From BBC.co.uk (bold emphasis mine)
The discovery of three bodies that lay unnoticed for up to two months in an apartment in Japan has raised concern over so-called "lonely deaths".
The three people, believed to be from the same family, were discovered on Tuesday in Saitama, north of Tokyo.
Electricity and gas to the house had been cut off, there was no food in the house and just a few one-yen coins.
Despite being the world's third richest country, Japan has seen a number of similar cases in recent years.
Such deaths are referred to as "kodokushi" - lonely deaths.
The BBC's Roland Buerk, in Tokyo, said when the police broke into the apartment in Saitama, they found the three bodies extremely thin.
It is believed they were a couple in their sixties and their son in his thirties who died of starvation. The alarm had been raised by the building's management company.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that the family had asked a neighbour for help, but had been refused and instead advised to contact the welfare authorities.
The family did not do so, a move some local media outlets have put down to feelings of shame.
Asahi Shimbun quoted lawyer Takehiro Yoshida as saying: "Some people have a resistance to going on welfare and are reluctant to consult with authorities. Others are isolated in their communities."
Our correspondent says the case has prompted soul-searching in one of the most affluent societies on earth about whether the needy are falling through gaps in the welfare system.
The left points to this as an example of the lack of compassion of the system, which they use as an excuse to advocate for bigger welfare states.
Yet it is not true that Japan lacks safety net, in reality, the number of people enrolled in Japan’s welfare system has reached nearly reached the record set during post World War II.
According to the Japan Times
There were 2.02 million people receiving welfare as of March, close to the record 2.04 million in the aftermath of World War II, while the number of households on welfare in March hit an all-time high of 1.46 million, the government said
The total number of people was almost equivalent to the record monthly average of about 2.04 million logged in fiscal 1952, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Tuesday.
Moreover, not only has the welfare state increased dependency of many Japanese, which reduces their productivity (as well as of the nation), another adverse consequence has been to diminish community values.
As the above report shows, calls for assistance by the affected to seemingly desensitized neighbors “had been refused and instead advised to contact the welfare authorities.”
Already burdened by heavy taxes paid to the government, neighbors must have probably thought that such responsibility should be the cargo of the welfare state, thus the reluctance to extend aid.
To quote Professor Shawn Ritenour in a Biography of Economist Wilhelm Röpke
Compulsory aid "paralyzes people's willingness to take care of their own needs" and its financial burden makes people depend more on the state and expect more from it. "To let someone else foot the bill" is the "very essence" of the welfare state; moreover, the people who pay are "forced to do so by order of the state"--the opposite of charity. "In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state's power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear that the welfare state is an evil the same as every restriction of freedom."
Hence, the politics of coercive welfare redistribution reduces the zeitgeist of voluntary charity.
Finally, the few Japanese who endured the 'lonely deaths', who by their “resistance to going on welfare and are reluctant to consult with authorities”, willingly refused to become a liability to taxpayers, or wards of the state, which they perhaps deemed as stigma. They must have died out of principle, and thus should be honored as true patriots.
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