The pyjama-clad skeleton of a Japanese man has been found in a vacant apartment building -- 20 years after his lonely death.
The skeleton was discovered lying atop a musty "futon" bedding earlier this month when workers getting ready to raze the derelict building entered the second floor unit where the man had lived, domestic media reports said on Thursday.
A newspaper dated February 20, 1984, was on the kitchen table.
Police believe the man, an employee of the construction firm that built the apartments in 1973, moved in after the building was vacated when the firm managing it went bankrupt, the reports said.
The man, then 57 and divorced with children, suddenly stopped coming in to work two decades ago but none of his relatives ever asked police to search for him.
"I had no idea that the apartment even existed," the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper quoted a 65-year-old neighbor as saying.
"After I heard the news, I thought 'Oh, it's here.' It's as if time had stopped in this one place."
