somebody was alive. It only had a way of noticing when somebody reported them dead. If this is the kind of hidden Japan you want more of, like the video and subscribe. It is the only thing this channel digs into. RESOURCES 111 year old man died 32 years ago, newspapers from the time found in the room | Asahi Shimbun, 29 July 2010 | https://web.archive.org/web/201007301... Preaching at a temple, asleep in bed: the family refused a meeting again and again | Asahi Shimbun, 29 July 2010 | https://web.archive.org/web/201008011... Asahi floor plan of the Kato house, reproduced with the Sankei report | Egusa Nori blog | http://www.enpitu.ne.jp/usr4/bin/day?... The family were told never to open the door | Yomiuri Shimbun, 31 July 2010 | https://web.archive.org/web/201008030... There was a smell after ten days: family knew soon after the death | Nikkei, 2 August 2010 | https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNAS... Eldest daughter and granddaughter arrested over pension fraud | Mainichi Shimbun, 27 August 2010 | https://web.archive.org/web/201008271... Granddaughter convicted of pension fraud, Tokyo District Court | Nikkei, 22 November 2010 | https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNAS... Prosecution dismissed after the defendant daughter dies | Nikkei, 22 January 2011 | https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNAS... 230,000 people aged 100 or over unaccounted for in the family registers | Nikkei, 10 September 2010 | https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNAS... On the problem of missing elderly people | Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 4 November 2010 | https://www.mhlw.go.jp/qa/dl/nenkin_1... Suspension of pensions for elderly people whose whereabouts are unknown | Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 5 August 2011 | https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/2r9... The mystery of Japan's missing centenarians explained | Demographic Research, 2012 | https://www.demographic-research.org/... Oldest was 149: fifty people over 120 declared missing in one year | Yomiuri Shimbun, 8 May 2022 | https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20... News programme builds a replica of the house, no religious books in the room | Japan Probe, 2 August 2010 | https://web.archive.org/web/201010061... #Japan #DarkHistory #Tokyo #TrueStory #HiddenJapan