Shortly after 1 p.m. on April 21, 2009, a worker at Fuji Reien cemetery in Gotenba City, Shizuoka Prefecture, discovered the body of a woman on its grounds. Nearby, a semi-conscious elderly lady sat shivering in a wheelchair.
The body was that of the singer and actress Yukiko Shimizu. She had taken her invalid mother to the gravesite of her father, who had died, age 39, when Yukiko was in third grade. In front of her father's grave, she put her head inside a plastic bag containing hydrogen sulfide. The highly toxic gas attacked her nervous system and killed her.
Shortly afterward, her sister Yoshiko, who had just turned 1 when their father died of complications caused by an enlarged heart, claimed the body. Death by suicide was officially declared at 5 p.m. that evening, and Yoshiko was obliged to take charge of her mother from that day on.