Defibrillators increasingly are being found outside hospitals, used to resuscitate people who have heart attacks in public places.
On the afternoon of March 16, an elderly man collapsed at Tochomae Station on the Oedo subway line in Tokyo's Shinkuku Ward.
After seeing that the man had no pulse, Sadakazu Horiguchi, the 57-year-old assistant head of the station, called to a station worker: "Call 119. Bring the AED," a reference to an automatic external defibrillator.