Staff members remove a coffin from a room of the ‘Corpse Hotel’ in Kawasaki, Japan (Picture: Reuters)

A so-called corspe hotel is tucked away in a quiet residential street in Kawasaki city in Japan.

Bride finds out her husband is already married (and has been for 13 years)The building is a refurbished workshop with a plain silver exterior and black draped windows that residents describe as creepy – understandable as soon as you learn what’s inside.

The business inside, Sousou, is one of Japan’s latest ‘corpse hotels’, a camouflaged morgue used to store some of Japan’s mounting pile of bodies.

The corpses lay waiting for a spot in one of the nation’s overworked crematoriums.


Customers Hirokazu Hosaka (R) and his wife Minako look at the coffin of his mother (Picture: Reuters)

‘Crematories need to be built, but there isn’t any space to do so and that is creating funeral refugees,’ said Hisao Takegishi, who opened the business in 2014.



At a daily rate of 9,000 yen (£57) family members can keep their dead relative in one of Sousou’s 10 rooms for up to four days.

Unlike other such morgues-in-disguise, which try to blend in by looking like hotels, Sousou doesn’t refrigerate corpses.

The business relies on air conditioned rooms instead.

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A staff member removes a coffin from a room (Picture: Reuters)

A child cycles past the corpse hotel (Picture: Reuters)

Japan’s ageing population are dying off at a faster pace. About 20,000 more people per year are expiring with the death rate expected to peak at about 1.7 million a year by around 2040, according government estimates.

By then, barring any major influx of immigrants, Japan’s population will drop by 20 million people.

Residents of Kawasaki are unhappy about living next to Sousou’s hidden corpse refugees, with placards and flags dotting the neighbourhood expressing outrage at the presence of the morgue.

People can book a four-day stay for their dead relatives (Picture: Reuters)

Yoko Masuzawa, 50, who, lives behind Sousou, demanded it put air ventilation grills above ground level, a request that she says it ignored.

‘It was built so close, less than a meter away in some places,’ she said.

Sousou’s customers, however, are grateful for a place to keep their deceased relatives.

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Customer Hirokazu prays to his mother as he stands at her coffin (Picture: Reuters)

‘I think it’s great that families and acquaintances can come and visit before she heads off to the crematorium,’ said 69 year-old Hirokazu Hosaka, as her mother’s body lay in a decorated coffin in Sousou.

Takegishi, who used to help organise weddings, is looking to tap growing demand, with plans to bring corpse hotels to other cities.