‘Felt lonely’: 51-year-old Japanese woman arrested for making over 2,700 false emergency calls

A 51-year-old Japanese woman has been arrested for allegedly making 2,761 false emergency calls over a period of about two years and nine months, according to a report by the Independent.

The woman called Hiroko Hatagami, is an unemployed resident of the city of Matsudo in Japan’s Chiba prefecture. She was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of obstructing the operations of a local fire department, The Mainichi reported.

It transpires that she repeatedly made calls from her home and neighbourhood about different “emergency reasons”. Between August 2020 and May 2023, she repeatedly made calls asking the Matsudo fire department to dispatch ambulances, complaining of stomach ache, drug overdose, and aching legs among other symptoms.

But, when the ambulances arrived, she turned them away with responses like, “I don’t want to take an ambulance” and “I didn’t make the call.” Both the fire department and police station warned her several times to stop making such calls, but she continued doing so. On June 20, the emergency services department filed a damage report with the police, which later led to her arrest.

After her arrest, Hatagami told investigators she did it because she was lonely and wanted attention. “I was lonely and wanted someone to listen to me and give me attention,’” she said.

In another similar case in 2013, Japanese police arrested a woman for calling them more than 15,000 times over a six-month period, according to The Straits Times. A police official said her calls had no meaning, and she was just too lonely.

A recent survey revealed that 1.5 million working-age people in Japan are living as recluses. A fifth of them cited Covid-19 as the main reason for their withdrawal from the government survey, known as hikikomori.

The phenomenon of social withdrawal has become increasingly prevalent in Japan in recent years. It is associated with feelings of anxiety, depression, and social phobia.

In February 2021, Japan appointed Tetsushi Sakamoto as the minister of loneliness in an effort to deal with the effects of the pandemic on social seclusion.