Japan Post's Mimamori — Postal-Worker Home Visits for Elderly Living Alone

Japan has one of the highest shares of elderly people living alone in the world. Japan Post — with roughly 20,000 branches nationwide — repurposed its existing delivery workforce into a low-tech digital-inclusion channel: the Mimamori ('watching over') Home-Visit Service, launched in October 2017.

A subscribing household receives one home visit a month from a postal worker, who checks on living and health conditions and can send a written report to relatives, plus invitations to subscriber lunches. In January 2022 Japan Post extended the model with smart speakers and a purpose-built app for local governments and corporations.

By February 2019 the paid service (~1,050 yen/month) had 10,592 users. A peer-reviewed evaluation tracked 524 subscribers using the WHO-5 wellbeing index and LSNS-6 social-network scale: averaged across all subscribers, mental-health scores barely moved (16.4 to 16.3), but among the subgroup living alone with the smallest social networks, WHO-5 scores rose meaningfully, from 14.2 to 15.3, while other subgroups saw no change or a decline.

The honest reading is that a monthly human check-in visit measurably helps the most isolated users and does little for everyone else — evidence for targeting the service rather than assuming a uniform benefit.