Dec 31, 2020
Many of Japan’s weekly magazines typically publish double issues from the last week in December in order to give staff some time off. Such issues can easily be identified by logos, banners or trim on their covers that appear in gold, although three magazines Aera, Sunday Mainichi and Friday have abstained from the practice this year.
From looking at the magazines’ contents, you’d never have guessed what a crazy year 2020 has been. However, with many station kiosks closed due to the pandemic, I suspect that their newsstand sales and ad revenues almost certainly declined, and it’s to their credit that they’re putting up a brave front for readers. Things certainly can’t be easy.
Debts preceded double suicide by elderly woman and her daughter
By Kenji Nakano on December 17, 2020
Weekly tabloid
Shukan Shincho (Dec. 17) looks into the lives of the women and unearths a tale of debt and poverty.
The woman, 87, and her daughter 52, lived together in a first-floor apartment in a building in Zama City, Kanagawa Prefecture located about a 15-minute walk from Odakyu Sagamihara Station.
“They moved in about 6 years ago,” the tenant of another unit says. “Neither of them seemed to work.”
The tenant goes on to say that the daughter could be seen regularly drinking beer outside in the mornings. “There’s a pachinko parlor near the station that she’d regularly visit,” the source continues.