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It has been one year since a missing 89-year-old man with symptoms of dementia left his home in the Kanagawa Prefecture city of Isehara while still in his pajamas. His family has been desperately waiting for his return, as there have been no helpful leads beyond information of an elderly man thought to be him spotted walking in a neighboring city in the early morning of Sept. 15, 2021.

The missing man, Michio Inaba, is from Fukui Prefecture in central Japan. He worked at an electric cable manufacturer for many years, and also established a company that created components for medical devices. He apparently had various hobbies, including mountain climbing, photography, and motorcycles. Though he was not very talkative, he had spoken of his childhood memories often for the past 10 years.

He began to show symptoms of dementia some years ago, which worsened after he was hospitalized due to a heart attack in 2020. There were apparently times when he could not even tell whether he was at his own home or not.

On Sept. 15 last year, Inaba had already left his home when his wife woke up at around 6 a.m. It seems that he went out while still wearing his pajamas. According to Kanagawa Prefectural Police's Isehara Police Station, footage from one surveillance camera in the neighborhood showed an elderly man who could be Inaba walking past the area twice at 4:03 a.m. and 4:32 a.m.

At 5:42 a.m., a driver who was passing along a side road of the Odawara-Atsugi Road in the city of Hiratsuka notified police that an elderly person was walking along the left side of the road. The driver said the person was walking in the rain in pajamas with no umbrella, and was headed toward the Hiratsuka Interchange located in the southwest.

According to National Police Agency data, there was a record high number of 17,636 cases of missing people attributed to dementia reported in 2021. Though many are found on the day they go missing, the whereabouts of 236 people, including Inaba, could not be confirmed by the end of that year. Some people who continue to search for missing family members have voiced helplessness that not much can be done on an individual level in terms of investigating.

Inaba's wife has been waiting while believing that her husband will return one day. Their 60-year-old son Kotaro said, "I did not imagine that he would not be found for this long." Sympathizing with her father, the couple's 62-year-old daughter Yoko Yoshikawa said, "He must be feeling lonely now because he always followed my mother around. I hope we'll be able to find him soon."

Inaba has a height of 170 centimeters and a slender build. At the time he went missing, he had short hair with some white streaks, and was wearing blue and white long-sleeved checkered pajamas and black sneakers with white lines.

Call Kanagawa Prefectural Police's Isehara Police Station at 0463-94-0110 to provide any information.

(Japanese original by Yuji Semba, Tokyo City News Department)

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