The country's growing ranks of dementia sufferers are sitting on a mountain of frozen assets, creating personal dilemmas for loved ones fretting over how to handle that money and a drag on the nation's economic prospects as the vast pool of wealth lays idle.
The pile of captive capital held by sufferers of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in the country swelled to ¥143 trillion ($1.3 trillion) in the year ending March 2018, according to research by Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute Inc. That's equivalent to more than a quarter of the size of the overall economy.
It's a problem on various levels: Relatives often feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of dealing with the savings and investments; policymakers must balance safeguarding the savings while ensuring they're still used effectively to support economic growth; for brokerages the static savings represents lost business in an already shrinking market.