for the statistics was because people in Japan are living longer than ever before. "That achievement is placing new burdens on a society where a declining number of working-age Japanese have to fund rising health-care and pension costs," The Globe and Mail reported. Dr. Aiba said that because Tokyo was so crowded, families cannot remain in the same household. “There’s not enough space for families to live together any more,” he said. A national census in 2005 found that 3.86 million elderly Japanese citizens were living alone, compared with 2.2 million a decade before. 24.4 percent of men and 9.3 percent of women over the age of 60 in Japan have no neighbours, friends or relatives on whom they could rely, a more recent study discovered. In 2008, the Associated Press reported that the number of elderly people committing suicide had reached a record high because of health and economic worries. "In what appears to be a collective cry for help, more than 30,000 Japanese seniors are arrested every year for shoplifting. Many of those arrested told police they stole out of feelings of boredom and isolation, rather than any economic necessity," The Globe and Mail reported after the discovery of Kato's corpse. Jeff Kingston, the Director of Asian Studies at the Japan Campus of Temple University, said, "It is a humanising phenomenon—the Japanese are traditionally seen as sober, law-abiding people—when they are in fact scamsters like the rest of us. [The story of the missing centenarians] holds up a mirror to society and reflects realities that many in Japan do not want to accept." See also Aging of Japan Elderly people in Japan List of Japanese supercentenarians Lists of centenarians Notes References 1899 births 1978 deaths Hoaxes in Japan People from Tokyo 2010 hoaxes