Hospital copes with 2 celebrity deaths, media swarm

Keio University Hospital, one of Tokyo's premier university hospitals, was packed with reporters, television crews and concerned ordinary people on Monday, with helicopters hovering in the sky, due to the deaths of two well-known people.

Izumi Sakai, the singer of Japanese pop group ZARD, died at the hospital on Sunday after falling from stairs there, her office said Monday morning. She had been hospitalized for treatment of cancer. Shortly after, scandal-hit farm minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka was found to have hanged himself at his residence on Monday and was taken to the hospital shortly after 1 p.m. where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

Scores of reporters, photographers and TV crew members jammed every hospital gate and entrance they could find, trying to catch a glimpse of the two unfolding sagas. And some TV networks managed to capture the scene where Matsuoka was taken into the hospital on a stretcher — a scene repeatedly shown on their breaking-news programs.