Almost 30% of the population in Japan is elderly (age 65 or older). That’s the highest in the world. Because of this, the crude death rate in Japan has been rising each year. Here is a graph from 2014 to 2021 with a trend line stemming from the upward trend in death rates between 2014 and 2019:
To verify that the 2020 year had unusually low death in Japan, a 99% prediction interval was formed around the trend line:
The 2020 death rate (orange dot) was below the lower bound of the 99% prediction interval (yellow dot) — indicating statistically-significant lower death in 2020.
Notice how the 2021 death rate (orange dot) was within the 99% prediction interval, sitting below the upper bound of the interval (gray dot) — indicating that the 2021 death rate was not out of the bounds of expectation.
But the vast majority of the dead in Japan are cremated, and very recently, there have been stories about crematoriums being overrun with dead bodies. Average wait times for a cremation can be up to 6 days, depending on which of Japan’s 47 prefectures you are in.
Because of the backlog, the number of refrigerators ordered in order to store dead bodies (until they can be cremated) rose by 5-fold recently. Because this is a recent development — not happening in 2020 or in 2021 — let’s have a closer look at the situation for 2022:
Evidence suggests that the reason that crematoriums in Japan are currently being overrun with dead bodies — making family or loved ones have to pay ~$90 a day to store the bodies until they can be cremated — has to do with the high rate of COVID jab uptake.
Reference
[percent fully jabbed in Japan] — OWID. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
[In Japan, loved ones are paying about $90 per day to store the dead bodies until they can be cremated] — Japan's funeral industry struggles to keep pace with rising deaths. Wednesday July 12, 2023. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2563/
[A record 1,582,033 people died in Japan in 2022] — Deaths jumped 8.9% in Japan in 2022 to almost double birth total. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/Deaths-jumped-8.9-in-Japan-in-2022-to-almost-double-birth-total
[in every prefecture of Japan, the population is now diminishing] — Japan’s population drops by nearly 800,000 with falls in every prefecture for the first time. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/26/japan-population-how-many-people-drops-first-time-births-deaths