Three adult siblings have been arrested after it was discovered that they had kept their mother’s body in their house for three years after her death.
The Japanese sisters and brother insist that they have done nothing wrong – and say the reason they wanted to stay with their parent was that she had become a god.
The 65-year-old man and two women aged 59 and 52 are accused of conspiring to abandon a body.
Skeleton: Three siblings lived with their mother’s dead body for three years, according to police (file photo)
Police arrested them after finding the skeleton of an elderly woman at their home in Usa in the country’s south-west, according to Jiji Press.
Officers visited the home in order to investigate the possibility that the elderly woman was being abused, but the siblings tried to refuse them entry.
One of the sisters told police: ‘There’s no need to let you see her. Get off our property,’ according to Asahi News.
When they managed to enter the house, they found Mrs Ishigai’s body lying face up on a futon – which the siblings said was ‘for religious reasons’.
They deny the charge of corpse abandonment, because they say their mother is in fact still alive.
‘Our mother has become a god,’ they told officers. ‘She is not dead but is in the process of ascending to higher dimensions.’
The siblings added: ‘We are servants of god - the way we see it, our mother is not dead.’
Location: The grisly incident took place in the south-western Japanese town of Usa
Neighbours told a local news website that the suspects used to be respected members of the community, but had recently developed unusual religious beliefs and had withdrawn from everyday life.
When relatives came to visit, the elder sister apparently chased them away by threatening with a garden hoe.
It has also been suggested that the family may have been fraudulently claiming the elderly woman’s pension – an increasing problem in the economically troubled country.
A police spokesman said officers were running tests to determine the identity of the corpse and discover how the woman died.
They said they believed that the woman would be 88 years old if she was still alive.
‘We discovered today from an autopsy that the skeletonised body is that of a female who died two or three years ago, but we have to wait for the results if a DNA test to confirm her identity,’ the spokesman said.
Traditional Japanese religion sometimes involves elements of ancestor worship, though this normally manifests itself in the erection of a shrine or leaving offerings on a grave.
