How the world’s most elderly country is fighting heat in a deadly double crisis

Tokyo —

Whenever he’s home, 84-year-old Toshiaki Morioka carries an alarm device that measures temperature and humidity, which can summon emergency responders at the press of a button. He takes it to bed, to the kitchen, even to the bath.

That’s because he knows he could easily fall victim to heatstroke – which kills hundreds of elderly Japanese each year, and which has impacted tens of thousands this summer amid record-breaking temperatures.

The alarm device is part of a government push to combat a deadly double emergency: the collision of Japan’s climate crisis and its aging population.

While elderly people everywhere are especially vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat, Japan’s problem is exacerbated by isolation and other cultural factors.

Like millions of other Japanese eld