Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Once fixed in the popular imagination – both in and outside Japan – as an enviable model of economic prowess and, famously, reverent to the aged where the young esteem and take care of their elders, Japan in the early twenty-first century now offers another image to itself and the world: a survivor of a generation’s long recession and a nation with the largest and fastest-growing aging population. Plagued also by below population replacement birth rates, Japan is coping not only with a continuing uncertain economic future as the number of younger workers decreases, but also with a “graying” future that some scholars have referred to as a “seismographic wave” that will alter not only the economic landscape but the cultural one as well. Complicating the matter are conflicting perceptions of how the aged are characterized in society today. Sometimes forgotten or seen as a burden on families and society they are vital to the sustenance of communal and ancestral bonds. Lest we forget, they were the builders of Japan’s economic miracle, yet are the ones effected most negatively by its continued decline. They occupy an uncertain space wedged between the gift and curse of longevity. This sense of uncertainty and ambivalence contributes to feelings of anxiousness expressed by the aged as they negotiate end of life decisions. Often wrought with inter-generational tensions, there is a stimulus and response in exploring new ways of thinking about how to update ritual forms that function more effectively in a changing and graying Japan.