More than 40 percent of elderly Japanese men living alone say they don't have any close friends, and one in four says he has no contact with neighbors, according to a government survey that paints a grim picture of the nation's aging society.
According to the Cabinet Office survey released earlier this week, 41.3 percent of men aged 65 or older who live on their own said they had no close friends. The percentage for women was 22.4 percent.
The study was based on interviews with 792 men and women aged 65 or older and living alone.
The group included both married and unmarried people.
Of the men, 24.3 percent said they had no contact at all with neighbors, up from 15.4 percent in a similar survey in 2002.
Only 7.1 percent of the women surveyed said they had not had contact with neighbors, up from 6.9 percent in 2002.
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