Rain falls as a light drizzle as we pull into a narrow side street in Tokyo’s Gotanda neighborhood. I’m with Hirofumi Sakurai and Hiroki Shimana, who have been hired to help one of the capital’s unseen cleanup crews — tasked not with tidying up after the living but clearing away the belongings of those who died alone.
Waiting for us at the front of a ground floor apartment is Hisayoshi Joto of the Japan Association of Memento Organization (JAMO), one of thousands of private entities that provides professional cleaning services for extreme situations like these.
We suit up — masks, gloves, plastic suits. Once inside, I’m greeted by the thick, suffocating smell of decay. It doesn’t announce itself all at once but moves with eerie patience, curling around the doorway before deepening as we step inside. Somewhere in this cramped, cluttered room, a man spent his last moments unnoticed by the world. Today, that world erases him.
