Currently in Japan, one in eight deaths is treated as an unnatural death by the police. Many of these are elderly people living alone, cases where the circumstances of death are unclear due to elderly-to-elderly care, or cases where end-of-life care was inadequate in elderly care facilities. In addition, among working-age people, sudden deaths due to lifestyle-related diseases are common, requiring a determination as to whether or not it was a work-related accident due to overwork. Other cases included in unnatural deaths are sudden deaths of infants and deaths of unidentified persons.

Our department conducts autopsies and examinations of unnatural death cases, primarily in the western Kanagawa Prefecture region, based on requests from the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, Shizuoka Prefectural Police, and the 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters. We strive to improve the accuracy of post-mortem diagnoses by performing post-mortem CT scans, histopathological examinations, and DNA analysis to clarify the cause of death and the circumstances of injury, and to identify individuals whose identities are unknown.