ニューヨーク・タイムズのインスタグラム(nytimes) - 12月3日 06時40分

“Everybody around me has died, one after another, and I’m the only one left,” Chieko Ito said. “But when I think about death, I’m afraid.” Chieko has been lonely every day for the past quarter of a century. She lives along in a housing complex, or danchi, which she has called home for nearly 60 years. One of the biggest in Japan, the government complex is a monument to the nation’s postwar baby boom. On Chieko’s 91st birthday, a heat wave had leaders there worried. Volunteers had been distributing leaflets on the dangers of heatstroke to the many hundreds of residents who lived alone in 171 white buildings. Each year, some of the older tenants died without anyone knowing. In the world’s most rapidly aging society, deaths like theirs are known as “lonely deaths.” Summer’s the most dangerous season for these lonely deaths, so this time, Chieko wasn’t taking any chances. Birthday or not, she knew that no one would call or check on her. So she asked a neighbor in the opposite building for a favor. Could she, once a day, look across the greenery separating their apartments and gaze up at Chieko’s window? In the morning, she would open the paper screen. “If it’s closed,” she told her neighbor, “it means I’ve died.” Visit the link in our profile to read more, and to see more photos from #Japan by Ko Sasaki.

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