WurfWhile

This tale of Japanese starvation was on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times and it both horrified me and made me sad.

“In a thin notebook discovered along with a man’s partly mummified corpse this summer was a detailed account of his last days, recording his hunger pangs, his drop in weight and, above all, his dream of eating a rice ball, a snack sold for about $1 in convenience stores across the country.

‘3 a.m. This human being hasn’t eaten in 10 days but is still alive,’ he wrote. ‘I want to eat rice. I want to eat a rice ball.’

These were not the last words of a hiker lost in the wilderness, but those of a 52-year-old urban welfare recipient whose benefits had been cut off. And his case was not the first here.
….
The diarist, a former taxi driver, qualified [for welfare benefits] last December after receiving diagnoses of diabetes, high blood pressure and a bad liver brought on by alcohol abuse. He lived in a dilapidated row house whose walls and roof had partly collapsed. Electricity and gas had been cut off.

According to city documents, the man’s case worker began pressing him to find a job within weeks of his receiving benefits.
….
Three months after he started receiving benefits, the man signed a form saying he no longer needed welfare. The city said it was voluntary, but an entry in his diary belies that. Writing that he was about to start looking for work, he added: ‘I was just about to give it a try when they cut me off. Are they telling the needy to die as quickly as possible?’
….
Perhaps out of shame, the man with the diary did not turn to his relatives or neighbors for help, even though he had lived all his life on the block.

‘2 a.m. My belly’s empty,’ he wrote on May 25, some 45 days after his benefits were cut. ‘I want to fill my belly with rice balls.’

He added: ‘Weight is also down from 68 kilograms to 54 kilograms’ — from 150 pounds to 119.
….
A friend found the dead man’s corpse on July 10, long after his last diary entry on June 5. In his diary, the man dreamed of rice balls to the end. To most Japanese, rice balls, which are now sold in convenience stores, were traditionally a snack that mothers usually made by hand: a ball of rice, wrapped in seaweed with perhaps a red plum buried inside, to be eaten during a hiking trip or some other pleasant activity.

‘My belly’s empty,” read the diary’s last entry. ‘I want to eat a rice ball. I haven’t eaten rice in 25 days.’”

The diarist is the third man in as many years to die of starvation in Kitakyushu, Japan. All three men were sick and all three were denied welfare benefits.