In a quiet residential neighborhood of southern Osaka, the transition of a private house licensed to take in lodgers into a so-called corpse hotel has left locals up in arms.
"The corpse was carried in wrapped in a cloth," a local man in his 70s recently explained as he recounted his astonishment at seeing a body arrive last December at the house with its dingy and blackened walls in the city's Sumiyoshi Ward.
"I could see it being laid out in the garden. It was disturbing because there had been no explanation whatsoever," he said.