That's a much less efficient way to get mail delivered, because each stop takes 5-10 minutes, and thus it became discouraged.
Efficiency. Short term optimization for the wrong output.
This article starts with an obviously disturbing topic - dying alone as an elderly person. Yet the Japanese are super nosy people with very little privacy in my experience there. Somehow, there are customs that are deeper around privacy that are not obvious.. and perhaps a growing society that is not changing well.
Expectation of privacy, territory and associated manners and legal actions.. are being examined here. The wildly-downvoted comment stands.
All of this was of course, a long time ago, and a further consideration was that the family whose phone was used were on a party line with the neighbor in question and specifically mentioned that a phone call for that neighbor went unanswered the previous evening which added some urgency to the matter.
If anything, Japan has a culture of privacy and respect of individuals which make this originally noted societal problem more likely.
> their outhouse collapse, trapping them in it.
You lost me. Were there multiple people trapped in the seat?
Except that it was not
Singular they has existed for hundreds of years, it has nothing to do with ideology.
Every Japanese home has a little square area near the front door called a "genkan", where guests are supposed to remove their shoes when entering. Postal workers also occupy this area when delivering mail.