Tokyo man arrested for abandoning father’s remains in a subway station men’s room

That probably wasn’t mentioned in the will.

In September of 2019 the father of Hiroaki Hishijima passed away. However, his father having been divorced from his mother and living separately from the family, there appeared to have been little in the way of a funeral.

Instead the Tokyo Municipal Government was handling the cremation and it wasn’t until the following month that they requested Hishijima pick up the ashes for a proper committal. He dutifully went to the ward office to pick up his father, but then was at a loss over what to do with him.

Reports are conflicting over whether Hishijima’s mother directly refused to allow him to bring the ashes home, or he simply thought that she would get mad if he did. Either way, he felt that going home wasn’t an option and, as he later told police, committing the remains would have been too much of a costly and time-consuming process for him.

So, while passing through Tokyo Station, he thought a men’s room of the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line was as good a spot as any and just left his father there. May he rest in peace.

▼ Tokyo Station

Station staff disagreed, however, and upon finding the urn filled with ashes, contacted the police who eventually tracked down the 53-year-old son and arrested him for abandonment of human remains, which can result in up to three years in prison.

Details regarding why the father was handled this way aren’t clear, leaving many online wondering how something like this could happen.

“That mother sounds kind of scary.”
“He was worried about upsetting his mother, but he wasn’t worried about upsetting the rest of the city and the police?”
“‘Abandonment of human remains?’ I never even heard of that crime.”
“Sounds like he was trying to be a good son by picking up the remains, but he was too scared of the mother.”
“At least they were able to recover it.”
“He could have just tossed it into Tokyo Bay.”
“Is he scared of his mom? He’s 53!”
“We can’t say what his thinking was without knowing the whole situation. But technically he did commit a crime.”

Most people were quick to judge the mother, which was surprising to me as my first thought was the father might have been a piece of work. The fact that the son couldn’t be bothered to process the remains properly would suggest as much.

However, another telling detail is that Hishijima simply left the urn in the restroom, and held back on using one of the many nearby toilets that could have easily disposed of all the evidence without a trace.

▼ He even could have thoroughly rinsed out the container with the toilet’s many functions. It would have been the perfect crime.

Perhaps in this case both the mother and father had their issues, and the son who was stuck in the middle and probably not raised in the best environment, wrongly felt the best compromise was to leave his old man in a historic piece of the Tokyo landscape. As far as public restrooms go, it’s probably one of the better ones to spend eternity in.

Source: FNN Prime, Nippon TV News 24, YouTube/ANNnewsCH
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso 1, 2
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