Japanese man hid father's dead body for 2 years, continued to draw his pension

A man in Japan hid his father's dead body in a closet for two years, allegedly because of the high funeral costs. During this time, he continued to draw his pension. His secret was revealed after some well-meaning neighbours reached out to the police after he failed to open his Chinese restaurant in Tokyo for a week, Fuji News Network reported.

Nobuhiko Suzuki's absence was worrying for the people who knew him. So they informed the police. When the officers reached his home, they found his father’s skeleton in the wardrobe. They were shocked to discover human remains in the man's house.

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Upon questioning, Suzuki revealed that he hid the body after his father passed away at age 86 in January 2023. He said that he could not pay for the funeral, and so decided to hide the body. "The funeral was expensive," he said.

Meanwhile, it is not clear how his father passed away. Suzuki claims that on the day he returned from work, and found his father dead. 

He further added that he did not feel any kind of guilt either because he believes his father was to blame for his own death. 

However, Suzuki is now under arrest and is being investigated for embezzling his dead father's pension. 

This is not the first case of pension embezzlement in Japan. In 2023, a 56-year-old hid his mother's body from 2019 to 2022 so that he could continue to receive her pension. In total, he took about two million yen from her pension.

Meanwhile, people on social media have mixed reactions to the story. Many of them sympathise with the man about the funeral costs. One of them wrote that he spent two million yen (US$14,000) on his father's funeral because he did not know anything about the process.

According to a survey by Japanese funeral service provider San Holdings Inc., a funeral costs around 1.3 million yen (US$8,900) following the COVID-19 pandemic. This is less than pre-pandemic prices since people now hold simpler rituals, SCMP reported.