The Vanished 1: Fact-check

Mauger first published on Japan's 'evaporated' in 2009 in the magazine XXI, so presumably she and her collaborators visited Japan earlier that year or, more likely, 2008. From the jacket: "Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace." Mauger's book lacks a bibliography, so readers are left to dig into this surprising claim themselves. (Because it is a head-scratching figure and invites digging.) Really? 100K? No trace, never found? Here are the numbers, courtesy of the National Police Agency. From the year 2008: 84, 739 missing persons reports, 78, 668 cases closed. Let's consider the first year for which both figures are available, 1966: 91, 593, and 63, 667, respectively. Finally, in 2022: 84,910 and 80, 653. The data goes back to 昭和31, or 1956, and since then the annual figure for missing persons has reached or exceeded 100K in just 11 years. Not only that, but never have "nearly one hundred thousand people" permanently vanished. Habemus Corpus. Just where did Mauger get her numbers? Chubby Guy? Methinks the filmmaker's Japanese skills did not extend to internet searches in the language. Or was it "facts are so passe"? Or perhaps the triumvirate decided they were entitled to their own.