NAGOYA—Local government officials here left deceased residents in cold storage facilities at funeral homes for extended periods because they could not find relatives or acquaintances to handle the cremation procedures.

One body remained in storage for three years and four months.

Under the law on graveyards and burials, the mayor of the municipality where a resident dies is responsible for cremating or burying the body when no relatives or other individuals can be found to carry out such services.

In Nagoya, that responsibility lies with ward offices.

In typical cases, they complete the cremation procedure in about six months.

But a more than three-year audit conducted by the city government showed that five of the 16 ward offices in Nagoya had failed to cremate 13 residents as of December, when the audit ended.

All 13 bodies were eventually cremated, but the procedures for six of them had not been taken for at least one year after the city decided to cremate them.

In other cases, officials discontinued their searches for bereaved family members.

Seven officials who were in charge of the cases were reprimanded.

“The officials were swamped with clerical work and prioritized other matters with pressing deadlines or urgent issues that came in,” a city government representative said.

A source at a funeral company in Nagoya said it once had to keep a body in cold storage for nearly three years for a ward office.

“It is not unusual to keep bodies for about two years,” the source said.

TOO MANY BODIES

According to city officials, an increasing number of people are dying alone as society ages.

In fiscal 2020, the remains of 243 residents were left unclaimed in Nagoya for some time. Ward offices handled the cremations for 160 of the bodies, nearly double the 84 in fiscal 2016.

“The officials want to find next of kin to claim the body as soon as possible, but new bodies keep coming in,” a city government representative said.

In one case, officials had to postpone a scheduled cremation because they became too busy searching for relatives to claim the body of another person.

Bodies have been left in storage while officials await return phone calls or letters from relatives of deceased individuals. Sometimes, after receiving no replies, they have suspended the search for bereaved relatives.

One senior Nagoya city official emphasized that the front-line workers were not neglecting their duties on purpose.

“They are working hard,” the official said. “They know that they must do the job.”

According to city officials, funeral companies are paid a lump sum for storage and funeral fees, meaning additional charges are not applied even if the body remains in storage for a long time. This arrangement tends to make it less urgent for ward offices to cremate the bodies.

The officials also explained that novel coronavirus-related work took priority over the cremations.

INCONVENIENCES FOR FUNERAL HOMES

One funeral home in Nagoya said it had to cancel funerals for its customers after its cold storage facility was filled to capacity with bodies sent from a ward office.

Another company said it had to keep a body in a coffin filled with dry ice because it ran out of storage space.

But funeral companies cannot complain to ward offices over the setup because they rely on the stable income from the ward offices, according to sources.

A source close to a funeral home said that when the company asked a ward office about the prolonged storage of a body, a government official said the ward could take its business elsewhere.

Funeral homes had previously shied away from the requests of ward offices. But even major companies are now willing to accept the bodies because more customers are saving on funeral costs by holding small-scale services.

“Funeral companies cannot take a hard line out of consideration for ward offices,” a senior city official said. “Ward officials must understand that they are worried about losing business opportunities.”

The Nagoya city government plans to revise its guidelines by specifying an acceptable process period between the time of death and the cremation.

“It’s difficult to say when the cremations must be carried out, but we want to establish a standard period,” a city official said.

(This article was written by Kei Kobayashi and Kenji Seki.)