The sentence is ‘ちょっと前に似たような体験をしたものだから、僕もこと“死”に関しては冷たいんだ。’
I keep seeing こと used in this way and though I get it it feels unnatural somewhat for it to be used before the noun ‘死’.
Can someone explain this for me?
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This is a fixed phrase.
こと[noun]に関しては or こと[noun]となると, other similar phrases as well. It is a way of saying that, regardless of other things, particularly when it comes to [noun] some feeling or judgement.
More interesting is the question of what こと actually is here, with the options being 事 or 殊. It seems this usage is mentioned under the 事 entry in some dictionaries however intuitively 殊 makes more sense, especially as an abbreviation of 殊に. I am messaging back and forth currently with a friend who is a kokugo teacher to see if we can get to the bottom of it (currently looking into judging by intonation differences…) but hopefully that answers your question enough for the moment.
Might be worth putting this on the Bunpro missing grammar list if it isn’t already on Bunpro somewhere (I’ll check that as well).
Various discussions of this phrase in English and Japanese for reference:
One
Two
Three
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こと is a really good example of this phenomenon in Japanese, but I often wonder how common it is that things written in hiragana these days came from a completely different kanji than what some modern dictionaries would have you believe, simply because it’s easier to associate a word with the most common kanji, even if the meaning doesn’t fit.
I don’t think there’s heaps of these, but I’d wager there’s a lot more than one would expect. Japanese record keeping within its own language is… not the greatest. 
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Thanks guys!
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