It is highly likely that the parents were "guarantors" (保証人) for their children, which is standard practice here. This is similar to the US concept of co-signing. Also, socially speaking, "my adult child caused trouble for you implies I have a responsibility to you" is something that more than 90% of Japanese people would strongly agree to.
I know that in feudal Japan personhood effectively didn't exist in the form that it does today. You were part of a clan, if you killed someone and died in the process the clan of that someone could extract revenge on your clan. They were the actor, not you.
I understand that much of this survives today in the form of shaming, you don't just bring shame to yourself, but to your family (clan).
But is there actually any legal system in Japan that treats a family or clan as a collective? Can the liabilities of adults that kill themselves be transferred to their family?
If family members aren't guarantors, then there's technically no legal ground for landlords to sue the family members. But just being sued is a big stigma in Japan. If the family member has certain social position there's a strong incentive to avoid being sued, or to settle it asap if they are actually sued.
And it's shameful to be sued but not shameful to file obviously frivolous lawsuits, or at the very least being the subject of a frivolous lawsuit would imply no shaming?
Note that I'm not sure what the actual contract terms were in those cases in the article. I suspect it's a guarantor thing. It's very very common to have parents or relatives signed, even if you're an adult.
And I also assume that who actually filed a lawsuit was the property managing company, and some of those companies doesn't care much about reputation. When the issue is between individuals, it's not as common to take it to the court as in US.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1khj2n/til_i...
So I can definitely see how this makes perfect sense when it comes to doing "damage" to apartments (even if only due to reputation / superstition) if there are direct guarantors, but as the news about JR show there must be something deeper going on here.
It is standard practice in Japan, and works pretty well. There is the implicit belief that you have to respect others first."You" is not you as individual, but includes "your social group", your family, your boss, your company.
In the US they can sue you for all kinds of stupid reasons and ask you millions(if you have them).
In the US it is about the individual first, you and only you.
It is the US the one who is different. Most of the world operates under a mixture of social responsibility for your actions and personal responsibility.
And, of course, as the article identifies, you have families who do not fight it, in which case no legal justification is necessary.
So they can sue the estate, but they can't sue the family. They have no claim on assets that are not part of the estate.
Can families that fight back recoup legal costs potentially getting a judgement against some or all of the landlord's property?
The post raises more questions than answers. Seems like a "proper" legal system should deal with this soon enough without any extra legislation. Granted it's Japan.