Society Japan's Evaporated (蒸発)

A few days ago, Jake Adelstein presented his new Podcast on 蒸発 (jōhatsu, "evaporation"), the phenomenon of about 80-100 thousand Japanese disappearing from their established lives without a trace every year. There are several reasons for people purposely vanishing: work pressure, debts, depression, addiction, or escape from abusive partners, family members or even cults. According to the NPA, in 2015, 82,000 people disappeared, and 80,000 were traced by the end of the year.

Adelstein, the author of "Tokyo Vice", stated that due to limits and practices by the police--only family members or spouses can report someone missing--the actual number is estimated to be 240,000. Many reported missing are later found, but many are not--or never officially reported missing. Specialised businesses, so-called yonige-ya (夜逃屋), help people who want to hide move quickly and escape their original lives.


Here's a link to Jake's Podcast:



The Wikipedia entry on jōhatsu:



Needless to say, "evaporation" isn't a phenomenon restricted to Japan.

When someone here in Maine disappears , they usually find them dead in the woods or ocean sad to say. 240,000 seems like huge number and kind of scary.

Uncle Frank said:

When someone here in Maine disappears , they usually find them dead in the woods or ocean sad to say. 240,000 seems like huge number and kind of scary.

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Suicides account only for a small number of those gone missing (21,007 in 2021), but the rest WANTS to disappear for various reasons.

I first thought that the majority of the people disappearing may just be hikikomori. But that's unlikely as they need someone (typically a family member) to bring them food, so that wouldn't count as disappearing without leaving a trace.

If I remember well Japanese law says that if someone disappears for 5 years from the system (no official address, no way to reach them) all their debts are cancelled. That is why some homeless people choose to become homeless, at least for a while. Could this explain some of these disappearances?

Maciamo said:

If I remember well Japanese law says that if someone disappears for 5 years from the system (no official address, no way to reach them) all their debts are cancelled. That is why some homeless people choose to become homeless, at least for a while. Could this explain some of these disappearances?

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I imagine many more people would vanish into thin air if this were true. And I'm not sure the 暴力団 care about statutory limits.

I'll see if I can find any legal sources on that.

thomas said:

I imagine many more people would vanish into thin air if this were true. And I'm not sure the 暴力団 care about statutory limits.

I'll see if I can find any legal sources on that.

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What I had in mind was the statutes of limitation for commercial debts, not debts towards the Yakuza. I have checked a few websites (like this one) and the statutory limit for commercial debts is indeed 5 years in Japan. That period appears to be relatively standard compared to other countries.

Consumer debts, 10 years in general and commercial debts 5 years in general.
Please note that the statute of limitation period will be changed from April 1, 2020.

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Thanks, @Maciamo; I wasn't aware of it!

There is a very popular Franco-Japanese YouTuber (known as Louis-san)who made a very good video about Japan's evaporated a few months ago. He explains that some of the people who decide to disappear do it in order to wipe out their debts. There are special services called yonigeya (夜逃屋 "night escape business") that specialise in making people disappear. They will get a job getting paid only in cash so as to avoid leaving any trace on their bank account or having to pay by card. These businesses are usually managed by or linked to the Yakuza. There is a neighborhood of Osaka where these people who wish to disappear from the system can stay and work.

Here is the link to the video for those of you who understand French:
Japan Today also has an article about those yonigeya. They explain that the number of people wishing to disappear experience to Boom after the 2008 financial crisis.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 yonigeya companies in Japan! It is of course not only people who want to disappear from the system to avoid the weight of their debts who use them. There are also women (and their children) who wish to escape from a violent husband or people escaping from family pressures, for example.

The estimation of 100,000 evaporated people in Japan is obviously much too low when we consider the number of yonigeya companies. That would mean only one customer per company which is ludicrous. The reason why the number of evaporated people is grossly underestimated is that most people do not report missing relatives to the police. Apparently this is because the police cannot do anything about it due to the very strict privacy laws in Japan. The police cannot even ask the yonigeya companies where they moved the "missing" people. That would be against the privacy laws.

Among the 100,000 reported missing people in Japan one quarter of them are minors. There is a huge number of high school girls who run away from home, especially since the Covid pandemic. They are known in Japanese as iedeshōjō (家出少女). As minors they cannot use the services of the yonigeya though. Many end up selling "services" to older men, such as renumerated dating, hostessing, or worse jobs managed by yakuzas.

If debts are wiped out after five years I wonder if any of them surface after the time is up.

More on Jake's podcast. Conclusion: MyNumber will likely put an end to the "art of disappearing".

"In Japan...there is a certain normalcy around disappearances, and that could contribute to one of the reasons why the police response on missing persons cases can be a little bit bleak," Plambeck said. Still, with the government pushing for almost all residents to obtain "My Number" national identification cards by March 2023, this oddity of Japanese society may soon become a thing of the past.

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For those of you who understand Spanish, Nekojitablog (made by a Spanish guy and his Japanese wife) released a video last month about the phenomenon of the evaporated in Japan.


It's always good to have additional sources. They found official statistics for the five year period from 2015 to 2019 about reported disappearances. 40% of the cases remain unexplained. The other 60% of cases can be divided in 6 categories (the percentages are those of 2019).

1) Health conditions (27% of the cases) : mostly elderly people with Alzheimer's who go out and can't remember where they live. These aren't voluntary disappearances though, and most of them are found within a few hours or days or being reported missing.

2) Familial reasons (16.5%):

• Children who argue with their parents and decide to run away from home.
• Women beaten/abused by their husbands and suddenly leave far away without leaving traces.
• Couples in love who want to get married or live together but don't have the approval of their families.
• Or simply adults who can't stand their family any more and leave them.

3) Work (11.8%) :

• Men who lost their job and are too ashamed to tell their families and choose to move elsewhere or live in the street instead of facing the shame.
• People who have debts they can't pay back and decide to run away from their creditors (not necessarily companies, but also friends who lent them money).

4) School (2.4%) : Students who fail their exams in secondary school or at university and who are too ashamed to face their family.

5) Marriage issues (1.7%) : Married men or women who have an affair and want to live with their lover but can't obtain a divorce from their current spouse. I would have classified it under familial reasons, but Japanese authorities thought otherwise.

6) Crime (0.6%) :

• Convicted criminals who decide to start a new life away from their family after leaving prison.
• Victims of murders who are never found as the body was made to disappear (usually by the Yakuza).
• People who have decided to commit suicide in a remote spot or in a place where the body won't be found for a long time if at all, e.g. jumping in a river or in the sea.

Yuko, the Japanese girl in the video, also tells several examples of people she knows (of) who disappeared for various reason. One of them was a great uncle of hers who disappeared for 30 years until the police called the family one day to say that they found him dead in the street, where he was living as a homeless person.

One of the most common reasons in Japan to disappear is to be afraid of facing shame or disapproval from one's family. Shame is a very powerful thing in collectivist countries like Japan and can even lead to suicides, although nowadays running away from social pressure appears to become an increasingly common way of dealing with it.

Yesterday, the NPA released the 2022 statistics of people who went missing in Japan, stressing that the number of demented people has increased significantly.

The figure was up 6.1 percent from the previous year and almost double the 9,607 reports filed in 2012, when the data were first compiled, according to the National Police Agency. With the country's population rapidly graying, the police are working on measures to locate missing individuals more quickly, including by enlisting municipalities, local organizations and companies to spread information about cases. By prefecture, Hyogo in western Japan had the most cases at 2,115, followed by 1,996 in Osaka and 1,902 in Saitama, near Tokyo. Of the total, 17,923 people were found alive, of whom 77.5 percent were located on the same day as a report was filed, while 99.6 percent were tracked down within a week. A total of 491 individuals were found to have died, including in accidents.

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The number of people who went missing amounts to 84,910 in 2022, a rise of 5,692 from the previous year and up for a second straight year.

Individuals in their 20s made up the largest group at 16,848, followed by those aged between 10 and 19 at 14,959. The number of individuals aged 80 years and older stood at 13,749 and those in their 70s at 10,779, with the four age groups accounting for over 60 percent of the total.

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I'm almost definitely not included in these statistics, but I should be.

This is my life.

I've been doing a lot of cycling around Japan for the last 3 years ( I'll start again in July) and I get to met people that just live off the grid. Their life style ( kind of like mind, but I do have a roof over my head) is that they have a free will to survive without much govt. help. These are young and down and out people that just said " screw it".
The thing is, here in Japan one must have and address to get their yearly National Health Card. That comes in July. That includes me too. Once I get that, then I'll start part 2 of my cross country tour/camp of Japan and be a long haired hippie of the 60's.