Population Decline and Ageing in Japan - The Social Consequences (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series)

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Population Decline and Ageing in Japan – the Social Consequences

Population decline and ageing is one of the most pressing challenges facing Japan today. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its consequences. It argues that social ageing is a phenomenon that follows in the wake of industrialisation, urbanisation and social modernisation, bringing about changes in values, institutions, social structures, economic activity, technology and culture, and posing many challenges for the countries affected. Coulmas shows how Japan, as a country which is experiencing a higher rate of population ageing than any other, has recognised the emerging problems accompanying this trend. He goes on to contend that all Japanese society is affected by social ageing, not just certain substructures and institutions, and explains its complex causes, describes the resulting challenges and analyses the solutions under consideration to deal with it. This book outlines the nature of Japan’s population dynamics since 1920 and argues that Japan is rapidly moving in the direction of a ‘hyper-aged society’ in which those 65 or older account for 25 per cent of the total population. It then considers the implications for family structures and other social networks, gender roles and employment patterns, health care and welfare provision, pension systems, immigration policy, consumer and voting behaviour and the cultural reactions and ramifications of social ageing. Florian Coulmas is Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, Japan. He is also the Chair of Japanese Studies at the University of DuisburgEssen. He has published widely on Japanese society and culture, and his publications, in English, German and Japanese, include several monographs, two textbooks, dictionaries and an encyclopaedia.

Routledge Contemporary Japan Series

1 A Japanese Company in Crisis Ideology, strategy, and narrative Fiona Graham 2 Japan’s Foreign Aid Old continuities and new directions Edited by David Arase 3 Japanese Apologies for World War II A rhetorical study Jane W. Yamazaki 4 Linguistic Stereotyping and Minority Groups in Japan Nanette Gottlieb 5 Shinkansen From bullet train to symbol of modern Japan Christopher P. Hood 6 Small Firms and Innovation Policy in Japan Edited by Cornelia Storz 7 Cities, Autonomy and Decentralization in Japan Edited by Carola Hein and Philippe Pelletier 8 The Changing Japanese Family Edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka 9 Adoption in Japan Comparing policies for children in need Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu

10 The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature Polygraphic desire Nina Cornyetz 11 Institutional and Technological Change in Japan’s Economy Past and present Edited by Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz 12 Political Reform in Japan Leadership looming large Alisa Gaunder 13 Civil Society and the Internet in Japan Isa Ducke 14 Japan’s Contested War Memories The ‘memory rifts’ in historical consciousness of World War II Philip A. Seaton 15 Japanese Love Hotels A cultural history Sarah Chaplin 16 Population Decline and Ageing in Japan – the Social Consequences Florian Coulmas

Population Decline and Ageing in Japan – the Social Consequences

Florian Coulmas

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Florian Coulmas

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Coulmas, Florian. Population decline and ageing in Japan : the social consequences/Florian Coulmas. p. cm.–(Routledge Contemporary Japan Series; 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Japan–Population. 2. Population–Social aspects. 3. Aging–Japan. I. Title. HB3651.C63 2007 304.6'20952—dc22

ISBN 0–203–96202–8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-40125-9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-96202-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-40125-8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-96202-2 (ebk)

2006035198

Contents

List of illustrations A note on names and transcription 1 Facts and discourses

vi viii 1

2 The problem of generations and the structure of society

17

3 Social networks

26

4 The lonely child

37

5 Women and men at work

50

6 The socialization of care

62

7 ‘Mature’ customers

73

8 Longevity risk and pension funds

85

9 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly

94

10 Limits to ageing?

105

11 Immigrants welcome?

115

12 Population ageing and social change

125

Notes References Index

139 148 161

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1

‘Because there are so few children I want to have many’ Japan’s birth rate, 1950–2004 Population decline Bansanka (trend to late delivery) Four population groups through time: young, working age, elder, and elder elder First and second baby boom The Japanese ageing index, 1960 to 2002 Changes in the life cycle over 70 years Changing proportion of household types 1970–2000 Lifestyle changes in old age, 1973–2003 RÜjin kurabu Age of first marriage, 1950–2004 Correlation of income and marriage rate for men Gross national income per capita and total fertility rate, 1970–2005 Household composition: Japan, Tokyo Asahi Shimbun poll about important fertility boosting measures, 10 September 2005 Labour force participation rate by sex and age Changing ideals of marital relations, 1973–2003 Japan’s single population Number of senior citizens and ageing rate Estimated number of bedridden and other elderly patients Social support for elderly care The growing proportion of the population over 50 Travel club for those 50 years and older, Fifty Plus Car accidents caused by drivers 65 and over ‘When Paro shows up, their expression lights up’ ‘I take pride in being a good walker and Super Collagen’ The structure of the Japanese public pension system

7 8 9 10 13 18 21 22 27 29 33 39 40 42 47 48 51 52 57 63 68 71 74 78 81 82 84 86

Illustrations vii 8.2 Declining trust in the National Pension System: non-subscribers and defaulters, 1995–2001 9.1 Japan’s most ardent voters 10.1 A sharp rise in the number of centenarians since the early 1960s 10.2 Infant mortality decline, 1950–2002 10.3 Infant mortality and number of centenarians 10.4 ‘The age of a lifespan of 100 years is coming. Iwao Yamakawa, 100, and Mirai Watanabe, 0’ 10.5 Membership of the Japanese Society for Dying with Dignity, 1976–2006 11.1 Registered foreign nationals, 1950–2003 11.2 Registered foreign nationals and visa overstayers 12.1 The transformation of Japan’s population pyramid, 1950–2030 12.2 Japan’s Gini coefficient, 1980–2005

90 95 106 107 108 109 113 117 123 126 134

Tables 1.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 7.1 9.1

Japan‘s changing demographic structure Life expectancy of women and men Participation in groups and organizations Members of a male cooking class and their age Members per household, 1970–2000 Ratio of life-long unmarried men and women Total fertility rate of Japanese prefectures, 2004 Total labour force and its ratio to population (2003) Disparity of hourly pay for women and men Envisioned consumption by retiring baby boomers Demographic change: the increase of the older segment of the population 9.2 The age cohorts with the highest and lowest election participation rate 9.3 The growing proportion of the older segment of the electorate (65 and over) 12.1 Ratio and labour force participation rate of persons aged 65 years and older

14 28 32 34 40 43 46 51 53 77 96 98 98 129

A note on names and transcription

Japanese words have been transcribed following the Hepburn system. This does not however hold for all names. In the transcription of names, three simple principles were taken into account: firstly, proper names are exceptional; secondly, people know how to spell their own name; and thirdly, the text of this book is in English. The first two principles imply that transcription conventions, however rational and lucid, cannot be applied consistently to proper names. Vowel length in Japanese words is marked with a macron, as in jinkÜ (population). However, if Japanese authors who publish in Western languages follow different conventions for their own name, their choice must be respected. Thus, such individuals are cited as Atoh rather than AtÜ, Kono rather than KÜno, and so on, whatever the case may be. The same holds true for names of businesses, such as publishers. For example, it is Koubundou rather than KÜbundÜ and Hara Shobo rather than Hara ShobÜ, because this is how these companies refer to themselves. The result is unpalatable for purists, but nothing to worry about for those of us who acknowledge the messiness of social life. The third principle has implications for place names. English language maps and other reference works refer to Tokyo, Osaka, Hokkaido rather than TÜkyÜ, ›saka, HokkaidÜ, and so on, and the same practice is followed here.

1

Facts and discourses

Ageing shock for Japan!? Asset meltdown and regular deficit by 2020 (Yomiuri Shimbun, 24 September 2004). Ageing Asia. It’s not just Japan (Asahi Shimbun, 18 January 2005). Start of population decline just ahead (Asahi Shimbun, 23 February 2005). The birth rate decline lie (Newsweek Japan, 16 February 2005). Natural population decline in 24 prefectures. Population 90 years and over exceeds one million (Asahi Shimbun, 15 March 2005). At 1.29, birth rate again at record low, as in 2004 (Asahi Shimbun, 1 June 2005). Birth rate yet again falls to record (Kyodo News, 2 June 2005). What the future holds: The era of depopulation, part 5. Changing lifestyles, continuing falling birth rates (Mainichi Shimbun, 22 August 2005). Editorial: Thinking about decreasing birth rates (Mainichi Shimbun, 18 April 2005). Why donations swell. Having fewer heirs, people don’t want to leave everything to their children (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 14 August 2005). Awareness of fertility decline, a generation gap (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 18 July 2005). Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport predicts: 90 per cent of population in urban areas; regional gaps widen (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 14 August 2005). Medical expenses 70 Trillion Yen. The 2025 nightmare (Nikkei Shimbun, 5 September 2005). Japan’s economy is turning around. The great misunderstanding that the economy will shrink because of social ageing (Shñkan Daiyamondo, 10 September 2005). 1 in 5 65 or older. Highest level among developed countries (Asahi Shimbun, 19 September 2005). All-time low birth rate 1.25 as fertility decline unabated (Asahi Shimbun, 1 June 2006). Japan’s population now world’s grayest. Seniors top 20 per cent for first time: report (The Japan Times, 1 July 2006).

2 Facts and discourses At the present time, halfway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is hard to find a topic that attracts more attention in Japan than current demographic changes; increasing longevity on the one hand, and declining birth rates on the other. Hardly a day goes by without media coverage concerning these topics. The above list is a random selection of headlines from major newspapers and periodicals, all of them on the front page. Content in magazines, books, TV shows, radio programmes, Internet forums, discussion groups at city halls and ‘letters to the editor’ columns are also just as intensely devoted to this general theme. It has forced the government to draft new legislation in various fields and occupies a permanent position on the agenda of local, regional and national politicians.1 As demographic change has not visited Japan out of the blue and as it will continue for the foreseeable future, the media frenzy may seem surprising because it isn’t really news. But then the consequences of population ageing are so ubiquitous that virtually no social domain, no institution and no individual remains unaffected. And hence society reacts. Should the low statistical birth rate of 1.25 children born to a woman in her lifetime calculated in 2006 continue unchanged, the last Japanese will be born 953 years from now. Though few expect to live to verify it, many in Japan find such a prediction disquieting. Seventy-six per cent of the respondents to a Mainichi Shimbun poll ‘feel uneasy’ about the fact that social ageing continues and the population is beginning to decrease,2 and a Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll found that 77 per cent consider population decline a ‘dark prospect’.3 Thus, the general awareness of population ageing and its many consequences is very high. The Japanese take an active interest in these issues because everyone is involved, in one way or another, or knows someone who is: someone who has seen an elementary school turned into a community centre for the elderly; someone who is overstretched trying to do justice to a care-dependent parent and a job; someone who is troubled by mounting medical costs and a stagnant retirement allowance; a couple who hesitate to have another child because they find tuition fees prohibitively expensive, even for one child. Politicians who call for pension reform and fail to pay their premiums do not escape media attention any more than elderly people who have no one to care for them and who, therefore, commit suicide. It isn’t all calamity and discontent though. Japan’s demographic development has its bright side, too. Boasting the highest median age in the world is a huge accomplishment and proof of a successful society. The Japanese are not only old, but also healthy. Many elderly people now reap the fruits of a busy life, enjoying relatively carefree years of retirement in good health and without economic worries. Although in many individual cases there is hardship, the present generation of pensioners is overall well off. Many can afford a lifestyle that their parents never dreamt of, and they bequeath on their children unprecedented wealth. Japan is a very affluent society that allows its members to grow old in peace. They don’t die during the hazardous first years of their life, they don’t die of disease, they don’t die of war and violence, and they don’t die of smoking, alcohol or too much fatty food. These are reasons to be proud and happy. Measured in terms of per capita national or domestic product, infant mortality, life expectancy, level of education, health care and employment, Japan compares

Facts and discourses 3 favourably with most countries. In terms of life expectancy at birth, defined as the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality remains constant, Japan is ahead of almost all countries globally. In the widely-quoted index of www.nationmaster.com it is ranked sixth with 81.15 years, but ranks 1 to 5 are occupied by realistically incomparable mini-states (Andorra, Macao, San Marion, Singapore and Hong Kong). Other big industrial nations, such as Germany (34), UK (38) and US (46) are found much lower down on the list. Japan is also one of the world’s richest countries in terms of purchasing power parity. In the above-quoted nationmaster index it comes in twentieth, but if tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, Bermuda, San Marino and the Cayman Islands, as well as a number of small countries – in terms of population – such as Austria, Luxembourg, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are discounted, it ranks among the top eight or five wealthiest countries in the world, depending on the index you consult. Japan has also been the world’s largest creditor nation for years. Not that this makes ‘Mr and Mrs Tanaka’ any richer, but it is an indication of the overall clout of the Japanese economy. Yet, affluent and saturated though it is, happiness is not what comes to mind when characterizing Japanese society today. The fact that 95 per cent of the respondents of a 2003 attitude survey carried out by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK’s Broadcasting Culture Research Institute ‘feel glad that they were born Japanese’4 can hardly be taken as an expression of life satisfaction or happiness, but rather suggests a strong sense of ethnic and national identity; that most people in Japan cannot imagine to live elsewhere and are content with their life compared with alternatives they do not know. According to the NHK survey, overall life satisfaction has been virtually stable over the two decades from 1983 to 2003, the bulk of 61 per cent of respondents reporting that they are ‘somewhat satisfied’ (yaya manzoku) with their life. It should be noted that this middle-of-theroad response is as indicative of Japanese attitudes toward happiness as a social value as it is of the happiness experienced by the Japanese. In international comparison, Japan is trailing most highly-developed nations, but also trails developing nations such as Venezuela, Indonesia and the Philippines.5 Cross-national and cross-cultural life satisfaction assessments are problematic because ‘the pursuit of happiness’ is not as universal a value as it would seem from a Western perspective. Yet Japan’s life satisfaction rating is lower than indices such as wealth, longevity, health and safety would predict. More telling than international comparisons is, perhaps, the fact that between 1998 and 2003, the ratio of Japanese who were not satisfied or felt unable to answer grew by three per cent.6 Given that there is a strong inclination to report a rather non-committal moderate degree of satisfaction (yaya manzoku), a three per cent decrease can easily be taken as an indication, if not of crisis, then of change. Many Japanese realize that it is becoming more difficult to maintain the high standard of living accomplished by the present generation of pensioners. Material affluence notwithstanding, they are worried by all sorts of concerns, real and imagined. The 1990s have seen bankruptcies, unemployment and homelessness on the rise, and suicide

4 Facts and discourses has become a pandemic. In 2003, 34,427 Japanese men and women7 took their own lives, a sad record after a decade of continuous rise. Incidences of suicide are highest among two groups – the elderly aged 60 years or older and people in debt: victims of success. Discourse of change The decrease in life satisfaction, though small in absolute terms, is indicative of a heightened sense of transition that took hold in Japan around the turn of the century. It engendered a discourse of change; a discourse about where Japan stands and in what direction she should go that is structured around a number of keywords and phrases that have captured the public consciousness. Some of these are:

• • • • • • •

hyper-aged society; birth-rate decline (and countermeasures to this); age of population decline; trend of late marriage; equal gender participation; pension burden; gap (widening) society.

We will cover each in turn below. Hyper-aged society (ch k rei shakai) The discourse about ageing Japan began in the 1980s. Professional demographers were aware of the coming problem earlier, but they failed to grasp the rapidity of Japan’s transformation from a young into an old society that, indeed, took many by surprise. When the conflagration of World War II was over, Japan’s median age was 22. At the time of writing (2006), it had risen to 43, having almost doubled in just 60 years. On this parameter Japan ranks second only behind Monaco, a place on the Mediterranean coast much preferred by wealthy retirees. A median age of 43 means that one half of the population are younger than 43 and one half older than that age. Many Japanese alive today can expect to see the median population age rise to 50 in their lifetime.8 Initially after the war, rapidly declining infant mortality rates contributed substantially to the ageing of society, but the growth in the younger-than-median-age half of the population were offset by decreasing fertility. For the past 30 years, Japan has been one of the top two or three countries for low infant mortality rate (2005: 3.26/1,000). Therefore, increases in median age are attributed largely to the growing life expectancy of the elderly, which in turn is reflective of dramatic advances in gerontologic medicine. In 1989, the elderly of 65 years and older accounted for 11.6 per cent of the Japanese population. Since then their proportion has reached 20 per cent, just one step short of the mark that indicates the transition from an aged to a hyper-aged society.

Facts and discourses 5 Definitions

• • •

Ageing society: 7–14 per cent of the population are 65 years or older. Aged society: 14–21 per cent of the population are 65 years or older. Hyper-aged society: 21 per cent or more of the population are 65 years or older.

The fast pace of this development was reflected in public discourse, where the scientific terminology was swiftly picked up. A spot check of newspaper article headlines in mid-September preceding Respect-for-the-Aged day from 1980 to 2005 has revealed that the term kÜreika shakai (ageing society) was frequently used from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, when it was superseded by kÜrei shakai (aged society). The terms chÜkÜreika shakai and chÜkÜrei shakai (hyperageing society and hyper-aged society, respectively) began to appear in the late 1990s. These technical terms have thus found their way into public discourse suggesting that the Japanese have begun to think of themselves as an aged and even a hyper-aged society. Birth-rate decline and countermeasures As a complement to and component of the hyper-ageing aspect of population change, public discourse has focused on birth-rate decline (shÜshika taisaku). The number of babies born in Japan has been falling for 25 years. As a result, the demographic composition of the nation’s population has changed in such a way that the elderly, 65 years and over, now outnumber the population of children under 15. In 1950, the latter group accounted for 35.4 per cent of the population, the former for 4.9 per cent. By 2003, the child population was down to 14 per cent, while the aged population had risen to 19 per cent of the total population.9 Too few children are born in Japan. For some time, media attention was focused on the growing ranks of the elderly and how they change society, but then the tide turned and the other end of the demographic structure of society came into view; the dwindling number of babies. People are concerned. To be sure, there is the occasional dissenting voice. For example, sociologist Chizuko Ueno pointed out that birth rates in the ‘former Axis powers’, Japan, Germany and Italy, were among the lowest in the world. A fact, Ueno argues, that can be explained as the result of a ‘sub-conscious birth strike by women against machismo.’10 With less-opinionated zeal, though not quite politically correct, Manabu Akagawa enlivened the debate with his popular 2004 book entitled Fewer Children – so what! He argues that those who call for a policy of reversing birth rate decline are alarmist and misguided, as Japan’s demographic dynamics are not exceptional after all, but conform to a pattern typical of advanced nations. However, the public discourse about demographic issues is less influenced by international comparisons than by domestic ones. Thanks to persistent media coverage it is common knowledge that birth rates are much lower now than in the past, and there is wide agreement that this is a reason to be concerned. Since 1947, Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR) dropped from 4.54 to 1.29 children

6 Facts and discourses born by a woman in her lifetime, far below population replacement level. As attested in an endless stream of articles and letters-to-the-editor in the daily press, many Japanese feel that deliberate countermeasures should be taken. In a 2004 opinion poll by Asahi Shimbun,11 78 per cent affirmatively answered the question of whether they took an interest in falling birth rates. At the same time, the question of whether it is easy to raise children in Japan today got a resounding ‘no’ of 74 per cent, and when asked whether raising children is a burden or a pleasure, respondents were almost evenly split, those considering children more of a pleasure than a burden having a paper-thin lead of just one per cent; 45 per cent to 44 per cent. In combination with the repeated result of opinion polls showing the actual number of children per family falling short of the number considered ideal, these responses are indicative of a major reason why happiness seems to escape the citizens of early twenty-first-century Japan. For various reasons they seem to be unable to take pleasure in their offspring. The public discourse about this question is characterized by sharply diverging policy recommendations, ranging from creating child-friendly environments to more gender equity in the labour market, marriage and relationship support to more generous child-rearing benefits and the active development of positive attitudes towards parenting. Each of these will be discussed in later chapters. The general sentiment is captured well in a leader of Asahi Shimbun: The Japanese population will peak in 2006 and start declining thereafter. That cannot be helped. However, we should build a society where young people find it easier to want to have children.12 The fact that this issue is regularly taken up in leaders and commentaries is in itself indicative of its social significance. It must be noted, however, that a deep division concerning the desirability of children goes through Japanese society. In the past, the overwhelming majority of young people married, and it was a matter of course that they would then have children. This is no longer so. Fully 50 per cent of the respondents of the 2003 NHK survey denied that marriage implied having children ‘as a matter of course’, an increase of 10 per cent since 1993 when 40 per cent said that to not have children after marriage is acceptable.13 Conspicuously, young women up to the age of 35 who think that not to have children is acceptable not only outnumber those who think that having children is ‘in the nature of things’ (tÜzen) by a rate of 4 to 1, but are also more numerous than their male counterparts who can live without children. Many observers, therefore, concur with the conclusion of the NHK survey that ‘if a policy of reversing declining birth rates (shÜshika taisaku) is to be pursued in earnest it must begin by reconsidering male dominance in this society’.14 By contrast, shÜshika taisaku has become such a prominent topic of public discourse that it invites comments from unexpected quarters, such as the young lady who together with many of her friends in Tokyo’s fashionable district Harajuku flashed a sign confessing that giving birth to many children was what she could do to make herself a useful member of society (Figure 1.1).

Facts and discourses 7

Figure 1.1 ‘Because there are so few children I want to have many.’ Copyright Tokyo Graffiti, The New Generation Magazine, June 25 2005.

Age of population decline (jinko- gensho- jidai) Japan’s persistently low birth rate has long been a subject of discussion, but that it will inevitably lead to population decline has only recently become a topic that is debated not just at scholarly conferences and in government departments, but at town hall meetings and in audience-participation TV shows as well. Even professional demographers failed to predict the drop in fertility that is the cause of Japan’s population implosion. This is evident from several demographic forecasts that had to be repeatedly revised. Population projections in the mid-1970s, assuming continuous though slowing growth, saw Japan’s total population stabilize around the year 2020 at 140 million. However, the 1990 fertility rate of 1.57 came as a shock to the government because it fell short of the 1.58 recorded for 1966, the year of the Fiery Horse in the Chinese zodiac. As girls born in such a year bring destruction to their husbands, many couples defer reproduction. In any event, this was a cultural explanation for the exceptionally low birth rate of 1966, but no Fiery Horse could be scapegoated for the rate of 1990, which moreover was still high when compared to the rate of 1.2888 calculated for 2004 (Figure 1.2). The 1997 projection of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had the population decline to 100 million by 2050 (Atoh, 2000: 4).

8 Facts and discourses Thanks to Japan’s extremely low infant mortality, a fertility rate of 2.08 is enough to keep the population at a steady level. Births fell short of this figure for the first time in 1974 and have been on the decline ever since. Because mortality also declined, low birth rates did not immediately translate into population shrinkage, but as fertility has been low for decades, the next generation of childbearing women is affected and overall population decline is inevitable. It should be noted in passing that below-replacement-level fertility is a general feature of most advanced industrial societies. Total fertility rates in France, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Sweden fell below 2.0 in the 1970s or early 1980s. The notable exception is the United States that due to immigration lags behind the general trend and still has a rate of 2.0. The Japanese 2005 census was prepared and carried out under the assumption that the Japanese population would reach its peak at about 127 million in 2006. The information brochure distributed to all households to solicit the public’s cooperation in advance of the census features a graph showing Japan’s population development and prospect from 1920 to 2050, with the growth rate mapped onto the absolute numbers (Figure 1.3). According to this projection, a negative and steadily declining growth rate as of 2006 will bring the population down to just above 100 million by 2050. Other projections foresee an even steeper decrease. However, rather than the accuracy of various trend models the point of issue here is the fact that the general public has been thoroughly prepared for Japan’s plunge into a period of shrinking population. The rate of decline is not so important, but the fact that population growth will be negative for years to come is taken for

Figure 1.2 Japan’s birth rate, 1950–2004. The downward spike indicates a dramatic decline in the year of the Fiery Horse, 1966.

Facts and discourses 9 granted both by decision makers and the society at large. In the political arena, accordingly, voices that call for policies that acknowledge the fact of population decline have become more forceful. The conclusions drawn by the editors of the NHK survey are representative of many: Counter measures to the declining birth rate has now surfaced as a major policy concern for the country. The problem of the sustainability of pensions, health insurance and other aspects of the social security system has also come into view. A blueprint for a society that takes population shrinkage as a given must urgently be drawn up.15 Trend of late marriage (bankonka) In the mid-1980s, unmarried women over the age of 25 were disparagingly called kurisumasu kÂki, a reference to the plummeting value of Christmas cakes still ‘on the shelf’ after December 25. At the time, the ideal marriage age for women was 24, but marital behaviour has changed significantly since. For one thing, there has been a trend away from arranged marriage to love marriage that can be interpreted as being indicative of changing expectations about the marriage partner and married life. Causality is hard to prove here, but temporal co-occurrence is not. While the trend for love marriage has advanced, young Japanese men and women have postponed marriage. Because the number of children born out of wedlock in Japan is much lower than in other industrialized countries, and statistically almost negligible, later marriage leads to lower birth rates because it cuts into women’s reproductive years. The fact that fertility decreases with age also comes to bear on Japan’s declining TRF because the average age of first marriage for women is now

Figure 1.3 Population decline. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2002 projection, distributed to all households with the 2005 national population census announcement.

10 Facts and discourses above the age at which individual fertility begins to decrease. According to figures released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare,16 the average age of first marriage in 2004 was 27.8 for women and 29.6 for men, and the average age of mothers at their first child delivery was 28.9 years. Thus, nowadays women don’t marry for a decade after high school graduation and more than half a decade after attending college. Bankonka (the trend to late marriage) became a catchphrase in the 1990s encapsulating the view that marriage postponement is a major cause of decreasing birth rates. Its counterpart, bansanka (the trend to late delivery; Figure 1.4), also came into use at that time, reflecting the high correlation between marriage and childbirth. Statistics show that the number of unmarried people has been on the rise since the 1970s. As this is an aggregate figure of people of all age cohorts, it follows to some extent from the trend to delay marriage that has been known as being a check on population growth since the time of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834). The English clergyman, political economist and originator of Malthusian population theory taught that all social ills could be eradicated by regulating family size, especially of the lower classes who tended to produce more children than they could support.17 Malthusian social engineering has been largely discredited because his assumption that only famine would limit population increase turned out to be wrong. However, as witnessed by China’s one-child policy for example, the idea that population control is necessary to secure social wellbeing is still influential, especially in developing countries. In Japan, the birth rate came down without government coercion as a result of individual family planning – including as a major factor the tendency to delay marriage, which shows no sign of arrest, let alone reversal. As this tendency is so strongly correlated with the

Figure 1.4 Bansanka (trend to late delivery). Source: Kokumin seikatsu hakuscho (Government of Japan white paper), 2003.

Facts and discourses 11 declining TFR, it is regarded very critically by some observers as an outcome of a Westernized, individualistic, if not to say egotistic, lifestyle. Instead of taking on the responsibility of building a family, young people lead a carefree life with lots of spending money, or so the argument goes. In the late 1990s, Miyamoto, Iwagami and Yamada (1997) started to refer to this generation as dokushin kizoku (unmarried nobility) or shinguru kizoku (single nobility), presumably because of their profligate lifestyle. A couple of years later Masahiro Yamada popularized the term parasaito shinguru (parasite singles) that like dokushin kizoku was quickly adopted by the mass media and became a common term in public discussion, evidently giving expression to a widely-felt sentiment. That ever fewer children are born is perceived as a problem, and the blame for it is placed at the doorstep of those who sponged on their parents by continuing to live with them and off them. Instead of raising the next generation of pension-fund contributors they follow their hedonistic pursuits. The idea that young people could be held responsible for the nation’s ills was apparently irresistible to the media. A website was even established that allowed its visitors to check whether they met the criteria of being ‘parasite singles’.18 Yet, the proposition that people are wary of marriage because that could lower their standard of living did not remain unchallenged. The notion of ‘parasite singles’ has been criticized as one-dimensional because, while it gives a name to the 60 per cent of unmarried men and 80 per cent of unmarried women between the ages of 24 and 30 who continue to live with their parents (Yamada, 1999), it fails to acknowledge the fact that a rise of unemployment and irregular employment – ‘freeters’ – in this age cohort co-occurred with the increase of the number of adult children living at home and delayed marriage. Rather than enjoying the luxury of a new nobility, many young Japanese live with their parents and don’t marry because of financial constraints (Genda, 2000). The incidence of delayed marriage is higher among women who are ‘freeters’ than among women with careers. In the 1990s, uncertain employment prospects had a major impact. Not choice, but deteriorating employment conditions made many young men and women ‘parasite singles’ who, by preference, would be neither parasites nor singles. The instant popularity of this negatively connoted term after the publication of Yamamoto’s book reflects both the willingness of society to accept readily-understandable explanations for unwelcome developments and continued support for marriage, although the pressure to get married has weakened in recent decades giving rise to more individualistic demographic behaviour. Equal gender participation (danjo kyo-do-sankaku) How do declining birth rates relate to the labour force participation rate of women? This question was much discussed in the 1990s, because since the mid-1980s the trade-off of female employment against fertility had become very conspicuous. This is because there has been a marked shift by women away from unpaid work in family enterprises to paid employment, bringing the opportunity costs of having children into sharper focus. Or to put it differently, the increase of paid female

12 Facts and discourses employment brought about a change in the sense of time. Time spent at work came to be perceived as being more valuable than time spent on rearing children and household chores. The idea that paid work is more rewarding and the need for families to have a double income developed simultaneously. Driven both by economic necessity and ideological reorientation, gender roles are changing and with them the Japanese family. In 1973, 22 per cent of women and 21 per cent of men were in favour of a family model based on ‘conjugal cooperation’ as opposed to gender-specific task division; by 2003, these rates were up to 48 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively.19 As in other industrialized nations, it became more common for women to compete with men in the labour market and women became more assertive generally. Reflecting this trend symbolically was a long battle for the recognition of fñfu bessei, or a married woman’s right to keep her last name. Against fierce conservative resistance public opinion moved in the direction of a system of choice of same or different family name for spouses (Tomioka and Yoshioka, 2001). There is no direct link between attitudes to naming conventions and changes in the fertility rate, but it seems obvious that the temporal co-occurrence is not fortuitous.20 The fñfu bessei discourse is just another indication of changing gender roles. In the past, the Japanese government has held back rather than expedited the advancement of women, but in the 1990s the view that legal frame conditions must be adjusted to facilitate the balancing of professional aspirations and family life gained ground, and with the promulgation of a number of laws21 the state has become a major agent of promoting change in gender roles. Danjo kyÜdÜsankaku (equal participation of men and women)’ thus became a catchphrase figuring prominently in public discourse. Pension burden (nenkin futan) Ageing has drastically changed the structure of the populace, reversing the proportions of the young under 15 years and the old over 65. In 1997, the population groups under 15 and over 65 were on a par, but as of that year the latter has overtaken the former (Figure 1.5 and Table 1.1). As this has obvious implications for a pension system that depends on intergenerational redistribution, the financial sustainability became a topic of much public debate. The working-age population is poised to shrink, while the number of pensioners will continue to rise. Public concern that, in the long run, the ageing of Japan’s populace will bankrupt its pension system is not unfounded. Even if the demographic descent were to be halted or turned around by a marked rise in fertility, the government could be hard pressed to maintain benefit levels because the effect of a higher birth rate on pension funds would not be felt until 20 years after an increase, at the earliest. At the present time, the solvency of Japan’s public sector pension system is not in peril: retirees are well-off and reaping the fruits of a long, laborious life. However it is doubtful that the high level of benefits they enjoy can be sustained for future generations. Structural reforms to the social security system have been implemented gradually from the mid-1990s onward, but due to the shrinking

Facts and discourses 13

Figure 1.5 Four population groups through time: young, working age, elder, and elder elder. Source: National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japanese Population Projection, 2002.

working-age population the benefit/burden ratio is nevertheless certain to decrease; that is, younger subscribers to the system will pay more and receive less than their elders. The government anticipates a large revenue shortfall to develop if fertility continues to drop or remains at its present low level as expected. Reform of the pension system, therefore, remains a topic of intense discussion not confined to policy makers and specialists. As the total number of persons supporting the social security system drops, the media devote considerable attention to the ‘pension burden problem’ and the question of who should shoulder it. Audience-participation TV shows have revealed a stark contrast in the perception of the problem by elderly and young citizens. While retirees tend to stress the insurance contributions they made over 40 years, college graduates and young employees focus on the fact that many pensions are higher than young workers’ salaries even though their needs are much bigger and funds invested in their life plans can be expected to yield higher returns than money spent for and by the elderly. Young city dwellers in particular see themselves as paying pension fund contributions to allow the elderly to spend their twilight years in comfort, if not luxury, while they have problems making ends

14 Facts and discourses meet and face the prospect of receiving less then they have paid into the system upon reaching old age themselves. The general notion of intergenerational fairness that young and middle-generation workers finance the pensions of the current generation of retirees on the assumption that they will receive similar benefits when they retire is being undermined. When intergenerational transfer was within the family, it was a matter of course that the middle-aged would provide for the elderly, in return, as it were, for the care they received as children. But at a time of birth-rate decline and increasing longevity, the anonymity of intergenerational redistribution institutions is leading to a redefinition of intergenerational relations that is now frequently referred to as a ‘generation gap’ or sedai kakusa,22 another catchword of the age of demographic descent. Gap (widening) society (kakusa shakai) As a matter of fact, the generation gap is just one of the disparities that have come into view in early twenty-first-century Japan, and there is growing awareness that many of them are related to, if not caused by, the unfolding demographic crisis. In the post-war period up to the 1980s, many in Japan took pride in the fact – or the ideal – that Japan was a society characterized by a desire for harmony, a high degree of homogeneity and a near universal middle-class consciousness rooted in a seniority-based wage system and relatively small income disparities. That, observers nowadays agree, is a vision of the past. For better or for worse, Japan has been distancing itself for some time from the notion of an ‘all middle class nation’. Disparities are becoming apparent in various arenas and increasingly so. As pointed out, fertility is declining, but it is not declining evenly. Most couples who have children have more than one, while at the same the proportion of couples with no children is growing. Hence a disparity is emerging between people with and without children, which is likely to lead to disputes about social redistribution in future. Those who decide not to have children not only save the effort, time and money necessary for their upbringing; having no children to fall back on, they will also have to rely on public assistance in old age if they need it. ‘Japan’s economic disparity’ in terms of income and assets was highlighted in a much-noted 1998 book of that title by Kyoto economist Toshiaki Tachibanaki. As ageing proceeds Table 1.1 Japan’s changing demographic structure. Age

1950

1975

2000

2030

0–14

35.40%

24.30%

14.60%

11.90%

15–64

68.20%

67.80%

59.60%

57.80%

4.90%

7.90%

17.20%

30.40%

65–

Source: dataranking.com, based on United Nations (2003) World Prospects

Facts and discourses 15 faster in rural than in urban areas, draining provincial districts of much needed tax revenues, politicians have been forced to take issue with widening disparities between towns and villages (shichÜson kan no kakusa kakudai). By contrast, there are regional birth-rate disparities with city dwellers being even less inclined to have children than the inhabitants of rural prefectures. Of all 43 prefectures, Tokyo has the lowest birth rate, 1.0, and Okinawa the highest, 1.7. Another gap that opened in the 1990s and widened in the 2000s exists in the labour market. It is a disparity in income, working hours and lifestyle. The polarization has produced permanent employees with long working hours and high incomes, on the one hand, and part-timers and ‘freeters’ with low incomes and much less time spent on work, on the other (Higuchi, 2004a). Pursuing the theme of ‘parasites,’ Yamada (2004a: 89) observes a growing disparity in available income and lifestyle between those who can continue to live with their parents after getting married and those who cannot. He has moreover diagnosed what he calls a ‘society of diverging expectations’ (kibÜ kakusa shakai). The growing number of unemployed, not regularly employed and part-timers no longer see their purpose in life in what were almost universally shared aspirations of the ‘allmiddle-class-society’: my home, my car, and a college education for the children. Freeters and nÌto,23 accounting for as much as a third of the labour force in the mid2000s, cannot take employment for granted and concentrate on pursuing careers and building a middle-class life with a family. They ended up at the low end of what some observers say has become a society of winners (kachigumi) and losers (makegumi). Originating in the world of business, these terms initially distinguished profitable corporations form their unsuccessful counterparts, but, reflecting a growing sense of social cleavage, they have been adopted by the media and are now widely used in almost all social arenas. The race is on to belong to the kachigumi, and although population ageing is not its sole cause it has clearly contributed in bringing it to the forefront of public attention, giving rise to the notion of a ‘new class society’ (shin kaikyñ shakai). Whether the painful disparities this new class society exhibits are here to stay, or whether this is a transition phase leading to a new equilibrium, is too early to tell. However, it is quite clear that demographic pressure is forcing Japan to change its ways and make many adjustments. It has to face challenges concerning intergenerational fairness and social cohesion, a shrinking labour force and economic growth, pension funds and public fiscal sustainability, and a new relationship between the state and non-state organizations and their involvement in education, care-giving and other social services. These across-the-board challenges have given rise to a public discourse, or rather a number of related, overlapping, complementary and contravening discourses, about the consequences of social ageing. They are focused on topics and questions such as the following:

• •

Will it be possible to maintain Japan’s high standard of living in a hyper-aged society? How can social security be sustained without stifling the economy or incurring too much hardship on the elderly?

16 Facts and discourses

• • • • • •

Why do Japanese women have fewer children than they would like to? How should a social policy be designed and what are its potential and actual effects? Why is it that affluence breeds childlessness? Are gender relations so askew that men and women postpone marriage and having children? Does the burden of caring for the old and infirm curb the younger generations’ ability and willingness to have children? How and to what end does immigration come into play as state and society adjust to the realities of population decline?

Every one of these questions gives rise to heated debate. It is not the purpose of this book to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments that are pitted against each other, let alone to choose sides. Rather, public debate and media attention on these topics are considered here as expressions of a super-ordinate discourse about Japanese society and how it changes. The underlying assumption and the leitmotif of this book is that is does. It is important to realize that the many aspects of population ageing that are subject to public discussion coalesce to bring about change. As a result of population ageing Japanese society is not just getting older. What we are witnessing is not the same society gradually increasing its median age, but a social transformation on a large scale. Population ageing means social change. This is the theme of this book. And it is from this point of view that public discussion about individual aspects of social ageing is examined here.

2

The problem of generations and the structure of society

Sue Kobayashi is 94. When she was born in 1903, she was the twelfth grandchild of Sonoko and Minoru Tategawa, her mother’s parents, but she never really knew her grandparents. Both her father’s parents had died before she was born, and her maternal grandparents passed away, aged 60 and 64, before she was three years old. Sue has three great-grandchildren, two of whom she sees regularly because one of her two granddaughters lives just two train stops away. She occupies a small apartment in the Yokufñen Senior Citizens Home in Tokyo’s Suginami ward. Several of her co-residents are grandparents or great-grandparents, although some of them complain that their daughters have no children depriving them of the pleasures of grandparenthood. Sue never experienced grandchildhood, but she has ample experience as a grandmother and a great-grandmother.

In a general sense, population ageing means that the proportion of older persons increases relative to the rest of the population. In Japan this process is so far advanced that conventional models of the age structure of society are no longer descriptively adequate, for it is not just individual parameters such as average life expectancy and median age that are affected, but the structure of society at large. As mentioned earlier, Japan is rapidly moving in the direction of a ‘hyper-aged society’. Widespread longevity on such a scale implies not just that intergenerational relations are changing, but that the very notion of a generation must be reviewed and, perhaps, redefined.

Generation What, then, is a generation, and how is it to be measured? Biologically speaking, generation length is the age difference between parents and children or, more precisely, the time span for women from their own birth to the birth of their first child. In human society, this is not a fixed interval for individuals or population groups. Nativity and mortality are not synchronized; at all times children are born and people die. Therefore, generations overlap. Yet there are cycles, and it is common in demography to refer to the ‘mean length of generation’; a normative value set at about 27 years. However, as fecundity, the physical ability of women to

18 The problem of generations and the structure of society bear a child, extends over a period of some 35 years between the ages of 15 to 49,1 the generational cycle is not 27 years, but a value between 27 and 35.2 Fecundity is not evenly spread over the reproductive years. Rather, childbearing is more frequent in the early years of fecundity, which is why the average age of childbearing is not at the mathematical midpoint of 32.5, which is 15 (onset of fecundity) plus 17.5 (half the number of fecund years), but in fact occurs earlier. The same is true of the age of highest fertility. These are biological constants within a certain range that define the length of a generation. However, human biological periodicity interferes with extrahuman natural factors as well as socioeconomic phenomena such as natural catastrophes, pandemics, great wars and crop failures. In combination with human reproductive biology these factors account for the tendency for human populations to move through time in generational cycles or waves. Civilization, it can be argued, is the attempt to protect humanity from the adverse effects of the forces of nature. Considering the growth of the world population,3 these attempts have been quite successful. However, population waves are detectable even nowadays; witness, for example, the baby boomer generation. In Japan, the so-called first baby boom lasted only three years. It peaked in 1948 with 2,702,000 life births. A steep decline set in after that, reaching its trough with 1,607,000 life births in 1961. The ‘echo’ on the first peak then appeared 25 years later in 1973 with 2,107,000 life births (Figure 2.1). Because of an overall drop in fertility, the second peak is considerably lower than the first, but it is still noticeable. The 32 per cent fertility increase from 1961 to 1973 is readily explained by the fact that the first baby boomers reached their marriage and highest fertility age in the early 1970s. Generations in this sense are a physiological reality.

Figure 2.1 First and second baby boom.

The problem of generations and the structure of society 19 However, if we consider what caused the baby boom in the first place, it is obvious that non-biological factors must be taken into account. In 1946, 70 per cent fewer life births were recorded than in 1948. With only 1,576,000 life births, fertility was at its lowest point since 1920. The war had taken its toll not just among the living at the time, but resonated as a birth deficit in the next generation. Peace brought fertility up again. The surplus of births in the immediate post-war years repeats itself a generation later when the first baby boomer generation reaches its maximum fertility age. That the second baby boomer peak is less prominent than the first is consistent with the general rule that, as they move through time, waves flatten and broaden becoming subject to interference from other population developments. In the event, fertility decline, briefly halted by the second baby boom, not only progressed further, but also increased to the effect that another fertility peak, however moderate, is not expected for the first baby boomers’ grandchildren generation. Annual births will decrease from 1.17 million in 2002 to less than 1 million in 2014.4 By that time, the first baby boomers will be in their mid-60s. It makes sense to speak of them as a generation if only because they can be identified as a protuberance in the population pyramid. ‘Age group’ and ‘age cohort’ are other terms used to refer to age-specific populations that in the event may be more appropriate because the baby boom extended over just three or four years, far less than a biological generation. However, the baby boomers are considered a generation for other no less substantial reasons. Mannheim taught that while ‘a rhythm of generations recurring at unchanging intervals’ can be established (Mannheim, 1997: 31), what makes a generation socially meaningful is the shared experience of its members. In view of the various aspects of social ageing the question may be raised of whether the intervals Mannheim refers to are indeed unchanging or whether, in the long run, generational reproduction is being affected. Older individuals today are biologically younger than the elderly of former generations, and fecundity is being pushed to higher age levels. It must be noted that this development is very recent and that the present generation of elderly Japanese are charting out new territory. They are the first generation to experience old age en masse, which is part of what makes them a generation. Belonging to different generations creates identities and shapes social relationships not just within the family, but across society at large. The truth of this notion is attested by the baby boomer generation whose members are seen and see themselves move through time as a unit. Units of this sort, according to Mannheim, ought to be considered a formative factor of history that should be investigated in conjunction with other historical determinants such as ethnic units, the region, the national character, the spirit of the epoch, the social structure (Mannheim, 1997: 55). Some of these notions seem dated, but on reflection we do not have many convincing alternatives today. As Mannheim took ‘the unchanging interval of generations’ for granted, he was oblivious to the delicate interactions between the forces of society and nature, but he was certainly right to emphasize the social dimension of generations.

20 The problem of generations and the structure of society The Japanese baby boomers of the late 1940s and early 1950s are a generation because they form a numerous birth cohort that has many psychological and social implications concerning their upbringing and education early in life, their contributions to the business cycle, and their demands on the pension system, among others. With the concept of generation linked to that of an epoch, Mannheim sought to shed light on the development of political and social movements. To understand the history of generations it is important to locate the nature of key experiences that are the source of the commonality distinguishing a generation from its precursors and successors. An inspection of terms that have been used to characterize Japanese post-war generations reveals the cogency of this notion. For example, in a study about adolescents and youth culture, Ichikawa (2003) identifies four successive generations as follows.

• • • •

1960s: Dankai sedai, the first baby boomer generation; 1970s: Shirake sedai, the apathy generation; 1980s: Shinjinrui sedai, the new-species generation; 1990s: Dankai junia sedai, the second baby boomer generation.

The first baby boomer generation, born between 1947 and 1949, is characterized by a spirit of resistance and protest. It is often equated with the betonamu sedai, the Vietnam generation whose key experience was demonstrations in opposition to the US war against Vietnam. The ‘apathy generation’ that followed is characterized by lethargy and an attitude of moratorium. In the 1980s the ‘new-species generation’ arrived, which distinguished itself by being egocentric and super-individualistic. It was succeeded in turn by the second baby boomer generation of the 1990s, categorized as indifferent to others. It is called otaku sedai by another name. These are of course stereotypes, and other groupings are conceivable. For example, reference is made occasionally to the ‘oil shock generation,’ because economic adjustments following the first oil crisis of 1973 led to a marked drop in the birth rate between 1973 and 1976. Also, Ichikawa’s association of generations with successive decades seems too neat. However, arbitrary as this division may appear, the metaphor testifies to the historicity of generations and the importance of shared experience. The first baby boomer generation has been shaped in part by being born at a certain time, between 1947 and 1949, and in certain numbers, 6.8 million, 30 to 50 per cent more than the neighbouring three-year age cohorts. These bare facts alone distinguish the baby boomers from the war generation and the generations of their successors. Through the decades they exercised an influence on society as a generation and they still do as they begin reaching retirement age en masse in 2007, with far-reaching implications for the labour market and the pension system. With the baby boomers’ retirement, long-cherished employment practices disappear. They were the last generation to consider lifetime employment in exchange for company loyalty the aim to aspire to. Another aspect of the shared experience of this generation is the student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While not everyone was embroiled in violent clashes with riot police, student unrest was a

The problem of generations and the structure of society 21 nationwide phenomenon that passive bystanders could ignore no more than helmet-wearing activists. This is precisely what ‘shared’ moments in history as formative elements of a society’s development are about. Representing a substantial portion of the working age population, this generation has had an influence on society for the past four decades. As its members go into retirement, their influence will change, but it will not disappear, if only because many baby boomers are poised to have very long lives. They will continue to contribute to and make demands on society, and the mere fact that they will do that for another 25 to 30 years signifies a change in social relations and power structures of society. Generations defined by common experience cannot be of equal length, yet biology makes itself felt. People tend to experience the happenings of life in age cohorts, which is another way of saying that age is both physiological and social. Biological generations overlap with experiential generations, creating intersections between biography and social history. How does the shift towards older age of the life cycle from being born to giving birth that has occurred in Japan over the past century affect intergenerational relations? A rare exception until recently, long lives of 80 or 90 years are becoming increasingly common. Hence adjustments will be made, and the generation first confronted with the necessity of making these adjustments, the second or junior baby boomers, are again a generation by virtue of shared experiences in this regard. The Japanese debate about intergenerational equity is centred on the first baby boomers and their offspring because the flow of resources between generations was affected and required readjustments by social ageing rather suddenly.

Figure 2.2 The Japanese ageing index, 1960 to 2002; on the basis of Kokuritsu shakaihoshÜ jinkÜmondai kenkyñsho, 2004: p. 30.

22 The problem of generations and the structure of society As has been pointed out repeatedly (for example, Ogawa, 1998; Schmid, 2002), population ageing in Japan advanced at a pace three times as fast as in other ageing societies such as Sweden and Germany. Japan’s ageing index, defined as the ratio of the population aged 65 and older to the population aged 0–14, rose from 32.6 in 1975 to 130.5 in 2002 (Figure 2.2). Over the past 70 years Japan experienced substantial gains in life expectancy and at the same time greatly increased participation in secondary and tertiary education. However, there has been little time for society to adjust conceptually and culturally to the changing time path of fertility and mortality and the resulting shift in the age structure. A life cycle model5 helps to illustrate some of the changes that have occurred.6 As is evident from Figure 2.3, it is not just the length of life that has changed, but also the division into life stages. Most conspicuously, the actual childbearing phase has been halved and retirement has become much longer. Increase in the survival rate and postponement of marriage and childbearing co-occurred, but years gained in longevity – 20 years for women, 15 years for men – outnumber those of marriage delay by a factor of four and three, respectively. As a consequence, the incidence of three and four co-existing generations has markedly increased. The life cycle changes from 1935 to 2005 also affect the age structure of households. In 1935, the eldest son would become household head following the death of his father at age 65. Accordingly, a relatively high proportion of household heads assumed that function around age 35, at about the same time or soon after they started a family of their own. Seventy years later, the household head lives 15 years longer with the implication that first fatherhood and becoming household head no longer occur in close

Figure 2.3 Changes in the life cycle over 70 years, 1935–2005.

The problem of generations and the structure of society 23 temporal proximity. During the same period, the legal status of the household head was weakened and his social role, especially with regard to the selection of children’s marriage partner, changed significantly. The implications for intra-familial relations are yet to be fully explored, but it seems certain that further adjustments are inevitable, for traditionally Japan is a highly age-stratified society.

Age segregation and age-grading The strong emphasis Japanese culture places on age has often been noted (Norbeck, 1953; Coulmas, 2000). Traditionally, life stages have been clearly defined and marked by ceremonial rites of passage. In the past, formalized age classes functioned as important social ordering devices superimposing a structure on the life cycle. Many customs revolving around the transition from one stage to another beginning with infancy or early childhood, to boyhood or maidenhood, adolescence, adulthood and retirement testify to the importance of temporal order. While some of the rites and ceremonies seem outdated, it should be noted that modern Japanese society continues to send its members in age cohorts on their life course. They enter kindergarten and school in narrowly defined cohorts and progress as members of such cohorts through college and university. Many employers recruit and hire personnel once a year. One’s age and length of service to an organization are as important as role expectations associated with senpai (seniors) and kÜhai (juniors) and birth order for relations between siblings. Age still commands a measure of deference, and seniority-based promotion and wage systems, though under adjustment pressure by population ageing, have by no means lost their significance for the Japanese employment system. In Japanese companies, wage differentiation on the basis of performance begins later in the career than in other industrialized countries and the ascension of the wage curve with increasing age is accordingly steeper. Institutionalized age classes may have disappeared a long time ago in the wake of the Meiji reforms, but the importance of age ordering in Japanese society is still pervasive. The division of community labour is often organized on the basis of age. People of different age cohorts are not supposed to or prefer not to mix in public places such as restaurants, bars, discotheques, and so on. Remnants of age separation can be detected in company dormitories for unmarried men. The influence of age and generation is also evident in many customs and holidays. Transitions such as Shichi-go-san or ‘Seven-five-three’ and coming-of-age are celebrated collectively on national holidays rather than individually on birthdays. In family relations, too, age is the primary defining feature. Vertical relations that secure the continuity of the family line have often been described as more important than horizontal ties between spouses and siblings. Social scientists have observed a marked shift since the implementation of the new constitution of 1946 that stipulates equality of the sexes from the traditional stem family to the conjugal nuclear family (Morioka, 1997: 266). The stem family, centred upon the father to son succession, functioned as the major social mechanism of intergenerational transmission securing continuation of the family line, its name and assets. Inheritance of the family wealth was predicated on the expectation that the eldest son

24 The problem of generations and the structure of society would provide for his parents in their later years in life-long co-residence. Under the civil code, family obligations shifted from the stem family of paternal linage to the nuclear family, but cultural norms continued to be effective. Intergenerational co-residence is still higher in Japan than in other industrialized countries. The stem family system was centred on the paternal line and household. This is still so, although the preponderance of viri-locality is much reduced.7 The proportion of elderly persons aged 65 and over who lived with a child dropped from 69 per cent in 1980 to 48.4 per cent in 2001.8 Budak, Liaw and Kawabe (1996) argued that both cultural norms and economic rationality have so far favoured intergenerational co-residence. The important point is that both of these factors interact, and if a further factor is taken into account, the observed 20 per cent decline does not contradict their argument. During the 1980s and 1990s, many families remodelled their houses or built a second dwelling on the same site. If elderly parents living with their children in separate dwellings on the same site are counted as ‘broadly defined co-residence’, the rate of co-residence has hardly changed (Kohara and Ohtake, 2004). The question to be asked here is how cultural norms and economic rationality interact. The cultural norm of co-residence is still considered valid by many, but economic conditions allow for a slight reinterpretation accommodating both the requirement of co-presence and the desire for more privacy. This reorientation as well as the weakening of the stem family must also be seen against the background of increasing life expectancy and the expansion of the oldest generation’s later years. When the eldest son is 35 and the father 60 with another five years to live, the asset-transfer-in-exchange-for-care arrangement works better than when the son is 60 and the father 90. Thus, population ageing brings about changes in intergenerational relations that were at the same time promoted by changing legal provisions, cultural norms and economic rationality. As the economic rationality of intergenerational coresidence becomes less compelling, a shift in emphasis from vertical inter-generational to horizontal intra-generational relations becomes apparent, the conjugal family making inroads at the expense of the traditional stem family.9 Population ageing is beginning to show its effects on the rigid sequencing of generations in other arenas too. In education, for example, generation mixing is observed much more frequently than just a decade ago. In the face of declining student numbers, universities go out of their way to accommodate retirees who want to go ‘back to school’. Life-long learning is a growth industry. In a society where the seniority principle begins with directing infant’s attention to the importance of birth order and age this must be considered a major change.

New divisions To describe intergenerational relations, Mannheim (1997: 28) used the notion of ‘the non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous’. In intra-family generational terms the contemporaneous until recently used to be three generations: grandparents, parents and children. Put differently, family members’ generational roles would typically be two at any given time: mother and grandmother, daughter and mother, daughter and granddaughter and so on. Social ageing has a noticeable

The problem of generations and the structure of society 25 impact on this constellation. Gains in life expectancy add an additional generational role to many individual life courses for increasingly long periods of time. A striking feature of Japan’s population dynamics is the growth, both absolute and relative, in the population of late old age of 80 years and older. The number of individuals is steadily increasing who will be great-grandmother, grandmother and mother, or daughter, granddaughter and mother, or daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter at the same time. As this development co-occurs with dwindling birth rates, there is a double effect on generational relations: while smaller households cause a reduction of the multiplicity and complexity of horizontal relations between members of the same generation (Hiroshima, 1997), vertical relations across generations expand (Shimazaki, 2004: 170). In these circumstances, the traditional notion of kanreki,10 60 years of age as the beginning of old age, which is based on the 60-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, has all but lost its meaning. According to Kosuke Motani,11 a senior researcher of the Development Bank of Japan (Nihon Seisaku TÜshi GinkÜ), not even 65, the conventional age referred to by demographers as the beginning of old age, is old in twenty-first century Japan. As many people over 65 are in good health and active, 70 should be the lower limit for counting a person among the elderly. Other traditional divisions similarly shift towards a higher age. Prior to World War II when life expectancy was about 50 years, four age groups were distinguished: shonen (children), seinen (adolescents), sÜnen (prime of life), and rÜnen (old age; older than 50). Clearly not just the last age group is affected by the ageing process. Children are children longer than in the past, and a 40-year-old man is hardly considered blessed with the wisdom of advanced age, as the Confucian tern fuwaku (beyond erring) as a synonym of 40 years old suggests. First pregnancies in the early thirties are no longer considered late. As generations are growing longer they get pushed along the life course toward an older age. Unobserved by many, conceptions of age and attitudes toward life in general thus change. It must not be forgotten, however, that these changes are experienced for the first time by the baby boomer generation and their offspring, both in their specific ways, once again reinforcing their identity as generations. The major trends of population ageing are the following:

• • •

people are living longer; they are getting married later; they have fewer children.

All three trends impinge on living arrangements and the family structure. In conjunction with economic and ideological changes, ageing brings about a shift in emphasis from parent–child ties to husband–wife relations. While co-residence of two adult couples as a living arrangement and mechanism for the transmission of assets and welfare is on the decline, the present extended life course brings about intergenerational relations of longer duration. Later unions and smaller but more diverse families are concomitant of these developments. This diversification of lifestyles and family types in turn has implications for social relations in general and the social networks of the elderly in particular.

3

Social networks

Tooi Shinseki yori chikaku no tannin (A good neighbour is better than a brother far off). Japanese proverb

I live alone with my dog. When my husband died of illness a year ago I caved in, but eventually I got used to it and somehow recovered. Then, this month, a public welfare officer came by to inquire about a contact in case of emergency. She was compiling a list of elderly persons above 65 living alone, she said. When I heard ‘elderly’ I was dumbstruck. After taking a deep breath, I managed to answer, ‘I just turned 64…’ I have no grandchildren and suffer from no serious disease. I thought of myself as 40 or 50. Nonetheless, I had to notice that the world around me looks at me as an energetic senior citizen. Facing the reality of diminishing physical strength, I thought again. I wrote down an emergency contact number right away and fastened it with a string to the telephone receiver so that a relative could be reached in case I collapsed at home. Yet, I still don’t feel old. I’m waiting for the rock singer advertised in a TV commercial, and look forward to going to the concert with my daughter when she comes to Tokyo. Misao Kawauchi, age 64, without occupation. Letter to the Editor, Asahi Shimbun, 10 October 2005 (morning edition): 10.

Misao Kawauchi is one of the growing number of senior citizens who are living alone. She is healthy and in the absence of grandchildren does not feel old, that is, like a grandmother. Yet she is beginning to realize that, in spite of her vitality, as a single person she faces certain risks as she grows older. But she did not arrive at this insight spontaneously; it was brought home to her by a public servant whose task is just that. That the newspaper printed her letter to the editor was hardly fortuitous, for improving the living conditions of elderly singles is an increasingly urgent social concern. Of the changes the Japanese family system has undergone over the last several decades the steady increase since the mid-1980s of the proportion of single person households and the decrease of number of household members are among the most consequential. (Figure 3.1.) Social analysts of recent developments have, therefore, come to the conclusion that ‘the increase of elderly persons living alone is

Social networks 27

Figure 3.1 Changing proportion of household types 1970–2000, from bottom to top: nuclear families, households including other relatives, non-relatives households, single person households. Source: KÜsei rÜdÜ hakusho, SÜmushÜ tÜkeikyoku (Government white paper), 2005: 18.

becoming a social problem’ (Eijingu sÜgÜkenkyñ sentª, 2002: 36). To a large extent, though not exclusively, the increase of single person households is on account of single senior citizens, who like Misao Kawauchi, have no spouse or other family and, therefore, live by themselves. Her daughter, as is evident from the letter, lives elsewhere, and occasionally comes to visit her, but in her everyday life she manages alone. Upon reflection the idea of providing information for the event of an emergency appealed to her. Clearly, her neighbourhood network is not such that she can take immediate assistance for granted. Gender difference The hyper-aged society is a gender-segregated society because women are affected in different ways from men, and more drastically. Due to the longer survival of women, they are more numerous; hence elderly single women outnumber elderly single men by a large measure. One of the implications is that for statistical reasons alone elderly women are more likely caregivers for elderly men than vice versa. Using data from the Japan Statistical Yearbook 2004, there were 100 women for every 60 men aged 80 to 90. In the age cohort of 70 to 79, the ratio is not quite as unbalanced, but there is still a marked gender gap with 100 women for every 80 men. The greater longevity of women has long been known, but it has taken on new proportions as the difference in life expectancy of men and women doubled from 3.4 years in 1950 to 6.97 years in 2003. As a result, the sex ratio of the elderly population 65 years and older was 43 per cent men to 57 per cent women. One of the consequences of the traditionally strong differences between gender roles in Japanese society is that women tend to maintain more dense and diverse

28 Social networks Table 3.1 Life expectancy of women and men.

1950 2003

Women

Men

62.97 85.33

59.57 78.36

Source: Ministry of Health and Welfare/Health, Labour and Welfare, 1950, 2003.

networks in the community than men. Because of their involvement in childrearing, school and neighbourhood activities, regardless of whether they are fulltime housewives or bear a double workload of a job and homemaking, they take care of domestic chores more than men and tend to be better integrated in advanced age than men, who often face adjustment difficulties after retirement being cut off from their work-centred social network (Eijingu sÜgÜkenkyñ sentª, 2002: 86). Relationships with neighbours and friends are more actively cultivated by women than by men (Kikuchi, 2004: 196f). However, the overall changes in social relationships that have been a concomitant to social ageing over the past half century have affected women, too.

Weakening ligatures In view of the decreasing number of family members, it is not surprising that the prominent role of the family in the social support system of Japanese seniors is also declining. These tendencies have been labelled variously as ‘individualization of the family’, ‘shift from matrimonial family to lifestyle family’, ‘dissolution of the family’ and ‘pluralization of the family’ (Mori, 2004), among others. Co-presence and continuity of everyday life across generations is no longer a matter of course, and as the relations of the elderly with their children and grandchildren shift from co-residence to occasional contact, the elderly adjust their attitudes and desires to changing social conditions. According to a 2001 survey by the Cabinet Office on the life and attitudes of the elderly,1 the proportion of senior citizens who find it desirable ‘to always live with their children and grandchildren’ (43.5 per cent) dropped by 10.7 per cent compared to 1986, whereas the proportion of those who think that ‘it is good to meet children and grandchildren for a meal and conversation once in a while’ rose by 3.8 points. These findings are in accord with the 2004 NHK survey that indicates a shift in what people aspire to in their ‘third life’ (Figure 3.2).2 Time spent with the family is decreasing, while time spent on hobbies, travel, and other pastime activities is increasing. Subjects were asked how they want to spend their old age, and given a choice of six options as follows: (1) peacefully with my children and grandchildren; (2) in close relation with my spouse; (3) leisurely to suit my tastes and hobbies; (4) active with many elderly friends; (5) keeping in touch with young people not to grow old; (6) continuing with my work as best I can. The 13-point gain from 1973 to 2003 for (3) ‘tastes and hobbies’ corresponds to a 14 point loss for (1) ‘children and grandchildren’, while the gains for (2) ‘spouse’ match the loss for (6) ‘work.’

Social networks 29

Figure 3.2 Lifestyle changes in old age, 1973–2003. Source: NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004: 67).

These tendencies can be interpreted as reconfirming the view that the modern values of individualism are concomitant to modernization and have steadily gained importance in Japan (Ölschleger, 2002: 266). The Japanese ‘family revolution’3 proceeds further in this direction, as intergenerational financial dependency among family members lessens thanks to the near universal coverage of the pension system. While this clearly is a relief to many families, reduced economic intrafamilial dependency relations also imply weaker social ligatures. Whether ideological changes in attitudes toward the family precede or follow changes of family composition and size is a matter of dispute, but progressively smaller households are likely to result in further reduced functions of mutual support among family members. To the extent that the importance of the family as a reference group for the elderly diminishes, that of alternative connections grows. However, the pluralization of the family goes along with that of extra-familial social ligatures. Here, a trend away from comprehensive human relations (zenmenteki ningen kankei) to partial (bubunteki) and pro-forma (keishikiteki) relations has been observed.4 The desirable nature of human relations in the domains of family, neighbourhood and work has been investigated, and in all three domains a growing preference for partial, purpose-specific relationships as distinct from all-encompassing, general relationships is apparent. It is a paradox of Japanese society in the early twenty-first century that ligatures inside and outside the family are weakening just as their importance is increasing for the only growing population group, the elderly. This paradox generates pressure for the professionalization of care for the frail and elderly, to be discussed in Chapter 6. However, social isolation is a problem not just for bedridden or house-bound elderly,5 but also and perhaps even more so for healthy senior citizens who do not require assistance, but whose social networks have eroded as old friends and

30 Social networks acquaintances have moved away or died and the opportunities to establish new relationships are thus reduced by lack of contact and a withdrawn lifestyle. Such a development is self-reinforcing: the smaller the network the less likely its expansion and the greater the tendency to live reclusively. As the number of elderly people concerned is on the rise, there is growing awareness that organized countermeasures are needed to cope with the problem (Katagiri, 1999).

Social networks and mortality The importance of social ligatures in the hyper-aged society lies not just in making life after retirement more comfortable; it is a question of life and death. Retired men have been described as experiencing ‘social death’ because with no more work to do they are stripped of their cardinal attribute and face ‘rolelessness’. Social death, metaphorical though the notion is, hastens physical death; for social network density, or rather, social isolation, is a strong predictor of premature mortality for both sexes. As women tend to maintain more diverse and dense networks than men it can be hypothesized that active partaking in social relations contributes to the well-known difference in the survival rate of men and women. There is empirical evidence that men who do not engage in social relationships after their retirement have a significantly greater than average mortality risk with respect to most causes of death. A correlation between social relationships and mortality was hypothesized as early as 1982.6 A large-scale study on networks and mortality in Japan supporting this hypothesis was carried out by Motoki Iwasaki and his associates in the 1990s. Using a self-administered questionnaire distributed through municipal government offices, Iwasaki et al. (2002) conducted a study on social networks in Komochi, a rural village in Gunma Prefecture, and Isesaki City in the same prefecture, covering a total of 11,565 subjects aged 40 to 69. The study variables were sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle, health status, and social networks. Seven factors were used as social network items: marital status, household size, frequency of meeting close relatives, having reliable friends, participation in activities, attendance of religious services, and friendly neighbourly relationships. Among the many results of the study, for present purposes the correlation between friends and chronic diseases is particularly noteworthy. Iwasaki et al. found that men and women who have reliable friends are less prone to have chronic disease than those without reliable friends, although they concede that the questionnaire item designed to determine ‘reliable friendship’ may not have been sufficient. The effects of social networks on mortality are likely to be indirect. For women, a negative correlation was observed between participation in social activities and the propensity to smoke and drink. Single, divorced and widowed men had increased risk of all-cause disease mortality compared to married men, and men who do not participate in social activities had an overall higher mortality risk compared to those who do. While not all of the above six social network factors were found to have independent effects on mortality risk, the aggregate result of the study is that ‘social networks are important predictors for premature death among Japanese’ (Iwasaki et al., 2002: 1215).

Social networks 31

After retirement Social isolation fosters an unhealthy lifestyle and leaves people without a purpose in life. Both of these effects increase mortality risk. With increased life expectancy for both sexes, the problem exacerbates for the simple reason that at the present time the ‘third life’ is longer than ever. The importance of deliberately building social networks is, therefore, increasingly recognized by individuals, local government agencies, and NGOs and other non-state actors. Disparaging labels such as sodaigomi ‘oversized waste refuse’ (that is hard to get rid of) and nureochiba ‘wet fallen leaves’ (that stick to the shoes) for retired husbands who stay home with nothing to do,7 and the growing incidence among women of the ‘Retired husband stress syndrome’ (otto zaitaku sutoresushÜ)8 are testimony to the gendered nature of the problem, as well as to the erosion of the tradition of respect for the elderly. In response, various new activities in the fields of adult education, hobby, sports and entertainment have come into existence around which social networks can be developed. The extended lifespan after retirement makes it necessary to purposely build new relationships. This is a new experience and a new kind of relationship, as the ‘we’ feeling of friends and peer groups typically develops earlier rather than later in life. Taking up new relationships late in life is found difficult by most people, but it is a skill rapidly gaining importance in a more mobile society that promotes intra-generational independence. In order to investigate senior citizens’ adjustments to retirement and how their social relationships are affected, a longitudinal survey study was carried out by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.9 The subjects of the investigation were retirees from regular employment. Of the 1,256 respondents, 97 per cent were men, reflecting the fact that regular employment to retirement age is overwhelmingly male, or was so until very recently. The retirees’ average age was 75, the age group 65 to 79 accounting for 72 per cent, and the average age at retirement was 58. Eighteen per cent engaged in paid work after retirement, while 81 per cent did not. In view of this high percentage of retirees who do not hold a paid job it is not surprising that the study found a big decline in work-related human relations. A distinction was made between human relations with family and relatives, on one side, and social relations in the wider sense, on the other. With regard to the latter, subjects were asked whether they participated in groups and organizations relating to work (their former place of employment), neighbourhood and local community, hobbies, senior citizens’ clubs, health and sports, and study (Table 3.2). A high proportion, almost 60 per cent, of the respondents who were involved in groups and organizations reported participation in retirees’ organizations of their last employer, which is another strong indication of the work-centred life of this generation. By way of rendering a service to their employees and the community at large, many big firms in particular support ‘old boy’ (OB) networks that offer their retirees a platform to stay in touch with each other and with their erstwhile company. Involvement in neighbourhood and residents’ associations, chÜnaikai and jichikai, respectively, was also relatively high, being reported by more than one third of the respondents. These voluntary associations have long played an important role in Japanese community life, helping to

32 Social networks Table 3.2 Participation in groups and organizations. Based on Shimizu (2001: 134). Participate

85.8%

Retirees’ organisation

58.4%

Neighborhood association

34.2%

Hobby circle

30.1%

Senior citizens’ club

27.1%

Health, sports

19.9%

Study

15.4%

Do not participate

11.7%

n = 1,256

organize a system of mutual benefit and help, traffic safety, sanitation, garbage collection and recycling, neighbourhood improvement, local festivals, and so on. In the aged society they gain additional importance by at the same time providing services local governments are unable to pay for and giving healthy and vigorous elderly citizens an opportunity to contribute to society and thus avoid the stigma of rolelessness. The time elderly people of both sexes spend on active leisure activities is steadily increasing, and more people spend more time engaging in voluntary services (Kikuchi, 2004: 197). The Basic Survey of Social Life conducted triennially by the Japanese Government’s General Affairs Bureau has observed a gradual increase of volunteer activities by senior citizens.10 A clear distinction between volunteer activities and leisure is not always possible, however, this is an indication of the twofold nature of volunteerism by the elderly. They engage in these activities both in order to render a service and as a means of social participation. In this regard senior citizens’ clubs play an important role. They often cooperate with neighbourhood associations having overlapping memberships. Close to one third of the respondents of the above mentioned survey by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology patronize senior citizens’ clubs. Incorporated in a national federation, ZenrÜ, short for Zenkoku rÜjin kurabu rengÜkai, these clubs engage in various cultural, educational and health related activities promoting an active social life for their members (Figure 3.3). ZenrÜ considers as one of its major tasks providing opportunities for social contact, companionship and mutual support. Its self-declared mission is as follows: In the aged society of the twenty-first century, the local community’s elderly citizens strive to build a club that renders a social service. In order to further the health of the elderly and a sense of purpose in life, based on the fellowship of Senior Citizens’ Clubs, we offer mutual assistance and a gratifying club life.

Social networks 33 And the federation adds: The twenty-first century will be the century of the elderly. In the aged society of this century, it is the elderly who have to play the leading part. Zenkoku rÜjin kurabu rengÜkai (www4.ocn.ne.jp/%7Ezenrou/) This cannot be brushed aside as empty rhetoric as ZenrÜ commands a nationwide network of 130,075 affiliate clubs with a total membership of 8,429,458.11 ZenrÜ originated in the post-war years, the number of clubs growing rapidly from 112 in 1955 to 9,755 in 1960. Nation-wide coverage with a club accessible to virtually every senior citizen was accomplished by the end of the 1980s. On average each club has 65 members, a size that has been stable over the past 20 years and which allows club members to form relatively tight networks. On the basis of cross-cultural and evolutionary evidence, anthropologists consider 150 the maximum size of a group that is manageable in terms of its members’ ability to recognize each other and track their social relationships. Ranging between 50

Figure 3.3 RÜjin kurabu. Courtesy of the Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs (Zenkoku rÜjin kurabu rengÜkei).

34 Social networks Table 3.3 Members of a male cooking class and their age. Age

50s

60s

70s

Total

No. in class %

4 3.9

81 79.4

17 16.7

102

Source: www.betterhome.jp/anq/dansei/dansei.html

and 70 members, ZenrÜ clubs are potentially very cohesive. Members know each other and are thus able to promote mutual support and engage in various activities to their own benefit and that of society at large, such as study groups, charity bazaars, travel, sightseeing guide volunteers, and cultural exchange, among others. As mentioned above, elderly women tend to be more socially active than men and are more numerous in senior citizens’ clubs. Although statistics on the sex ratio are not available, the ZenrÜ headquarters in Tokyo estimates a six to four female majority. It is men who are most in need of acquiring social skills that were not much in demand in the past but are increasingly needed to lead a satisfying life after retirement. This need is reflected in the establishment in recent years of educational programmes especially designed for men after retirement to make them less dependant on their wives, such as cooking classes, for example. In keeping with demographic trends, providers of such services have experienced a boom in the first decade of the century. For example, the BetªhÜmu (Better home) chain of cooking schools first introduced classes for male students in 1991. Enrolment increased from an initial 300 to more than 5,000 in 2005. The age distribution of the students in a Tokyo branch as shown in Table 3.3 is indicative of the trend. The clientele is in the post-retirement bracket. Always susceptible to social trends, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, NHK, produced a serialized comedy in 2005, aired in 20 parts over five weeks, entitled RisÜ no seikatsu (An Ideal Life), whose protagonist Katsutoshi Todoroki, 60, dreams of an ideal life co-residing with his son after retiring from the trading company he has served for 38 years. His designs are thwarted, however, by his son who leaves the paternal house having plans of his own. Katsutoshi thus faces the grim reality of having to organize his life anew, just when he thought he had reached an age beyond confusion and uncertainty. He ends up attending cooking lessons and getting entangled in various new relationships that are a far cry from his ideal of an orderly retirement in the cosy environment of his family – but a lot more fun and excitement as may befit his generation of energetic elders.

Volunteer activities and age-integrated facilities The healthy elderly have both time to spend and the desire to do so in meaningful ways. Taken together, these conditions have opened up new fields of activity for pensioners and other elderly citizens to engage in, as mentioned above. A relatively new development is the emergence of age-integrated facilities within the

Social networks 35 wider context of social welfare institutions. In response to a shrinking student population, many elementary schools use their rooms below capacity. Schools have been closed; others have opened up their rooms and precincts to volunteer groups, especially those catering to the needs of elderly citizens. This is no mean accomplishment because schools come under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, whereas elderly welfare is the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The ministries of the Japanese government tend to guard their turf jealously, making the boundaries between them almost insurmountable. That both ministries have come together to create the possibility for elderly services to move into schools is a direct consequence of demographic change and the adjustment pressure that emanates from it (Thang, 2003). Integrating nurseries and old-age services is not quite as difficult because both belong to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, but the notion that the old and the young should get together, though by no means new in the context of the family, is innovative in institutional settings. There are, however, successful and promising examples ranging from relocating elderly services to nurseries and kindergartens to establishing day-care programmes where elders are assigned active roles as caregivers for infants. Of late, age-integrated facilities of this sort have been established by non-state organizations as well as within the framework of conventional state-run welfare facilities the most common being the combination of day service centres for the elderly with nursery schools. The clientele of elderly day service centres are typically seniors who do not co-reside with a child and accordingly have limited opportunities to interact with members of the middle and young generations. Combining senior citizen centres and nursery schools not just by using vacant rooms in the same physical location but in terms of charging healthy elderly with specific tasks is beneficial in several ways. As a socialized substitute of grand-parenting it helps to keep the cost of nursery schools down, and enlivens the monotony of the daily routine of clients at publicly financed elderly day-care centres. Age-integrated facilities first came into existence in metropolitan environments where the proportion of single households and elderly living alone is higher than in rural areas. However, the notion also found application in peripheral areas. For example, in 1992, Kono yubi tÜmare12 ‘Day-care House’ was established as the first private sector age-integrated day-care centre of Toyama Prefecture. It works with a staff of 28 full-time employees supplemented by six paid and 40 unpaid volunteers. Its services are available, for modest fees, from 8 am to 5:30 pm to anyone, infants and elders, including handicapped persons. The combination of professionals, healthy elderly volunteers, infants, and elderly requiring some form of support is experienced as beneficial by all concerned. As ever more people are physically able to enjoy an active life beyond retirement, social structures must be adjusted to allow them to do so. Age-integrated facilities are one way of creating opportunities for seniors to interact with children. Another aspect not to be underrated is that facilities of this sort contribute to changing the image of the elderly as expecting to be cared for by the family.

36 Social networks Smaller families and higher mobility imply reduced opportunities for intergenerational contact within the family and family-centred social networks. How does the society react to these developments? One observable trend is a shift from social networking being a private matter to a socialized concern involving local government agencies, companies and NPOs. Labour market adjustments promote mobility, making it difficult for sons and daughters to live near their parents. The number of elders living alone is increasing and so is that of working age people who regularly travel long distances to look after their elders. Several NPOs such as Ai no kai (Society of Love) in Shimane Prefecture and Tokyo-based Paokko, an umbrella organization that offers advice to the ‘long distance care community’ (Enkyori kaigo komyunitï)13 have come into existence in recent years to alleviate this problem. The upshot is a tendency for erstwhile family obligations to be socialized. As will become apparent in Chapter 4, a similar trend can be observed at the other end of the population pyramid, child-raising. Volunteer organizations and local government agencies assume some of the functions formerly associated with the family. Not everyone will agree with Sagaza’s (1999: 204) assessment that ‘a new lifestyle of the elderly is being born’ as people realize that they can be of use and experience the joy of living for others. Yet there can be no doubt that volunteerism is on the rise in Japan as a new way to build networks and to find meaning and satisfaction in life. Perhaps most important of all is the function of age-integrated facilities as a hinge of intergenerational communication and the formation of social networks that make up for those the shrinking and weakened family no longer affords.

4

The lonely child

Chihiro is an only child. She is miserable because she has to leave her school and her friends behind when moving house with her parents who can afford a bigger and better home. On the way to their new domicile the little girl’s parents venture into a picturesque but unpopulated and therefore somewhat spooky town. Chihiro doesn’t want to go, but her parents attribute her resistance to her moodiness. They come across an unattended restaurant with heaps of food that, thinking they can get a free lunch, they rapaciously devour. But there are no free lunches in this world, and they are promptly turned into swine. With a great deal of toil and anxiety Chihiro has to get them back.

The above is in short the plot of ‘Spirited Away’,1 Hayao Miyazaki’s celebrated animated film that shortly after its release in 2001 became Japan’s biggest ever box office hit. The film is a remarkable work of art, but its mass appeal suggests that it also struck a timely theme many Japanese can relate to because it is symbolic of current social trends. Chihiro is the lonely Japanese child of our day, surrounded by elderly people with strange habits and stranger demands, having to find her way in, or rather out of, a hostile, alienated and unashamedly hedonistic society with little regard for its offspring. In this monstrous world of deviants, freaks and survivors of pathological families that appear normal only on the surface, Chihiro musters the strength, almost on her own, to cope with the social catastrophe of postmodernity, the breaking away of all reliable social ligatures.

From overpopulation to depopulation Japan’s birth rate is at an all-time low. Every new figure confirms the seemingly irreversible trend. But this was not always so. The story of how fertility is socially regulated in Japan is a complex one. In the course of the twentieth century, the Japanese government switched back and forth several times between encouraging and constraining marital fertility. Prior to World War II, large families with five or six children were not rare. During the war, the government lowered the legal marriage age, proscribed contraception, and promoted a family size of at least five children per couple. After the war the government changed course 180 degrees and

38 The lonely child adopted a policy of family planning. Sanjiseigen (reproductive control) became a household word to many Japanese. Literally meaning ‘births limitation’, it entails a direct appeal to families. The baby boom of the post-war years triggered what in hindsight seems a rather alarmist policy response. In keeping with Japan’s tradition of suasion and state intervention in personal affairs, the public were admonished that the national land, reduced by 40 per cent as a result of the defeat and the lost empire, could not support population growth beyond the 80 million Japan counted in the late 1940s. Shortages and the repatriation from overseas of millions of demobilized troops were additional concerns. Curbing population growth that at the peak of the baby boom had reached a startling rate of 5 per cent in 1946 therefore seemed a matter of sustaining tolerable living conditions. Reducing marital fertility was seen as the only viable measure to accomplish that. Sanjiseigen thus became official policy. Following the advice of US demographers Warren S. Thompson and Pascal K. Whelpton who visited then-occupied Japan, the revised National Eugenic Law of 1948, now named Eugenic Protection Law, recognized induced abortion for ‘economic reasons’ (Muramatsu, 2002: 906). With a change of the Drug Law that made contraception legal and more easily available, and a 1951 Cabinet Decision regarding Popularization of Family Planning, a new cycle of reproductive control began in Japan,2 welcomed by many feminists who considered family planning a means of liberation from the confines of domestic duties. Whether these measures caused, or were just conducive to, the birth-rate decline that soon followed is hard to ascertain. According to one interpretation, it continued the modern demographic transition that began in the late nineteenth century but was interrupted by World War II (Mosk, 1979). The fact is that as of 1950 the birth rate fell almost continuously, recovering only slightly in the early 1970s as an echo of the baby boom. From 2,670,000 in 1974 the number of live births fell to 1,760,000 in 2002 with no reversal of the trend in sight. How things have changed. Sanjiseigen is not on anyone’s policy agenda any more. Quite the contrary. Japan’s future is not in jeopardy by an unchecked abundance, but rather by a shortage of children. Extremely low total fertility rates, 1.25 in the calendar year 2005, are perceived as the major demographic problem, much more so than the swelling ranks of elderly citizens. In 1975, 53 per cent of all households were households with children (younger than 15). By 2003, this percentage had dropped to 28.2 per cent.3 Japan has become a society where too few babies are born, and policy makers, social planners and social scientists ask themselves why.

Causes of fertility decline This question is much harder than may seem at first glance, although some scholars think they know the answer. For example, Yutaka Harada of the Daiwa Institute of Research flatly states ‘The reason why the number of children is diminishing is that the cost of children is increasing’ (Harada, 2005: 30). Many of his fellow economists concur, for the theory of the demographic transition stipulates that lowered mortality and lowered fertility are the products of economic development. Yet it is unclear if fertility declined in response to economic conditions. The

The lonely child 39 baby boom, which occurred at a time of economic hardship, lends little credence to this assumption. Other economists therefore concede that the issue is complex and that a multiplicity of factors and correlations has to be taken into account. As Matsutani and Fujimasa (2002) have pointed out, we still do not fully understand why the birth-rate declines when population ageing occurs. The fact that it is a common phenomenon observed in many industrial countries suggest common causes, but socioeconomic conditions in advanced industrial societies are sufficiently diverse to make common causal factors hard to detect, and Japan’s unabated fertility decline today adds more uncertainty to the search for explanatory theories. Why is it that as life expectancy rises, fertility declines? Why shouldn’t both be independent variables? This is the great demographic puzzle. Is it possible to identify the external factors, such as technology and hygiene, which act on both variables, or is the assumption of a self-adjusting equilibrium-seeking interdependent system a more promising framework for analyzing fertility, as, for example, Hirschman (1994) has suggested? If systemic pressure is responsible for Japan’s steep fertility decline, then the underlying homeostatic principle that drives the system has not yet been uncovered. The issue is not just of theoretical interest, for in the absence of a clear understanding of how the system works interventions may not have the desired effect. If we consider fertility dynamics in Japan it must be noted that the decline accelerated as of the mid-1970s after two decades of relative stability. The oil crises of 1973 and 1980 dampened economic growth. Annual increase of GDP declined, while real-estate prices continued to rise making it more difficult for young people

Figure 4.1 Age of first marriage, 1950–2004. Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Statistics and Information Department, 2005.

40 The lonely child Table 4.1 Members per household, 1970–2000. Household and Household Members Year

Households Average (1000) annual increase %

Household Members members per household (1000)

Population Average (1000) annual increase %

1970

30.297

3.00*

103.351

3.41

104.665

1.08

1975

33.596

2.09

110.338

3.28

111.940

1.35

1980

35.824

1.29

115.451

3.22

117.060

0.90

1985

37.980

1.18

119.334

3.14

121.049

0.67

1990

40.670

1.38

121.545

2.99

123.611

0.42

1995

43.900

1.54

123.646

2.82

125.570

0.31

2000

46.782

1.28

124.725

2.67

126.926

0.21

Source: Japan Statistical Yearbook 2004. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. * Annual rate of increase between 1960 and 1970.

to finance their housing needs and start a family. At the same time, women flocked to universities in increasing numbers and female workforce participation grew continuously. According to the national census of 1995, 60 per cent of all women between 20 and 60 held a paid job at the time; this was as high as 74 per cent in the

Figure 4.2 Correlation of income and marriage rate for men. Source: Investigation of Desire carried out by Culturestudies and e-Falcon, quoted from Miura (2005: 124).

The lonely child 41 20–24 age bracket. These trends coincided with a steady increase of the age of first marriage4 (Figure 4.1) for both sexes and with a decrease of the number of members per household (Table 4.1). From 1950 to 2005, the age of first marriage rose by on average four years for both sexes, driving the age at when the first child is born up and the number of births per women down. A correlation was furthermore discovered between income and marriage rate. The ratio of the unmarried is highest among men with a low income (Figure 4.2). This observation has led to the conclusion that the overall marriage rate is declining, and with it the birth rate, because lower income groups can no longer afford marriage. The spiralling cost of education and the ever-more pressing perceived need to provide one’s children with a good education to secure their chances in a society of increasingly fierce competition and growing social disparity is often cited as an additional, if not the decisive factor. Education has indeed become more expensive. According to economist Morinaga (2004), the cost of a complete 14-year course from kindergarten to high school graduation amounts to between 5 million and 10 million yen, depending on various combinations of public and private schools. A four-year university course would add to that a minimum of 4 million yen. These outlays do not include fees for extracurricular cram classes or home teachers, living expenses and hobbies. As measured against an average annual household income of 5.8 million yen (2003),5 this is a heavy load to bear. Couples who make this kind of calculation may well be discouraged from having more than one child, if any. Yet, the argument that the Japanese do not procreate because they can no longer afford children misses the point, because, the long economic crisis of the 1990s notwithstanding, Japanese society has never been more affluent. The moremouths-to-feed argument has often been made, and a positive relation between family size and poverty as well as vulnerability to poverty has often been established. However, in the case of post World War II Japan the argument is not compelling, not least because poverty is a very relative notion. A conspicuous feature of Japan’s society from after the war until the end of the high-growth period in the 1980s is that it steadily increased its wealth without leaving many behind. This was the time when the ideology of a middleclass society, chñryñ shakai, and the aspiration of ‘making a decent living, like others’, hitonamini kurasu, captivated Japan. Everybody participated in the seemingly boundless expansion, yet fertility declined. The seeming paradox of the co-occurrence of falling birth rate and growing social wealth is encapsulated in Figure 4.3.

Lifestyle Economic reductionism is tempting, but it doesn’t do justice to the complexity of social reality. Declining fertility is a multifaceted phenomenon that defies monocausal explanation. It is a social catastrophe because it fundamentally changes the social body and its mechanism of reproduction. For a population that has been growing for as long as its oldest members can remember to start shrinking

42 The lonely child

Figure 4.3 Gross national income per capita and total fertility rate, 1970–2005.

is an occurrence of major consequence. Rather than a reduction of the same to a smaller scale, the shrinking of the family, the hesitancy to reproduce, and the disappearance of siblings signifies the dissolution of an old social organization and the formation of a new one. Economic parameters alone are insufficient to explain socially-regulated fertility and the momentous transformation it brings in its wake. Consider the elegant S-curve in Figure 4.2. It establishes a positive correlation between income and marriage rate, but can a causal relationship between the two be inferred from it? Hardly. For one thing, young men tend to be unmarried and have low incomes, both because they are young, not the other way round. Setting up one’s own household and having children incurs costs, to be sure, but other factors come into play that arbitrate their influence on individual decisions to get married and have children (or not). These factors are summarily referred to as ‘lifestyle’, a rather murky concept shunned by many demographers and economists because it is hard to operationalize, but indispensable if we want to understand why children are out of fashion and why many Japanese women and men defer marriage and have fewer children than they consider ideal.6 Lifestyle has to do with attitudes and values, with preferences and priorities, with cultural orientations, ideas and images promoted in the mass media; desires, consumption pressure, ideologies and possible life plans. Japanese society since the end of World War II has undergone enormous transformations in this regard. The general level of education has risen significantly and in its wake the Japanese have embraced individualism to an extent unimaginable in the early phase of industrialization. Möhwald (2000) diagnoses ‘a clear relativization and weakening of values in every area of life since the mid-1980s, especially in relation to the family, marriage, work, and everyday behaviour.’ At the same time and as an

The lonely child 43 expression of this trend the nature of marriage has changed, with the idea of love marriage as opposed to arranged marriage gaining wide acceptance. Just this one point is of great consequence, and it is only one of many changes that have occurred. If mutual love is a precondition of marriage, the possibility that no suitable partner will be found is implied. This is in stark contrast to a social arrangement where marriage is taken for granted and is basically a question of appropriate age. To the extent that love marriage gained ground at the expense of arranged marriage, the number of life-long unmarried men and women has been on the increase (Table 4.2). And as unmarried life has become more common, the social stigma formerly attached to it is fading away, reinforcing the tendency. The influential monthly ChñÜ KÜron thus announced ‘the advent of a society without marriage’.7 Other social conditions also change, both in response to demographic developments and the spread of attitudes and ideologies. Since the 1950s the growth rate of the number of households has consistently exceeded that of the population. Between the national censuses of 1990 and 1995 the population grew by 1.6 per cent, while the number of households increased by 7.9 per cent (Sagaza, 1999: 42). During the next five years until the national census of 2000 this trend became even more pronounced, with population growth being a mere 1.08 per cent while at 6.56 per cent the increase in the number of households was more than six times that. The obvious implication is that the household size is steadily decreasing. The upsurge of single-person households accounts for some of this decrease, but declining fertility also strengthen the trend. As a result most children not only have older parents, but also fewer siblings than their parents had when they were young. They have fewer Table 4.2 Ratio of life-long unmarried men and women. Men Year

Ratio of life-long unmarried (%)

Women Age of first marriage

Ratio of life-long unmarried (%)

Age of first marriage

1950

1.46

26.2

1.35

23.6

1960

1.26

27.4

1.87

25.0

1970

1.70

27.5

3.33

24.7

1975

2.12

27.6

4.32

24.5

1980

2.60

28.7

4.45

25.1

1985

3.89

29.6

4.32

25.8

1990

5.57

30.3

4.33

26.9

1995

9.07

30.5

5.28

27.2

2000

12.57

30.81

5.82

28.58

Source: Latest Demographic Statistics, 2005. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

44 The lonely child opportunities to interact with other children inside the family and hence grow up in a very different world. Their socialization breeds a new generation that creates a new society, the shÜshika shakai or ‘society with fewer children’.8

Consequences of fertility decline Both the otaku and the hikikomori are children of this society. Referring to nonnormative social behaviour as well as to those who exhibit it, these terms spread rapidly through Japanese society in the late 1980s and a decade later, respectively. Otaku, who have meanwhile gained a measure of recognition as representing a legitimate sub-culture, stay by themselves, spending their days absorbed in their obsession; electronic games, manga and other products of popular culture they admire. Although reclusive, they associate with each other, at least in cyberspace, and are not antisocial. The hikikomori phenomenon gained wide publicity after being given that name by psychologist Tamaki SaitÜ in a 1998 book. Hikikomori, or acute social withdrawal, is characterized by uncommunicative behaviour and severe avoidance of social interaction. SaitÜ estimates that there are between 500,000 and 1 million youths nationwide afflicted by this condition, most of them male. The hikikomori are a product of Japanese society in more than one sense. No reliable statistics exist, but judging from the enormous media attention showered upon them after the publication of SaitÜ’s book (and some follow-ups), many families must have reason to take an active interest in the phenomenon. If SaitÜ’s estimate is reasonably realistic then hikikomori is a serious problem affecting as it does a substantial part of the age cohort.9 The shrinking of the family produces new subjectivities and new patterns of interaction, exemplified, for example, by the otaku and hikikomori. There is no hard proof that these conditions follow from the reduced family size, but the swelling numbers of families with just one child is a matter of concern to many Japanese. From 1975 to 2003, the percentage of all households with more than one child fell from 33 per cent to 16.1 per cent.10 As a proportion of all households the households with only one child also diminished, but their share of the total of all households with children has grown. One-child families have become more prevalent. It seems that the fewer children the Japanese produce the more the problem of raising children commands their attention. The only child is a topic of intense public debate. Psychologist Akira Tago (2005a) advises parents of only children not to pity them for being an only child or adopt an apologetic attitude towards them, but apparently this advice is not easy to follow. The only child at the centre of the family signifies, more than anything else, inequality and asymmetric communication. Inside the family the only child, not having any siblings to compete with or to talk to, interacts with adults exclusively. Convincing, persuading and appeasing others means convincing, persuading and appeasing adults. Their face-to-face communication skills are often underdeveloped. Headphones clamped on their heads, they prefer to communicate with others by means of electronic devices. Evidence suggests that the only child is a problem both for parents and children.

The lonely child 45 In 2004, Tago published ‘a book for the son who is an only child’. Its immediate success – 17 reprints within two months – prompted author and publisher to produce a similar book ‘for the daughter who is an only child’, followed by two further volumes for parents of such children of either sex (Tago 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b). Public attention is just an indication of the social significance of the issue. What the social consequences of the increasing number of individuals who grow up without siblings will be is still a matter of speculation. In their early childhood, these children may be pampered by two parents and four grandparents. However, when they grow up they face the prospect of having to return their favours, which may be a considerable strain on the individual level as well as on the aggregate social level. As the national census only ascertains the number of people living in a household at the time of the survey and their relation to the household head, the number of lifelong only children is hard to establish. However, the shrinking household size suggests that it is on the increase. The only-child family will become a more common pattern of domestic life. Whether a ‘society of the unattached’ will emerge as a result is an important question whose full significance is yet to be fathomed out.

Regional differences Structural economic conditions and lifestyle aspects that are cited to explain fertility decline should not be considered alternatives. Lifestyle and market dynamics are not independent variables acting on demographic behaviour. There is wide agreement that ‘hard’ economic interests and ‘soft’ cultural values and ideologies interact in multifarious and complex ways to propel change. This is evident from regional disparities in demographic behaviour. Japan’s capital is ahead of all trends indicative of fertility decline. At 7.8 live births per 1,000 population, Tokyo’s birth rate is the lowest in the country, followed by other big cities such as Sapporo (8.1), Kitakyushu (8.4), Kyoto (8.6), Osaka (8.8) and Nagoya (8.9). At the upper end are rural prefectures, southern Okinawa being in the lead with 12.1, followed by Shiga (10.1) and Aichi (10.0).11 These figures translate into very low TFR values. Tokyo’s TFR12 fell below 1.0 for the first time in 2003, while that of Okinawa was 1.72, markedly above the national average, but still below replacement-level fertility. Fertility and evermarried fertility are lowest in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas (Table 4.3). Of families with children, Tokyo has the highest proportion of single-child families as well as the highest age of first marriage.13 Not surprisingly, at 12 per cent Tokyo also has the smallest proportion of children of the total population among the 47 prefectures, while Okinawa has the highest at 19 per cent.14 A look at household composition reveals similar trends and regional differences. In 2000, the number of household members was 2.67 for Japan, while the figure for Tokyo was only 2.21. Of the city’s 5,371,057 households a staggering 2,194,342 or 40.9 per cent were one-person households (Figure 4.4).15 Tokyo also leads the nation in terms of the proportion of the never-married population of

46 The lonely child Table 4.3 Total fertility rate of Japanese prefectures, 2004. 2004

2004

Tokyo

1.01

Gunma

1.35

Kyoto

1.14

Ishikawa

1.35

Nara

1.16

Yamanashi

1.36

Hokkaido

1.19

Yamaguchi

1.36

Saitama

1.20

Tochigi

1.37

Kanagawa

1.20

Toyama

1.37

Osaka

1.20

Shizuoka

1.37

Chiba

1.22

Okayama

1.38

Miyagi

1.24

Ooita

1.40

Hyogo

1.24

Shiga

1.41

Fukuoka

1.25

Nagano

1.42

Wakayama

1.28

Iwate

1.43

All Japan

1.29

Kagawa

1.43

Akita

1.30

Fukui

1.45

Kochi

1.30

Nagazaki

1.46

Gifu

1.31

Yamagata

1.47

Tokushima

1.31

Kumamoto

1.47

Ibaragi

1.33

Kagoshima

1.47

Hiroshima

1.33

Shimane

1.48

Ehime

1.33

Saga

1.49

Niigata

1.34

Tottori

1.50

Aichi

1.34

Fukushima

1.51

Mie

1.34

Miyazaki

1.52

Aomori

1.35

Okinawa

1.72

Source: Statistics and Information Department, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (KÜsei rÜdÜ hakusho, 2005).

either sex. According to the Marriage Information Service Council, 54.2 per cent of Tokyo’s men aged 30–34 and 65.3 per cent of Tokyo’s women aged 25–29 were unmarried in 2004, as compared with national averages of 42.9 and 54.0, respectively.16 With 5,517 inhabitants per square kilometre Tokyo’s population density was 16 times the national average of 340, as compared to Hokkaido’s 73, less than a quarter of the national average.

The lonely child 47

Figure 4.4 Household composition: Japan, Tokyo. Source: Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2005.

Although not all demographic indicators can be divided neatly along the urban rural line – for example, Okinawa has a relatively high single-person-household rate – it can be said with some confidence that it is the hectic, congested city life and much that comes with it, such as expensive real-estate, long working hours and commuting, a highly competitive labour market, the highest female workforce participation and many diversions and cultural attractions that is most unfavourable to starting a family and having children. However, while the shortage of children is most pronounced in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas, birth-rate decline is a nationwide phenomenon leaving no city, town or rural district unaffected. Tokyo is embodying a general development to which the nation as a whole feels the need to respond. Over the past two decades a variety of schemes has been proposed and implemented to halt the trend, so far to little avail.

Countermeasures The ‘1.57 shock’ of 1989, when the total fertility rate hit a post-war low, first brought the declining birth rate to public attention. An inter-ministry committee on ‘Creating a Sound Environment for Bearing and Rearing Children’ was established in 1990, leading to the enactment in 1991 of the Childcare Leave Act. In 1994 and 1999, the Japanese government implemented the ‘Angel Plan’17 and the ‘New Angel Plan’ intended to create an environment more favourable for families with children by further improving child-care facilities, parental leave programmes and support for working mothers. In 1997, the Child Welfare Law was revised to provide for the establishment of support centres for households with children. As these policies had no noticeable effect on fertility, the government continued to develop new pro-natalist policies and programmes. The ‘Basic Law on Measures for the Society with a Declining Birthrate’ and the ‘Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next-Generation’ were adopted and came into force in 2003. The ‘Basic Law’ defines responsibilities of the central and local governments for measures to be taken in the low-fertility

48 The lonely child society, while the Next-Generation Law targets the socialization of children emphasizing corporate social responsibility. It promotes cooperation of government and business in supporting education of the next generation and calls on business owners to reckon with employees’ needs with regard to child-raising. Further, in 2004 the ‘New-New Angel Plan’ or ‘Child Care Support Plan’ for 2005–9 was adopted and the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act was revised. Building on the earlier Angle Plans, the New-New Angel Plan puts emphasis on (1) the economic independence of young persons, (2) reconciling work and family life, (3) the value of human life and the family, and (4) mutual support in childraising. Because the situation in the absence of these policies cannot be known, their effectiveness is hard to assess. On the face of it, they have had no noticeable effect. There is no general agreement among politicians or the general public as to what measures are most suitable to reverse birth-rate decline, although a survey by Asahi Shimbun shows a large majority favouring economic assistance for families with children (Figure 4.5). This uncertainty is reflected by a diversity of measures discussed and implemented at municipal and prefecture levels. In 2004, the Metropolitan Tokyo Welfare Council drafted a proposal for the ‘conversion to Urban-Type Child Care Services and Welfare Reform’, focussing on new child-care facilities and facilitation of certification for private businesses and NPOs to operate such facilities. These policies were discussed and partially implemented in Tokyo’s wards and cities in various ways. Other schemes include free health care for children up to the age of 15, as implemented in Minato ward in 2005. Public agencies increasingly call on business to get more actively involved in efforts to raise fertility rates. For example, the governor of Ishikawa prefecture floated the idea of a ‘preferential

Figure 4.5 Asahi Shimbun poll about important fertility boosting measures, 10 September 2005 (multiple answers possible).

The lonely child 49 treatment pass’ (yñtai pasu) that would entitle families with three or more children under the age of 18 to various discounts, provided business supported the plan.18 All the while the pressure on the national government to come up with a comprehensive population policy mounted, leading to the creation, after the general election in September 2005, of a new ministry charged with the task of finding the reasons for the low birth rate and taking effective counter measures. A policy priority identified after the creation of the new ministry is to correct the imbalance in government spending on the elderly and on children. In the fiscal year 2002, 3.2 billion yen were spent on child-care facilities and child-rearing benefits, which accounted to just 3.8 per cent of the 83.6 billion yen budget for social security benefits. About 70 per cent of that budget is allocated to support for the elderly. Shifting the balance in favour of children at the expense of the elderly can be a long-term project at best. In the meantime, more palatable proposals are mulled such as a system of reducing or cancelling child-care facility cost as of the second child19 or a cost-free child delivery policy.20 However, there is little doubt that patchwork measures will not suffice to remedy the ‘lowest-low fertility’21 problem. A more thoroughgoing reconstruction of Japanese society will be inevitable. The name of the new cabinet post indicates the direction in which the society will have to move. It is called ‘Minister of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs’, reflecting what students of gender relations have repeated many times; that the low birth rate will not be turned around unless the prevailing gender inequality is faced more forcefully.

5

Women and men at work

When Aiko celebrated her fourth birthday on 1 December 2005, she stood at the centre of a controversy that some thought was of great importance for the future of the nation. For Aiko is a princess, and the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako. Should she become heir to the throne? No, said traditionalist hardliners, who wanted to preserve the 1947 Imperial House Law under which only males who have emperors on their father’s side can succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne. But yes, said an advisory council of learned persons and the Prime Minister, who made their opinion his own. A revised law would allow a female monarch and put Aiko second in line, edging out Prince Akishino, the Crown Prince’s brother. However, under pressure from conservative lawmakers, the Prime Minister shelved the bill indefinitely, demonstrating once again that progress is slow and subject to obstacles and backlash along the way. A lot of water has yet to pass under the bridges of the Sumida before Japan’s top job can be filled by a woman. That will be a major change indeed. Some say that the very discussion about this possibility is foreshadowing it.

Gender and labour force participation One of the most conspicuous features of the hyper-aged shrinking society with few children is the ongoing reconfiguration of gender relations. Gender is where the upper and lower ends of Japan’s demographic crisis come together. For the time being it is women who have to bear children, and it is women who have to bear the brunt of caring for the elderly. As mentioned in Chapter 3 they outlive men by about seven years, which quite apart from socially-conditioned task divisions makes it more likely women will care for elderly men than vice versa. For these reasons alone, women’s contributions to the wellbeing and reproduction of society are crucial, but this has, however, not gained them recognition as equal partners in society’s evolution. Moreover, driven both by economic necessity and lifestyle choices the female workforce participation rate has steadily grown ever since Japan’s industrialization. Women no longer accepted managing the household as their sole purpose in life, and at the same time had to take a job to supplement the family income. Nowadays double-income households are the norm. Japanese female labour force participation is comparable with other advanced industrial countries (Table 5.1), but the labour force structure differs. Equal opportunities is

Women and men at work 51 Table 5.1 Total labour force and its ratio to population (2003). Labour force (1,000)

Labour force ratio

Male

Female

Male

Female

39,340

27,320

91.8

64.2

Australia

5,515

4,451

82.4

66.8

Canada

9,136

7,911

83.5

73.0

France

14,286

12,647

73.8

64.8

Germany

21,590

17,686

77.6

64.9

Italy

14,453

9,465

74.5

48.8

United Kingdom

16,643

13,442

83.1

68.7

United States

78,238

68,272

80.5

70.3

Japan

Source: OECD, Labour Force Statistics 1983–2003.

a goal further removed and harder to achieve for Japanese women than for their European and North American counterparts. The M-shaped pattern of women’s labour market participation best symbolizes the structural inequality of the sexes (Figure 5.1). It shows a steep decline after the onset of the (social) childbearing age never to fully recover thereafter. The corresponding pattern for men does not exhibit a similar depression. Shirahase (2005: 24f) has demonstrated that this pattern emerged in the 1960s in response to accelerated urbanization and the ensuing shift of female employment

Figure 5.1 Labour force participation rate by sex and age. Source: Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, 2005.

52 Women and men at work status. While the female labour force participation was stable, and even declined for some time, women moved from self-employed or unpaid family work to paid work in the secondary and tertiary sectors. By the year 2000 the proportion of employees had risen to 80 per cent of all working women. The increase of the proportion of female workers whose salary is a tangible part of the household income had direct consequences for the image of the family and the gender roles it incorporates. The results of a long-term survey about ‘the ideal family’ conducted every five years over a period of 30 years by NHK (Figure 5.2) exhibits a clear trend away from gender-specific role allotment to a cooperative partnership. Conjugal cooperation of husband and wife was favoured by only 21 per cent in 1973, but by more than twice as many, 46 per cent, in 2003. At the same time, the proportion of those who support the notion that the husband leads and the wife follows almost halved from 22 per cent to 13 per cent. Noticeable also is the increased approval of more independence for husband and wife, reflecting the growing economic power of women and the weakening of the breadwinner plus housewife family model. This survey is indicative of a general trend from domination to partnership in marriage and a reduction of inequality in the social division of labour. It is backed up by many similar polls. For example, a long-term attitude study about gender roles found that in 1978, 50.4 per cent of the respondents agreed that the husband should go out to work while the wife should be a full-time homemaker, with 31.7 per cent opposed and 17.8 per cent undecided. Twenty years later, 61.2 per cent were opposed and only 18.4 per cent were in favour of this family model, with 20.3 per cent being undecided (Inoue and Ehara, 2005: 141). Support for the notion that women should continue to work after giving birth has more than tripled over a period of 30 years, from 11.5 per cent in 1972 to 37.2 per cent in 2002 (Inoue and

Figure 5.2 Changing ideals of marital relations, 1973–2003. Source: NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004: 28)

Women and men at work 53 Ehara, 2005:145). However, although data from various sources suggest that stronger female participation in economic and social life is both increasingly necessary and desired, there is a noticeable gap between attitudes and social reality. A discontinuous working life interrupted by a period of child-rearing is still characteristic of many women. According to a nationwide representative survey conducted in 1999 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, more than 70 per cent of women stopped working at the time of giving birth to their first child.1 What is more, despite a relatively high female labour force participation rate and generally more positive attitudes toward shared responsibilities of husband and wife, employment conditions for men and women continue to be very different. Career chances and career patterns still exhibit a strong gender bias (Bishop, 2000). A report by Teikoku Databank2 reveals that the ratio of female company presidents rose by 0.04 per cent in 2005. Of 1,179,369 companies surveyed, 67,299 (5.71 per cent) had a female president. This low rate is characteristic of executive positions in the private sector, and the public sector is not very different. Seven per cent of all elected politicians in communal and prefecture assemblies are women, eight per cent in the Lower House of the National Diet and 16 per cent in the Upper House. The upper levels of the bureaucracy are a largely male domain. At the time of writing, Japan had just two female ambassadors. Law is practiced predominantly by men, just 12 per cent of all judges and lawyers being women. The only professional field where women are on a par with men is education, due to the fact that 94 per cent of all nursery school teachers are female. The wage disparity gap between men and women is notably wide (Table 5.2). Gender-based wage disparities were often justified on the grounds that women did not have to support a family. Theirs were ‘supplementary earnings’, a notion that weakened women’s position in the labour market and that employers exploited to their advantage. It must be noted that it is not because of lifestyle changes and ideologies of self-realization that women go out to work. Economic Table 5.2 Disparity of hourly pay for women and men. Female Year

Fulltime workers (¥)

Male Part-time Disparity workers (¥)

Fulltime Part-time Disparity workers (¥) workers (¥)

1990

989

712

72.0

1632

944

57.8

1992

1127

809

71.8

1812

1053

58.1

1994

1201

848

70.6

1915

1037

54.2

1996

1255

870

69.3

1976

1071

54.2

1998

1295

886

68.4

2002

1040

51.9

2000

1329

889

66.9

2005

1026

51.2

Source: Salary Structure Basic Statistical Survey. Ministry of Health and Labour, 2001.

54 Women and men at work necessity makes them do so. But as women moved onto the labour market, the relationship between family life and work changed. When women were predominantly self-employed and doing unpaid work in family businesses, it was easier to combine work and domestic duties. As employees they spend more time away from home, which makes the harmonization of work and family much harder. Gender bias must be understood as an attribute of Japan’s economic culture as it evolved in industrial society. At the present time, this culture is coming under pressure from various directions because it no longer seems to serve the welfare of the nation. The globalization of markets and the demographic trends of population ageing and decline are the most important factors that interact with ideological currents that favour equality of the sexes. An intricate two-way dynamic that is a reciprocity of cultural and economic developments is at work that disfavours a clear gender-specific role division. This dynamic has a bearing on and is influenced by fertility. As the overall working population declines, women are drawn onto the labour market. In order to secure a family income sufficient to provide for their lifestyle requirements including a good education for their children, women spend more time away from home; but while formerly the majority of female workers did not compete with men, they now do in growing numbers, no longer accepting withdrawal from the labour force as an automatic consequence of marriage and childbearing. However, as this expectation is still prevalent among many employers, women defer marriage and childbearing with the result that fertility further declines. It is indisputable that time is more highly appreciated when spent on paid work. To the extent that women have moved from unpaid to paid work the perceived opportunity costs of having children have risen. This is certainly true under a system where childbearing implies diminished promotion chances, a lower wage and a lengthy interruption of the working life. Conservative critics of sexual equality argue that imported ideologies and the high educational level of women and increased female labour force participation are to blame for Japan’s dwindling fertility,3 but mainstream opinion is that rather than ideology and education the discriminatory employment system that favours careers for men and supplementary income jobs for women is at the heart of the problem. The notion that further corrections of the gender bias and a consequent restructuring of the labour market are essential for fertility trends to be reversed is widely accepted. It is for this reason that Japan is set to embrace gender equality policies more forcefully than has been the case so far.

Gender equality policies According to the Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society (Law no. 78, 1999), building a gender-equal society is a top priority of the Japanese government. This is not because the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is particularly committed to equal rights for women – 9.8 per cent of LDP National Diet members are women – but because its policy makers have enough insight to realize the inevitability of more equality and better working conditions for women if Japan is to stay internationally competitive. The preamble of the law, therefore states:

Women and men at work 55 […] to respond to the rapid changes occurring in Japan’s socioeconomic situation, such as the trend toward fewer children, the ageing of the population, and the maturation of domestic economic activities, it has become a matter of urgent importance to realize a Gender-equal Society in which men and women respect the other’s human rights and share their responsibilities, and every citizen is able to fully exercise their individuality and abilities regardless of gender. Quoted from Osawa et al. (2002: 294) Women’s rights activists were opposed to the reference to socioeconomic changes in the preamble of the law, aiming for an unqualified commitment to the equality of the sexes rather than a concession to overpowering developments. But the fact is that for some time economic and demographic pressures have worked against the system of clear-cut gender division that so successfully propelled Japan’s growth until the 1980s.4 The law responds to these changed realities, the battles that rage at the ideological front supplying the backdrop to the social shifts that come to pass as Japan adjusts to these pressures. In 1985, Japan ratified the 1974 UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and then enacted a series of laws to bring Japanese legislation into line with it. The Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) came into effect in 1986 and, after severe criticism by NGOs for being toothless, was amended in 1997. While the first EEOL was in many ways no more than a statement of intent lacking any enforcement machinery, the revised law not only prohibits gender discrimination at every stage of the employment system from job advertisements to retirement plans, but also provides for private right of action. Sanctions are possible under the new law and have had some effect. Every prefecture has established a Women’s and Young Workers’ Office that provides administrative guidance about equal employment opportunities. Under the law, the names of employers who fail to heed the office’s recommendations are to be made public. Another important improvement is a revised mediation mechanism that allows employees to initiate a mediation process in case of conflict without approval to do so on the part of the employer. Legislation designed to promote gender equality has changed Japanese society by improving the protection of women’s interests and enhancing opportunities in employment and education. Viewed within the context of countermeasures to fertility decline, however, the impact has been very limited. In addition, shortcomings and unexpected and undesirable side effects such as indirect discrimination have become apparent. The law proscribes discrimination against women in setting a retirement age or forcing them to resign upon getting married or pregnant. However, many employers have been slow to implement child-care leave systems and have failed to encourage employees to take full advantage of existing provisions. The general atmosphere at the workplace has been hostile to accommodating the needs of young parents, and many firms introduced an employment system that effectively perpetuated gender separation. The EEOL prohibits gender discrimination on the job, but does not

56 Women and men at work proscribe a recruiting practice that favours men over women in sÜgÜshoku (career and management) positions, while allowing women to enter the ippanshoku (general) track (Shire, 2000). The structural foundations of reserving managerial positions for men were thus laid outside the applicability of the law. Also, discrimination between non-full-time workers and full-time workers is not subject to the provisions of the law, which implies that many female workers employed in nominally non-full-time positions that exclude them from benefits in actual fact work full-time. For these female workers in particular the opportunity cost of childbearing is high because they are not entitled to child-care leave and face the risk of not being able to return to their job after a period of child-care leave. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Law helped female employees to make some inroads in the sÜgÜshoku career track, it has not provided women with equal access to jobs and salaries equal to men, as was intended. It also had the effect of diversifying the employment structure in that the proportion of part-time and short-term contract positions of all paid work has increased at the expense of regular positions with full benefits, thus helping employers to reduce the overall cost of labour. This is a response of business to deregulation and the forces of globalization as well as the changed frame conditions brought about by EEOL. Miura (2005: 70) points out that while the law reduced discrimination to the detriment of women, it also led to more competition and widening class differentiation among women and the working population at large. In the first ten years after the law came into effect, the number of women who continued working after giving birth rose from 16.1 per cent to 32.5 per cent (Araki, 1998), and the number of women in regular full-time and managerial positions also rose. But at the same time the share of regular fulltime positions of the total labour force has diminished and the number of part-timers and freeters has soared. This raises the question whether the price to pay for more equality between the sexes is more inequality for both sexes. The effects of gender-equality legislation on fertility are also far from clear. The case of Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture, is instructive. In 2004, the city’s TFR was found to be even lower than the prefecture average of 1.33. An investigation of the reasons found that the town’s biggest employer, Hitachi Co., where formerly young people most often found their marriage partner, no longer served this function.5 Prior to the 1999 Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society, the firm hired many young women who were not expected and did not expect to make a career. Many of them would leave the company upon getting married, which meant a great deal of flexibility for personnel resource management. Thanks to this easily adaptable portion of the firm’s workers there was no need for layoffs ever. Thus, in the early 1990s, Hitachi Co. had 2,000 women on the payroll. In 2005, there were just 200. What had happened? The company, rather than hiring women who would expect to keep their job and take child-care leave, making personnel management inevitably more complex and costly, hired men instead while reducing the company’s workforce. Management had solved a problem and created a new one. For while their worries about child-care leave and female career ambitions had been reduced, so had the chances of male employees to find a spouse. Both the ensuing discontent among male employees and the drop in the city’s birth rate were unanticipated and undesired consequences.

Women and men at work 57 Such are the unforeseen outcomes of rational policies designed to change social structures and cultural norms. Recent decades have seen a noticeable advance of women into traditionally male employment sectors. Consequently, gender roles are being redefined as the gender gap in qualification levels and workforce participation narrows. A clear majority of adult Japanese agree that women should go out to work more and that they should continue working after marriage and giving birth. But while the direction of social change is clear, the situation is unsettled and experienced as volatile by many because economic necessities – higher female labour force participation – and traditional mores – the ideal wife as a mother and homemaker – are incongruent. The growing proportion of Japan’s single population (Figure 5.3) can be interpreted as a reflection of this uncertainty. What Hodge and Ogawa stated almost two decades ago still holds today: ‘Japanese couples typically postpone marriage until they are ready to have children’ (1991: 31). The profound changes currently transforming Japanese society generate much

Figure 5.3 Japan’s single population. Source: Japan National Census, 2000.

58 Women and men at work uncertainty and insecurity making it difficult for young people to make life plans, as Yamada (2004a) has argued, because they will necessarily deviate from much that has been taken for granted in their middle-class society upbringing. They are, therefore, not ready to have children and consequently stay single.

Workers, husbands and fathers Another explanation for the growing single population is that a widening gap has opened between expectations and realities. The growing female labour force participation rate notwithstanding, what Japanese women expect from prospective marriage partners has not changed much; the proverbial sankÜ6 or ‘three Hs’: high education, high income and high stature. Miura (2005: 45) reports on a survey according to which 63.8 per cent of unmarried women want their would-be husband to earn an annual salary of no less than six million yen. Not many men in the 25–34 age bracket can meet this expectation. Shirahase (2005: 54f) also points out that the number of lifelong unmarried men has risen sharply since the 1960s and that the proportion of unmarried men is particularly high among those with an annual income up to 1,500,000 yen. Shirahase interprets these findings as indicating that attitudes towards marriage and expectations about gender roles do not change as quickly as actual social conditions. Women whose father is well-to-do and who have a good education are wary of a match that could lower their standard of living. Female freeters do not want to marry a male counterpart, but a man with a stable job and high income, much like the conventional family structure of the high-growth middle-class society they grew up in. On the other hand, only 18 per cent of unmarried men want a full-time homemaker as a wife (Yamada, 2004b: 21). It seems that men’s and women’s expectations about marriage are incongruous, and as a result men, especially in the lower income ranges, have difficulties finding a spouse. Ibe (2000) has identified another cause of the continuous rise of the proportion of unmarried men since the 1980s and, by implication, low fertility: ‘the enfeeblement of men’ (Ibe, 2000: 13). This change in gender relations didn’t appear out of nowhere; it must be seen as an aspect of Japan’s post-war development. Ibe argues that as a consequence of Japan’s defeat in World War II and the social changes it brought in its wake – reduced status of household head, better education opportunities for and achievements by women, increased female labour force participation, and a shift away from marriage by arrangement to marriage by mutual choice – men’s social standing has been destabilized, robbing them of their self-confidence. As boys they are told to study hard, ‘scolded by their mothers at home and by female teachers at school, and bullied by girl classmates. […] Girls evince no interest in boys with lower grades. This principle of ranking becomes even more pronounced at the university level’ (Ibe, 2000: 12). Female athletes have come to renown by winning at international competitions, and even the Self-Defence Forces have taken to employing more women because of their high motivation and level of skills. Japan’s future, Ibe concludes, depends on ‘men regaining their

Women and men at work 59 confidence and self-esteem and becoming thereby more attractive to women’ (Ibe, 2000: 13). While this analysis is clearly informed by traditional gender roles of manly men and womanly women, the case can be made that female advances into traditionally male domains are experienced by many men as undermining them. In combination with worsening employment conditions men find it harder than women to adjust to the ongoing reconfiguration of family and gender relations. They are no match for the strong women of the second baby boom generation born in the 1970s. The sexual behaviour of this age cohort can be cited as further evidence. In international comparisons of frequency of sexual intercourse the Japanese population ranks very low. People in their 30s have sex only one-fifth as many times as, for example, the French.7 That having children has to do with having sex is no secret, but this is not the point. At issue is the fact that in a society where intimate relations are normatively initiated by men, a low frequency of sex points to a lack of initiative on the part of men or a lack of interest in them on the part of women, as Ibe suggests. In any event, acquiescing to the new social realities seems to be harder for men than for women. Male reactions to gender-equality promoting legislation confirm this assessment. The Child Care Leave Law of 1991 guarantees the right to both male and female workers to leave to care for his or her child. This legislation was a landmark of major consequence, endorsing as it does the joint responsibility of both spouses for child-rearing and recognizing a couple’s right to determine how the harmonization of family and work is to be accomplished. This law was widely applauded as a significant step in the direction of a gender-equal society, but only a small number of male workers have taken advantage of it so far.8 In the event, the law was ahead if not of social trends then certainly of the acceptance of these trends. Being smiled upon by their colleagues at the workplace, men who take child-care leave fear compromising their career by taking the time out. The notion that fathers need to be or want to be as engaged as mothers in their children’s lives is not at present widely supported by Japanese enterprise culture, although, under the impression of the onset of population decline in 2005, some big companies such as Nissan – significantly, the first big firm with a foreigner as CEO – have begun to actively promote male workers’ child-care leave and thus create a more familyfriendly work environment. In many companies men continue to work long hours, leaving family duties to their wives. As one in four fathers in their 30s works more than 60 hours per week, policy measures intended to alleviate the double burden of working women cannot take effect as projected.9 The Japanese government has tried to deal with these deeply-ingrained working habits in various ways. In 2002, it adopted a plan on ‘Measures to Cope with a Fewer Number of Children Plus One’, the phrase ‘plus one’ meaning that marital fertility boosting measures should be further strengthened. Specifically, the plan calls for a greater participation of husbands/fathers in child-rearing. The government has also considered mandatory child-care leave for men or a mandatory quota of male workers’ child-care leave for companies. The Child Care Leave Law and similar measures make it clear that social engineering aiming at genderequality is not restricted to eliminating discrimination against women and

60 Women and men at work improving working conditions for mothers. Men’s lives are equally affected, and it is the realization of this fact that has met with the most difficulties. As students of gender have emphasized for a long time, a change of consciousness on the part of men is essential.10 Diaries written by men who took child-care leave have begun to appear on various websites and discussions about gender issues are crowded with advice columns for men. Observers such as Ibe, mentioned above, have called attention to the insecurity many Japanese men feel about their role in the rapidly evolving society. A gender-equal society is not taking shape without pains, resistance and backlash.

Rearguard action The transformation of gender roles inevitably meets with resentment and opposition on the part of conservative forces, especially among those who experienced the traditional family model of a working father and a caring mother as a key element of Japan’s resurrection after wartime defeat and successful rise from poverty to affluence. Not surprisingly, it is still viewed with nostalgia by many. Some of the reforms of the employment and social welfare systems seem to be predicated on the assumption that a return to that family system is possible once the current crisis is over. Gender equality is perceived by many as a threat to the family. Symbolic measures that highlight the independence of the sexes have therefore met with considerable resistance. A conspicuous example is the discussion about separate names for spouses, fñfu bessei, or rather fñfu besshi, in legal parlance. Japan’s first civil code of 1898 mandated fñfu dÜsei, or same name for husband and wife, and the new civil code of 1947 requires both parties in a marriage to opt for one family name, the husband’s or the wife’s. In 97 per cent of all cases wives adopted their husband’s name (Hisatake, 2003). The desire of women to keep their own family name in marriage came to the fore as the age of first marriage rose and more women embarked on a career before getting married. Since the early 1990s, there has been a discussion about whether husband and wife should be given the option to carry a common name or separate family names. Although men and women, including the older age cohorts, do not believe that family cohesion is negatively affected by separate surnames,11 the Liberal Democratic Party has persistently voted down amendments to the civil code that would legalize the option. Many women and men associate the same-name practice with the old paternalistic family and, therefore, lobby for a revision of the law to allow for fñfu bessei. Although the number of both independent minded women and men is on the rise, they are faced with many obstacles, some structural, others having to do with social attitudes. Unmarried women are still viewed differently from men, for example. The issue attracted public attention when one of them, Junko Sakai, published a book in 2003 entitled ‘Howling of the underdog’, which was a great success and became the source of a TV drama aired in January 2005. As a result, makeinu (underdog) became a vogue word on everybody’s lips. While Sakai used the term by way of pointing out that, regardless of how they feel, single women

Women and men at work 61 above 30 are often pitied, it nevertheless quickly acquired the qualities of a derogatory term branding women belonging to these intersecting sets. It came to be understood as denoting the true nature of the working woman. No matter how good at her job and how beautiful she is, Sakai maintains, if she is single, over 30 and has no children, she is an underdog. That in any event is how women like her who are leading a self-sufficient and independent life are portrayed. Although they may pretend otherwise, they must be deeply unhappy, howling like a dog in search of its master; yearning for the safeness and warmth of a family as it should be. While this picture no longer reflects social reality, it is ambivalent precisely because it evokes traditional values that have a certain appeal and are cherished by many mothers of happily single second baby boomer daughters. Many women insist that they prefer to remain single and work rather than marry, start a family and/or depend on a husband; however, at the same time for many working is not a matter of preferred lifestyle but economic necessity. And what is more, it may not always be one or the other. Says Sakai: ‘In my generation the feeling that we really want to be weak and cared for by a man is still deeply rooted’ (Sakai, 2005: 34). It is thanks to this tension that makeinu caught the public eye, embodying as it does social reactions to changing gender roles. The outdated stigma on single women lingers on, but so does a nostalgic longing for a family model that is giving way to new forms of social ligatures. Yet another ligature must be mentioned that is part of the equation of work–life balance, gender equality and low fertility; that between parents and grown-up children. This factor is cited by many as a reason for remaining single. Many second baby boomers experience the life stage of the ‘sandwich generation’ squeezed in between parents and children as a forced choice between two burdens, only one of which they are willing or able to shoulder. The combination of long working hours, increased job insecurity, anxiety about their own retirement benefits in future and care for elderly parents makes them opt against children. A 34-year-old female employee of a catering firm is a case in point. She is unmarried and lives with her parents, usually coming home after work at about 11 o’clock at night. She has had several boyfriends in the past, but broke off relations for lack of time to spend together. She would like to have children but probably won’t, as she intends to continue working and living with her parents. She explains her point of view thus: I understand that low fertility is a grave problem; however, giving birth to a child depends on one’s personal outlook on life. I feel that the government is unreasonable clamouring for making babies out of a sense of crisis because of strained finances. […] I would like to get out of my present work–life ambiguity and let my parents die in peace. ‘Umitai? Umenai? Dankai junia’ (Having children – they want to, but they can’t? The second baby boom generation). Asahi Shimbun, 9 June 2005: 33.

6

The socialization of care

A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of killing his 65-year-old father in an incident that occurred in Tokyo’s Edogawa ward in February 2001. At the time the father was sleeping under the kotatsu. Further investigation of the case revealed that the son’s elder brother was handicapped and his mother suffered from cancer. The 50-kilogramme father was afflicted by a heart condition and rapidly progressing senile dementia. That he fell asleep under the kotatsu so irritated the hefty 100kilogramme son that he kicked him, causing injury resulting in death. It was determined that the stress and exhaustion of care giving was too much for the son. Doko made tsuzuku kaigo jigoku (How far does the care-giving hell go?) Mainichi Shimbun, 19 February 2001.

This tragic incident made headlines in 2001, highlighting a growing problem that is epitomized by yet another ominous entry in the dictionary of the hyper-aged society, kaigo jigoku or ‘nursing hell’. An Internet search yields 350,000 hits for this term, many of which lead to books, columns in print media and Internet blogs offering advice to people who feel crushed under the burden of having to look after bedridden, decrepit or mentally deteriorating relatives in ways nothing had prepared them for. As an outcome of population ageing, caring for the elderly has become a predicament for so many people that the society at large is affected. In 2004, the number of citizens aged 90 years and older topped one million. At the same time, the number of people entitled to receive nursing care was approaching 4 million.1 In 2005, 1.6 million elderly people aged at least 65 were suffering from various degrees of senile dementia, accounting for 7.7 per cent of this age group.2 And the trend is continuing, posing challenges to both state and society, which social scientists cannot ignore (Ogawa and Retherford, 1993; Institute for Social Education, 1994; Sagaza, 1999; Ueno, 2005). International comparisons show Japan as having the highest increase globally in the old-age dependency ratio, calculated by dividing the population aged 65 and over by the working-age population between about 30 and 65. According to projections by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the current ratio of 26 per cent (that is, 3.9 workers supporting 1 elderly citizen) will increase to the 50 per cent range by 2030 (that is, 2 workers supporting 1 elderly citizen).3 This level

The socialization of care 63

Figure 6.1 Number of senior citizens and ageing rate. Source: Kokuritsu shakaihoshÜ jinkÜ mondai kenkyñsho (2004: 30).

will be reached earlier than in other OECD countries. On this parameter as on others, Japan is experiencing ageing faster than most other industrialized nations. The ageing rate – the elderly population divided by the total population – is projected to reach 36 per cent by 2040 (Figure 6.1). It is not just the numbers that are threatening. The greying of Japan’s population is occurring at a time when the family structure is also changing. Social ageing forces changes in intergenerational relations within the family and for society at large. The term kaigo jigoku is therefore indicative of a multifaceted social transformation. In the past, the family was the greatest single source of support for the elderly and the centre of their life. That children looked after their frail parents was a matter of course. However, the growing number of single-person households of senior citizens mentioned in Chapter 4,4 the declining number of children, and the increasing employment of women in paid work combine to make it more difficult for the elderly to live with a son or daughter when they become physically unable to care for themselves. What does this mean for the society, and how does it respond to the challenge?

From the ie system to the nuclear family In Chapter 3 we have seen that child care is undergoing a process of professionalization as the Japanese family under demographic pressure is losing some of its functions as primary socialization agent to other institutions. A similar process is underway in caring for the elderly. At present, two family forms coexist in Japan: the traditional ie or ancestor household, and the nuclear family. The ie system was premised on household continuity, ancestor worship and appreciation

64 The socialization of care towards one’s parents. It implies patrilocal marriage and inheritance preference for the eldest son. Tradition demands that the wife provides care for her husband’s parents. Daughters are supposed to marry out and non-successor sons establish their own household. The ideological backbone of this system is the Confucian notion of oyakÜkÜ or filial piety. The nuclear family consists of a married couple and their children only. Legal reforms after World War II based on equal rights of the sexes and equal inheritance by all children have paved the way for a steady movement away from the three-generation ie family model to the nuclear family. This trend has been slow, and co-residence with aged parents continues to be much more common in Japan than in Europe and North America (Linhart, 1997). However, the ie system is still losing ground. Ideological reasons, especially the individualism that has penetrated all spheres of Japanese society, have strongly reinforced the trend towards the nuclear family. It is further strengthened by the demographic development. Japan’s TFR has been below replacement level since the 1970s. This means that the baby boom generation has not produced successors in sufficient numbers. Even if there was universal consensus that the family is the locus where elders ought to be provided for in old age, this ideal can no longer be put into practice for a growing number of people. Some have no children; in other cases, when two single-children marry they have four parents to look after. This is the effect of the shifted old-age dependency ratio on the individual level. For lack of a sufficient number of children, home-based care for the elderly becomes increasingly impossible. Attitude surveys revealing a continual decrease of the desire for co-residence in old age with one’s children are indicative of attitudinal adjustments. The percentage of elderly people who say that they expect to live with their eldest son is declining, while that of those who expect to live with their eldest daughter or any daughter is rising. At the same time, the percentage of elderly people who expect to live alone or with their spouse is increasing (Linhart, 1997: 315f). A 2003 nationwide poll of 3,565 people conducted by the Cabinet Office found that 48.6 per cent of respondents said that it is natural to expect children to take care of their parents, down 8.7 points from a survey in 1995, while 36.1 per cent said that is not necessarily so, up 7.4 per cent. According to the same poll, as many as 80.1 per cent hope to use publicly-funded elder-care services when they can no longer care for themselves.5 These trends are clearly indicative of the shift away from the family as the primary locus of care. Because the ie family is no longer socially sustainable, such adjustments of attitude are inevitable. During the past two decades, eldest and only sons have experienced difficulties finding a wife because the expectation that the daughter-in-law will take care of the ageing parents is still lingering on but is increasingly perceived as an unacceptable condition of marriage. Many elderly today naturally find it hard to part with this idea, because they were not only raised under the assumption that this is the proper way to deal with one’s elders, but have taken care of theirs accordingly. In this regard, care giving has a contractual quality referring to customary ways of defining social relationships and intergenerational transfer. Yet today, insistence on the traditional notion of filial piety, much as it is cherished, meets with practical obstacles and causes many grievances for both parents

The socialization of care 65 and children. Fukiko Nakayama, a lawyer specializing in inheritance and guardianship, reports on the case of a widower who lived with his eldest son but moved to his daughter’s after falling out with his son’s family. He expected his daughter ‘naturally’ to take care of him, but decided that as his rightful successor his son should nevertheless inherit his entire estate (Nakayama, 2005: 32). Unquestioningly upholding the premises of the ie family system mixed with a measure of irrationality, the old widower did not consider his behaviour contradictory or unjust, although this is how his will is judged by members of his children’s generation. The case testifies to a discrepancy in the perception and conceptualization of family and intergenerational relationships. Incongruities of this kind are a social reality in present-day Japan that create tensions and cannot be overcome under the premise of the ie family system. Nakayama (2005: 30) therefore pleads for liberation from the ‘ie consciousness’ as a precondition for reaching consensus on a new ‘social contract’ about intergenerational transfer.

Gender bias A point to note is how strongly gendered the problem of care for the elderly is. So pronounced is the gender bias that the problem of the elderly is said, with much justification, to be a problem of women (Sugimoto, 2001: 203). Peng (2002: 428) accordingly emphasizes ‘that gender relations and demographic changes are crucial in shaping social policy today’, for as many as 85.1 per cent of elderly people in need of care are women.6 Most of these women have cared for their parents-in-law or parents, but cannot expect to receive care in a similar way because the family and the welfare system are in the midst of transition. Zaitaku kaigo (home care) has been promoted by welfare policy makers as an element of the ‘Japanese-style welfare state’, where the burden of caring for the elderly and the disabled falls on the shoulders of the family. However, changes in residence patterns, gender roles and employment practices have turned what used to be the norm into a minority option. Moreover, zaitaku kaigo in actual fact is a euphemistic label for what would be more appropriately called care by middle-aged daughters-in-law and daughters (Jenike, 1997: 332; Saito 2000: 304), a task that a diminishing number of women still bear willingly. Institution-based care too is largely dependent on female caregivers, as social expectations strongly favour women over men as nurses. Nursing and nurturing are associated with femininity. Yet ‘a small but increasing proportion of men who care for the frail elderly’, men who have become home helpers, and men who take up careers as care managers, have been viewed as harbingers of incipient changes in attitude and gender roles (Long and Braudy Harris, 2000: 34) that will eventually engender a new social contract that makes sure the elderly do not suffer unduly from the ongoing transition within the family and welfare system.7 The family is culturally constructed, determining intergenerational relations and transfer. However, the cultural interacts with the social and economic. The economic situation of parents and children influences care arrangements and transfer of time and money (›take and Horioka, 1994). The poor are more likely

66 The socialization of care than the rich to co-reside and provide home care for a frail family member. At the same time, due to cramped housing conditions, poor co-residing families are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to have elderly family members hospitalized, even for minor illnesses. Not surprisingly, children transfer more money to poor parents, and children living in a house owned by their parents are more likely to provide care when the parents need it. Analyzing data from The Attitude Survey on Childcare and Long-term Care of Parents conducted by the Cabinet Office in November 2000, economists Kohara and Ohtake (2004) come to the conclusion that children’s readiness to give parental care is largely dependent on whether the parents are rich enough to enable the children to meet their demands for nursing. As more daughters-in-law and daughters engage in full-time work, this tendency is expected to increase. The exchange motive, they argue, has more influence on care behaviour in Japanese families than altruism. Whether and to what extent children spend time and money on their parents depends on what they get in return, seems to be Kohara and Ohtake’s message. However, while it cannot be disputed that the bond between parents and children involves exchange, what they give and what they get in return cannot be reduced to money and time, that is, deferred earnings. Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of a system of dispositions, Hashimoto (1996: 169), therefore, conceives of intergenerational relations as a ‘social contract that entails a process of establishing symbolic equity’ in the sense that beneficiaries of care and help are regarded as having earned an entitlement. At base is a symbolic exchange in the Bourdieuan sense rather than a strict quid pro quo, because, as society is evolving, it is never possible for one generation to repay the exact equivalent of the debt it incurred as the beneficiary of services by others. The challenge for renegotiating symbolic equity is that the generation in the transition period is not left disadvantaged. Intergenerational relations are defined in terms of rights and duties, caregivers and care recipients. The question of ‘who is entitled to what?’ is always indexed to the present state of society. Answers to this question reflect traditional norms, on the one hand, and available means, on the other. Reliance on family rather than state support characterized Japanese intergenerational exchange in the past. The present older and middle-aged generations are faced with the necessity to shift their expectations of entitlement from the domestic to the public domain. Given the importance of the family as the building block of Japanese society and the traditional tenet of filial piety, it is not surprising that the shift is accompanied by friction and discontent; for at stake is not only a rational recalculation of intergenerational transfer, but reharmonizing norm and reality. There is general agreement that community and state must provide what families no longer are able to; yet, as Wu (2004) has demonstrated, care recipients in residential homes for the elderly have a severe sense of indebtedness rather than entitlement towards state support and unrelated home staff. Demographic pressure and the need for the fit and healthy to stay economically active to a higher age push care for the frail elderly out of the family household into institutional environments, as Japan’s traditional filial orientation is being replaced by more reliance on extra-familial support systems.

The socialization of care 67

The state steps in Demographic pressure has forced the Japanese government to recognize that in the age of low fertility proper care for the elderly cannot be left to families. Emotional bonds and traditional values of filial piety are no longer sufficient safeguards against poverty and distress in old age, even in a society as affluent as Japan. As of the 1970s, the welfare of the elderly has, therefore, become an increasingly important policy concern. Early policy formulations, such as ‘Designing Life Plans. A Vision for a Japanese-style Welfare Society’ (1975)8 and the 1978 White Paper of the Welfare Ministry9 were predicated on the notion of a Japanese-style welfare system, stressing family and community. As the extent and consequences of population ageing became more apparent, policy makers realized that a new approach focused on the needs of elderly people regardless of their family situation was required. The first government response in this spirit of the growing health care and welfare needs of the elderly was the 1989 ‘Gold Plan’,10 ready to be enacted in 1990 when the portion of the aged population over 65 reached 12 per cent of the total population. This marks the beginning of a sequence of related government initiatives, such as the Visiting Nurse Services programme (1992), the Law for Persons with Disabilities (1993), the New Gold Plan (1994),11 the Gold Plan 21 (2000),12 the Basic Law on Measures for the Ageing Society (1995), the Public Long-term Care Insurance Act (1997, effective 2000), the Basic Law for a Genderequal Society (1999), the Adult Guardian Law (2000), and the Law for the Prevention of Elderly Abuse (2005) among others. The three Gold Plans were designed to develop the infrastructure for regional welfare systems capable of providing services that would be available to all. The main idea was to help families and local communities to help the elderly to live in their own homes. These schemes were already developed under the assumption of weakening functions of family and local community. During the 1980s and 1990s, discussions about welfare services and care for the elderly focused on the allocation of tasks to be performed by family, community and government. A consensus emerged in favour of an insurance scheme rather than a tax-financed system. The result of these deliberations was the Long-Term Care Insurance Law (LCIL), passed in December 1997. Based on the LCIL, the long-term care insurance system was implemented and started operating in April 2000. It was intended to reduce spending on the elderly under the old-age insurance system by integrating medical and nursing care and welfare services. For although Japan’s elderly are relatively healthy, lack of institutional and home-based care support for the elderly means their hospitalization rate is high by international comparison because few Japanese facilities are officially classified as nursing homes (Yoshikawa, Bhattacharya and Vogt, 1996: 24). The New Gold Plan established targets for building new infrastructure facilities that will diminish the need to place elderly people who need assistance, but are not afflicted by an illness, in geriatric hospitals where they receive too high a level of service at too great a cost (Figure 6.2). These facilities are long-term welfare

68 The socialization of care facilities for the elderly, day-care centres, respite care facilities, visiting nurse stations, home-help services, care houses, housing for assisted living, and group homes for dementia patients (Hashimoto, 2004). This spectrum of services allows the need for care to be met more flexibly than the rigid alternative of either home or hospital, which in the past many could not avoid. The Long-Term Care Insurance Law requires all Japanese older than 40 but younger than 65 to enrol and obtain coverage. The monthly fee was set at 2,500 yen, plus additional payments that may be levied by local authorities that administer the scheme, that is, cities, towns, villages and the metropolitan wards of Tokyo. Although the system was underused during the first years of operation (Talcott, 2002), experts agree that it is a suitable instrument for enabling local governments to provide care for the elderly. The mandatory nature of the scheme implies a change ‘from status to contract’ (Kimura 2002: 337), that is, from welfare recipient to party in a contract. Under the old Law for the Welfare of the Elderly13 of 1963 it was necessary for elderly people in need of care to obtain the status of rightful beneficiary, to which end information about family background, income and assets had to be disclosed to local authorities. As this was associated with the stigma of being left uncared for by family members and, therefore, having to rely on public welfare services, many people were reluctant to make use of the system. The LCIL, which mandates compulsory payments in the form of a mutual insurance, is intended to assuage the sentiments on the part of the elderly against utilizing the available services. Culturally, the new law thus implies a redefinition of public care. What was commonly perceived as charity is replaced by a right to which all citizens are entitled by virtue of their own contributions. Driven by demographic pressure, this redefinition is widely regarded as a crucial prerequisite for alleviating the burden that falls on families with elderly in need of care. In view of the hyper-aged society, the welfare policy is redirected towards the ‘socialization of care’ (Sugimoto, 2001: 213). It should be

Figure 6.2 Estimated number of bedridden and other elderly patients. Source: Points for Long-Term Care Insurance, 2nd edition. Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The socialization of care 69 noted, however, that the policy is not intended and is not likely to supplant family care any time soon. But the disappearance of the full-time housewife, the growing proportion of elderly, and the extension of long-term care requirements due to rising life expectancy make the provision of services to supplement family care indispensable. These trends have brought in their wake other problems the government cannot ignore. Abuse of elderly people is one of the most disquieting. The episode reported at the beginning of this chapter illustrates the tensions domestic caregiving sometimes engenders, and the catastrophic consequences. A survey by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour conducted in 200314 found 10 per cent of elderly people in need of nursing suffering from cruel treatment. The ministry cited fatigue on the part caregivers, poor relationships, the victim’s character and the victim’s confused state of mind due to dementia as factors leading to abuse. Earlier statistics are not available, but it is not likely that the problem surfaced suddenly, although it contradicts the Confucian ideal of respect for the aged. The well-known Obasuteyama, or ‘Grandma-Dump’ legend, speaks of the elderly who could no longer feed themselves being abandoned in the backwoods, suggesting that respect for the aged had its limits in the harsh society of medieval Japan.15 However, that a cultural topos has been handed down from one generation to the next for centuries does not mean that it always meant the same thing. Cruelty and abuse are surely contingent notions, and standards vary. However, precisely because the vaguely-defined topos of respect for the elders features prominently in Japan’s self-image, the results of the 2003 survey by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour were found deeply disturbing and provoked a public discussion of the problem. The outcome was that cultural values such as filial piety and respect for elders are no sufficient safeguard against abuse of elderly people. A legal framework and support systems are prerequisites to resolving the problem. To ameliorate the situation, a Law for the Prevention of Elderly Abuse and Support for Caregivers16 was thus passed by the National Diet in November 2005 and came into effect 1 April 2006. The law defines cruel treatment as physical assault, psychological mistreatment, wilful neglect and appropriating property. It requires anyone who notices cruel treatment of elderly people to report it to the municipal government. The legislation clearly puts the onus on the community and municipal administrations to protect elderly people against abuse. Assuming that ignorance and helplessness are a source of elderly abuse, and in view of statistical predictions that the number of elderly suffering from senile dementia will continue to rise, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour has started a campaign to raise awareness and educate the public about the nature of this illness and how to deal with it. The ministry also promoted a new name for the illness, replacing the derogatory term chihÜ (imbecility) in its publications with ninchishÜ, literally ‘cognitive syndrome’.17 Nursing elderly people can be stressful, especially those with senile dementia. In the age of a top-heavy population pyramid the burden becomes too heavy for families to bear without community support that, in turn, is not forthcoming without government intervention. Another step is thus taken in the direction of the

70 The socialization of care socialization of care, as indeterminate Confucian values of respect for elders are being superseded by specific legal provisions predicated on human rights. The demographic turnaround thus serves as a catalyst of progressive legalization of human relations.

Volunteerism Shifting part of the burden of nursing for bedridden elderly people from family to state is only one part of the socialization of care. It is accompanied by the emergence in Japanese society of a voluntary sector (Eijingu sÜgÜkenkyñ sentª, 2002: 110). The government has moved and created important infrastructural facilities, but it is quite unable to shoulder the cost of the personnel needed to meet requirements. In this regard, as in many other cases, society was ahead of the government. Grassroots community organizations began providing home care services in the late 1980s. Many NGOs and NPOs have since come into existence, locally and at national level, to fill the gap in the support system for care-dependent elderly left by the weakening family. Their activities were a harbinger of Japan’s emerging civil society that was not viewed with unconditional approval by the government (Tanaka, 1998; Kingston, 2004). Its response was the establishment by local administrations of fukushi kÜsha or ‘welfare-oriented public corporations’ that in their activities resemble community organizations and were an attempt by the government to maintain control over welfare activities (Adachi, 2000). The growing elderly population in need of care made it clear, however, that the government’s co-operating with voluntary organizations was no longer a question of how best to control them. The political leadership could not but realize that a larger role for voluntary organizations was indispensable. It was therefore no coincidence that new legislation for non-profit organizations came to pass in close temporal proximity with the revised Gold Plan and the LongTerm Care Insurance Act. After long deliberations and intense lobbying by various interest groups, the LDP eventually tabled the Special Non-profit Activities Law, which was passed in 1998. Making the government smaller and more cost-effective was one of the motives for the LDP’s administrative reform programme. Realization that this aim was unattainable without increased participation of people in NPOs and other voluntary organizations led the LDP to change its hostile stance against non-state actors. The rising demand for nursing services for the elderly was a major factor in this decision. The new NPO law makes it easier for voluntary organizations to gain legal recognition, although the tax breaks they get are sparing by international comparison (Pekkanen, 2000). Many self-help groups, therefore, continue to operate without official recognition. Yet, the law clearly was effective. By January 2005, the number of NPOs registered under it had passed 20,000. Elderly care is one of the crucial areas where these organizations are active. The LDP government acted pragmatically rather than out of ideological conviction when it relaxed the restrictions on non-state actors with the new law, realising that otherwise a crisis in nursing care services would be hard to avoid. It was only

The socialization of care 71 under pressure from opposition parties and grassroots groups that the LDP moved in the direction of closer cooperation between state and non-state actors in welfare state reform. Groups such as the Women’s Association for the Better Ageing Society18 (KÜrei shakai o yoku suru josei no kai), formed as early as 1983, played a major role in the process that led to the legislation. NPOs were thus given a heavier task, but also more leeway in how to handle it and contribute to reshaping the relationship between state and society. In the first five years since the LCIL came into effect, the number of people engaged in voluntary work for the elderly has increased by 3.6 per cent.19 Nowadays, private groups and officially recognized NGOs provide essential services in assisting with the efforts of social welfare organization. The Long-Term Care Insurance is administered by local governments, but care services are provided by private companies and voluntary organizations on a competitive basis (Figure 6.3). From the sociological standpoint, the significance of elderly care by voluntary organizations appears in their cooperative networks that alleviate the burden on families and, at the same time, assume a new role between family and state in the production and reproduction of social life. New social relationships not premised

Figure 6.3 Social support for elderly care. Source: Asahi Shimbun, 19 February 2006. Reproduced by kind permission of Asahi Shimbun and the artist, Mariko Mikami; translation by F.C.

72 The socialization of care on current practices and power structures will emerge as a result. It is still too early to make out the specific consequences, for example, whether gender difference will become less strongly indexed to the power hierarchy, because adequate nursing services for the elderly of both sexes depend so much on women taking the lead. It is clear, however, that the new NPO law has opened the door for civil society just a little bit wider. Caring for the elderly is a highly important task through which society redefines itself. Its demographic dimension in the hyperaged society has thus turned into a driving force of social change.

7

‘Mature’ customers

When I returned home to celebrate the New Year with my parents I was shocked. It wasn’t the high snow on the Kanetsu Highway (which was quite surprising), but the 45 inch liquid crystal TV set in the living room that stunned me. And there was a DVD recorder plus HDD underneath, to boot. Come to think of it, my father had called me a while ago to ask which was better, plasma or liquid crystal. But I never thought he would buy a set with such a large screen (between you and me, it’s too big for the room). Then, having put my bags away, I looked around the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a new refrigerator. ‘I replaced all the old stuff,’ my father said. The printer in the kitchen corner had become an integrated copier scanner colour printer. And father, who had always used a word processor for his New Year’s cards, now managed an address index file with spreadsheet software. ‘Wow, what’s that?’, I thought, as I headed for the bathtub to take away the stress from driving, new appliances there, too. The old washing machine had been replaced by the latest model with an extra quiet drum. ‘Really,’ I sighed, ‘their only son doesn’t have any of these.’ My parents are just a little older than the baby boomers. They certainly aren’t rich. Seniors with a bit more leeway, since the kids are grown up, that’s about it. Luckily they are in good health and have work. I‘ve been told seniors have a hefty appetite for consumption. My own parents are a case in point. From now on, these seniors will have a huge influence on the market. Yet, all these goods don’t seem to be quite ‘mature’. No complaints about how they work, but they are not user-friendly for senior citizens. For middle-aged and elderly people it is difficult to master all of the functions. Besides, there are four different remote controls for TV, DVD recorder, video deck, and cable TV. High-quality multipurpose devices everyone can handle, that will be essential in the ageing society. This is what I felt on New Year’s Eve. Yoshida, Masaru (2006) Shinia pawª ni fureta shÜgatsu (A New Year’s holidays when I felt the power of seniors). Nikkei Business Publications, 6 January. www.nikkeibp.co.jp/index_j.shtml

In his New Year’s column, Masaru Yoshida, an economic journalist, speaks of the ‘the power of senior citizens’ (shinia pawª) by which he means their potency as

74 ‘Mature’ customers

Figure 7.1 The growing proportion of the population over 50.

consumers. By 2010, people 50 years and older will exceed 50 per cent of the total population (Figure 7.1). The composition of the elderly population will change too. In 2005, about 40 per cent of the elderly were over 75 years of age. Twenty years later, an estimated 60 percent of the elderly will be over 75. Simultaneously, the workforce will shrink by some 15 per cent. What does this imply for Japan Inc.? Economists agree that sweeping economic impacts of ageing are inescapable (Higuchi, 2004b; MacKellar et al., 2004), but while some see ruin, others see resurrection. The pessimists (for example, Hewitt, 2002, 2003) emphasize depopulation, rising elderly dependency ratio and hence rising social contribution rates, intergenerational conflict, declining labour force, diminishing tax revenues and lower investments in infrastructure projects, negative growth, contracting GDP, and a diminishing role of Japan in the world. By contrast, the optimists (for example, Fuji and Furukawa, 2000; Kusaka, 2005) focus on the well-heeled baby boomers who are about to go into retirement and will reinvigorate the economy by pushing consumption to new levels with their retirement moneys and generous pensions creating a new lifestyle that leads to the emergence of new industries and thus growth. The baby boomers’ retirement also means that unemployment will go down and reduced labour costs for many companies because they are in the upper wage range and can be replaced by cheaper, younger workers (Higuchi, 2005). ‘Japan’s Economy will Rebound. The great misunderstanding about low fertility and ageing’, thus blares the economics weekly Daimond.1 Not to be outdone, the rival Shñkan Econmisuto publishes a list of companies that thrive on ageing and depopulation.2 The fact that economists are divided as to whether ageing and depopulation spell promise or peril is indicative of the unpredictable factors that are involved. Will the consumption of the elderly rise more than the consumption of the young will fall, and will it upset the reduction in consumption caused by the diminishing number of all consumers? The difficulty of providing reliable answers to these questions stems not just from the uncertainty of fertility, mortality, and

‘Mature’ customers 75 migration and the demographic projections based on these variables but also from the fact that the effects of demographic change on behaviour are not known. In a 2005 survey by Mainichi Shimbun,3 76 per cent of respondents said that they felt a sense of uneasiness in view of the progressing birth rate decline and ageing. It is quite impossible, therefore, to predict whether the positive economic effects will outweigh the negative ones, or vice versa.

New market opportunities General uncertainties notwithstanding, a number of developments that stimulate economic growth are discernible. Foremost among them is the ‘silver market’, as it has become known in the 1990s. Japan’s silver-haired have deep pockets, so much so that they have earned the nickname of rÜjin kizoku, ‘the elderly nobility’. Home ownership is extremely high among them, giving them more living space than younger households. On average, senior single-person households have floor areas of 80m2, whereas elderly couples have 123m2 (Whitten, 2003). Present-day seniors have very substantial savings and a relatively high disposable income. But the generations born before and during World War II have experienced hunger and shortages of almost every kind. They had a strong inclination to save rather than to spend and thus provided the capital for Japan’s rapidly growing industrial sector after the war. The baby boomer generation is different. Its members were brought up surrounded by goods designed for young people and have experienced 50 years of market expansion creating a ‘hyper-consumption’ society (Clammer, 1997) as they grew older. Hikaru Hayashi, executive director of the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living (HILL), is confident that they will continue to put their money into consumption after retirement,4 and quite a bit of money it is too. In 2002, the baby boomer generation – some 5.3 per cent of the population – controlled as much as 10.8 per cent of the nation’s individual assets, a large part of it in savings. With their retirement, that was expected to rise to 16.6 per cent by 2009.5 Estimates on the amount of retirement pay to be disbursed each year from 2007 to 2009 range between 35 billion yen and 60 billion yen. According to the National Survey of Living Conditions in 2003, the Japanese elderly have more financial latitude than the general households; 52.1 per cent of the elderly and 44.7 per cent of all households said they lived in financially normal or rather comfortable (yaya yutori ga aru) circumstances.6 However, businesses are shifting their focus to senior consumers not just because this age cohort has money to spend, but also because the number of younger consumers is diminishing. An important question is how the potential of the affluent elderly can be tapped, for catering to senior customers is not business as usual. The silver market targets an age cohort, but although the baby boomers are a generation by virtue of many shared experiences as discussed in Chapter 2 above, they are also the first generation to have been encouraged for decades to develop individual preferences and taste. It is, therefore, a highly diversified market, and adjusting to the needs of elderly customers is a difficult process that must take into account both age-cohort specific behaviour – for example, typical of the baby boomers – and age-specific

76 ‘Mature’ customers behaviour – for example, typical of 60 to 70 year olds, 70 to 80 year olds, and so on. Ageing alters consumer behaviour. Marketing research is paying much attention to how physiological ageing, social categorization of life stages and cultural values interact to alter people’s lifestyle as consumers. For example, in 2000, the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, established a division of ‘Elder business promotion’ (HILL, 2003); the Nikkei Research Institute of Industry and Markets (2003) conducted a survey especially targeting the baby boomer generation; and the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry (2003) offers advice on how to win the confidence of senior customers. Its recommendations are published in a brochure organized around eight keywords. Their combined initials yield an acronym that is emblematic of the ‘new seniors’, konsheruju, or CONCIERGE, Japanese newspeak for upscale service.

Keywords The keywords identified by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry are, in English, of course, ‘Comfortable’, ‘One-to-one’, ‘Nostalgia’, ‘Community’, ‘Identity’, ‘Edutainment’, ‘Relation’ and ‘Generation free’. Largely self-explanatory, they refer to needs and expectations of this moneyed class of customers. These keywords aim at the interplay of bio-physical and psycho-social age of this growing group of consumers whose longevity in many ways alters the meaning of old age. The first one, comfortable, refers both to an imaginary level of comfort and relaxation retirees are entitled to by virtue of having worked for 40 years, and to a certain degree of luxury many of them can afford. Terms such as ‘universal design’ and ‘user friendly’ that are used in this connection highlight effortlessness and deemphasize old age. One-to-one refers to individualized service, especially in sales encounters with elderly customers who purchase high quality consumer goods. Nostalgia captures the need for marketing specialists to appeal to the targeted customers’ memories and allow them to look back on their own life in connection with the products that are promoted. In the present context of marketing for senior customers the keyword community implies an appeal to the rich experience these individuals have gathered in a lifetime and can share with others, provided they continue actively to participate in social life. As used in the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s booklet, identity means something like ‘idiosyncrasy’ and the demand for goods irrespective of fashion trends. Edutainment stands for the growing leisure and education market and the desire on the part of senior citizens to acquire new skills and knowledge. Important needs of elderly customers have to do with their relations with others, which should be kept in mind by those trying to gain their patronage. And, finally, generation free is used euphemistically as a reminder that the fit and active elderly do not like to be reminded of their advanced age.7 In advertisements and promotion materials indirect reference to age is preferred. Rather than ‘elderly’ (kÜreisha) terms such as ‘senior’ (shinia), ‘mature’ (seijukusha), and ‘adult’ (otona) are used. Taken together, these eight keywords depict a profile of senior customers that, according to the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, will help firms to

‘Mature’ customers 77 capture the silver market and benefit from the senior generation’s consumption potential. Paying due attention to the age-specific and age-cohort specific attributes of this market segment is important. That successful marketing depends on thorough knowledge of demographics is obvious, but promotion alone is equally obviously not enough. It is not just marketing strategies that have to be adjusted, but products and services have to be modified or newly developed to meet the demands of this market segment.

Consumption trends Entire new industries have sprung up and many new products have been developed, some at high costs that industry is confident will yield a profit, for current demographic projections virtually guarantee that this is a growth market. A survey by the Nikkei Research Institute of Industry and Markets (2003) looked at the areas of consumption on which retirees plan to spend their money. The results are summarized in Table 7.1. In spite of some gender-specific differences in emphasis, four industries stand out, travel, housing, cars, and education. We will deal with each in turn below. Travel The domestic Japanese tourism industry has not been doing well in recent years, but one sector has helped to make up for otherwise sluggish demand, namely leisure and educational trips by seniors. Religious tourism, too, has been rediscovered as a market section that appeals to senior consumers. Clients in their 70s and 80s are seeking the experience of a pilgrimage. Transport providers such as Japan Railway Group and package tour organizers offer discounts for seniors, starting at age 50 (Figure 7.2).8 Resort hotel chains operate clubs whose members are entitled to stay a certain number of nights per year in different places throughout the country, often in conjunction with sightseeing, entertainment, and educational courses. Overseas travel is a different matter. It has been an indicator of Japan’s growing prosperity for decades, steadily expanding, to some extent at the expense of domestic travel. The cross-section of the fit and healthy retirees and the affluent Table 7.1 Envisioned consumption by retiring baby boomers (multiple answers possible). Men

%

Women

%

1

Domestic travel

54.4

1

Domestic travel

53.7

2

Automobiles

31.6

2

Remodelling the home

33.1

3

Overseas travel

29.8

3

Mastering a new skill

30.0

4

Remodelling the home

26.8

4

Overseas travel

29.6

5

Mastering a new skill

16.7

5

Automobiles

13.6

Source: Nikkei Research Institute of Industry and Markets, 2003, quoted from Sekizawa (in press).

78 ‘Mature’ customers

Figure 7.2 Travel club for those 50 years and older, Fifty Plus. To experience Japan’s culture, history and nature, join the JR Tokai ‘50+’ (everyone 50 years and older can join).

(fuyñsÜ) is an important force driving the market. In 2001, JR Kyushu advertized a 14,000-kilometre journey on the Orient Express starting from Amsterdam through Europe, Russia, Central Asia and China. Tickets for the ‘transcontinental rail cruise’ sold for between 1.5 and 2.1 million yen. A total of 250 customers applied for the 50 seats available, and their average age was 67 years (Sumitomo Group, 2001). New companies such as Eurasia Travel Co., Ltd. targeting the ‘mature customer’ with European Music Voyages, educational trips to historical monuments, cruises on luxury liners, and tailor-made tours to up-market hotels in interesting locations hold further growth potential. In April 2005, JTB Corp., Japan’s biggest travel agent, established a subsidiary, ‘JTB GrandTour and Service’ specializing on senior clients with its ‘Third Age Selection’ of package tours advertising ‘a time for adult travel’ (otona no tabi jikan).

‘Mature’ customers 79 Education The travel market overlaps with that of the growing leisure and lifelong learning industries. Japan has a tradition of ‘social education’ (shakai kyÜiku) consisting mainly in community-based enrichment programmes for residents. The 1999 Law for the Promotion of Lifelong Learning marks a turning point towards lifelong education and lifelong learning. Within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, a Lifelong Learning Bureau was established to support local communities in developing new programmes for extracurricular education. At the same time, more and more private institutions (bunka sentª) provide courses not designed for career development ranging from foreign language education and technical skills to cultural enhancement and recreation. More Japanese in their pre-retirement phase and upon retirement discover the value of improving their skills and keeping up with high technology and communication devices that enable them to stay in touch with family and friends and are increasingly indispensable for procuring services of various kinds. Furthermore, retirees have time to enjoy lifelong learning and hardly a better way to spend it. Housing Many seniors want to spend money on home remodelling and improvement, the desire to make their house barrier-free so as to make it easier to live in in old age being a major motive. Private homes used to be designed to last 25 to 30 years, that is, a lifetime of homeownership from the age most people can afford to buy a house.9 A house basically meant a dwelling for one generation’s time. One effect of social ageing is that people now live in their home for a longer time. Building standards have changed, and more durable homes have become affordable. Since the baby boomer generation started building houses in the 1970s, the market for new homes has been steadily declining due to the smaller age groups that followed. However, segments of the housing market that target senior citizens have flourished. The home improvement and renovation market is expected to grow from 7.3 billion yen in 1995 to 9.3 billion yen in 2010.10 Construction of condominiums has been on the rise since the mid1990s, and renovation is an expanding market. Barrier-free housing for the elderly and disabled, safe homes with protection against break-in, more energy efficient homes, and healthy housing are in focus. The growing do-it-yourself market, too, is frequented by active seniors both for cost efficiency and enjoyment. The financial clout of the elderly and their inclination to invest in home renovation has produced an unexpected and unwelcome side effect called rifÜmu sagi or ‘home renovation scam’. Senior citizens living by themselves in their own homes are easy prey for ruthless salesmen by whom they are taken in to sign contracts for unnecessary and overpriced repairs, getting swindled out of large sums of money. As respect for elders is a part of Japan’s self-image, these crimes, when they came to light on a large scale in 2005, provoked an outcry of indignation in the media.11 They are, however, indicative of social ageing pointing as they do not just at economically hard times, but also at a high proportion of seniors with cash to spare, and the progressing social isolation of elderly people who lose to various degrees the ability to judge everyday affairs.12

80 ‘Mature’ customers Cars The automobile industry is mainly reacting to social ageing in three ways: expanding production of luxury cars, developing technical systems to counteract reduced physical capacities of elderly drivers, and designing special cars to aid disabled people. The high-margin luxury automobile market is expected to benefit from the baby boomers’ en masse retirement. Hitherto it was dominated by German carmakers BMW and Mercedes-Benz, who have increased their sales continuously over the past decade, prompting Japanese industry leaders Toyota and Nissan as well as Honda to introduce their own luxury lines in the domestic market. Toyota’s Lexus, Nissan’s Fuga, and Honda’s Legend started competing with imported luxury cars in 2005/06. To lure affluent senior customers away from their foreign competitors, Toyota established a network of 144 Lexus dealers and spent 1,200,000,000 yen to build Fuji Lexus College, a new training facility for Lexus staff in Shizuoka Prefecture. Only a small percentage of the elderly drive luxury cars, but many do drive. Drivers over 65 years of age now outnumber drivers under 25, by 8.79 million to 7.98 million in 2004, and their ranks grow by some 500,000 a year (Hoffman, 2004). Not surprisingly, the number of serious car accidents caused by the 65-and-over has also increased (Figure 7.3). Elderly drivers’ physical capabilities, especially eyesight, reflexes, and concentration gradually decline, often unnoticed by the drivers themselves. To cope with the situation and in order to reduce the risk of accidents, legal amendments have been made to require all drivers aged 70 and over to take a test of vision and reflexes every time they renew their licence. In the meantime, the car industry has also started to react by developing new technologies, such as driver’s assistance systems, lane assistance, headlights that follow steering direction, night viewing instruments, among others (Moerke and Kamann, 2005). Depopulation in rural areas, the growing number of elderly living alone, and the increasing fit and healthy life expectancy combine to make mobility for elderly people more important than ever. Technology is one way to make it possible. This also holds for cars designed for wheelchair users and other physically impaired people. All Japanese automakers13 are active in what is still a niche market that, however, is seen as holding much potential by the industry. All domestic car manufacturers are members of the Japanese ‘International Association for Universal Design’14 and within this framework develop and promote design features that improve comfort, user-friendliness and security without emphasizing the importance of these developments for the old. Fewer customers will inevitably lead to reduced sales in terms of absolute numbers of units, but by adjusting to the changing age structure of their clientele and their changing demands, the Japanese automobile industry seems well-positioned to weather the storm of population greying and decline. Robots What is apparent in automobile production is also true in other industries. High hopes are pinned on technology for helping to temper the ill effects of ageing and create a brighter future for senior citizens. Japan is the world leader in robotics. In

‘Mature’ customers 81

Figure 7.3 Car accidents caused by drivers 65 and over. Source: ZenkyÜren, the National Insurance Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives. Quoted from Shñkan Bunshun, 1 December 2005: 137.

recent years, the industry has augmented its main research field of industrial robots by paying more attention to the development of robots for private use and healthcare assistance. Major firms such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. have produced humanoid robots such as Wakamaru and Asimo, respectively. These home-use robots integrate a large number of complex functions allowing them to move about, carry objects and respond to signals of various sorts, including speech. The home-use robot ‘Wakamaru’ is a completely new communication partner with which you and your family can live together as a family member. Now your dream will come true. You can meet a futuristic robot that supports your daily life in totally different ways. Mitsubishi JñkÜ Gurafu (2003: 134) This is how Mitsubishi Heavy Industries advertises its home-use robot. Whether it embodies everybody’s dream or rather their nightmare is a matter of some uncertainty, but it highlights a field where much technology-directed research is being undertaken; household appliances in the widest sense. A function of this robot much emphasized by the manufacturer is communication. In its design, psychological aspects have been taken into account so that it ‘can contact people in a gentle way’. Other products focus on this aspect rather than practical utility. In 2005, Tomy Co. put the Yumel doll on the market, a humanoid robot that looks like a baby boy and can utter 1,200 phrases. Equipped with six sensors and an IC chip, it can be programmed to keep track of the owners’ sleeping hours and ‘interact’ with them in various ways. Tomy Co. is a toy maker, but this product is billed as a ‘healing partner’ for the elderly whose response has been very positive. The

82 ‘Mature’ customers sociopsychological implications of surrogate grandchildren for lonely elderly people are yet to be fathomed out, but branding these machines as inhumane would be rash and hardly do justice to the phenomenon. Similarly, and indicative of the fact that the market of robot dolls overlaps with the market for pets, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in collaboration with Microjennics Co. in 2005 marketed Paro (Figure 7.4), a robot baby seal, following in the footsteps of Sony’s path breaking Aibo robot dog. With a price tag of 350,000 yen the therapeutic robot is too expensive for large-scale sales. The idea is to make it available to nursing homes as a medical device, as experiments with other life-like robot pets have shown promising results in alleviating stress and tension, especially among patients afflicted by senile dementia. The robot industry is also expanding in other domains that reflect social ageing, such as medical robots (Kusuda, 2003) and various machines that assist in physical tasks of home care, for example, helping people getting in and out of wheelchairs, beds and bathtubs. Systems to track the movements of elderly people have been developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, helping increase the efficiency of caregivers’ work. Toshiba Co. is working on a mobile robot that can monitor elderly people who easily get lost. Machines that remind people to take medicine and keep appointments have been available for some time and are getting more sophisticated, adding functions such as routine checkups to detect changes in medical conditions. Machine-directed

Figure 7.4 ‘When Paro shows up, their expression lights up.’ Paro, a seal-type therapeutic robot developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in collaboration with Microjennics Co. Photograph courtesy Shñkan Asahi.

‘Mature’ customers 83 information exchange between patients, caregivers and physicians can save time in case of emergency and increase the security of elderly people living alone. Telecare and rehabilitation telematics for the elderly are innovative and promising applications of telecommunications technology and equipment. However, they have yet to gain the backing of health care insurance providers and conservative physicians (Tsuchiya, 2000). Robots that can support patients, caregivers and elderly people in their everyday lives are still in their infancy, but the challenge to make machines provide companionship and distraction as well as handle activities that humans with reduced capabilities cannot is a growing incentive to drive their development further. At the interface of high-tech engineering, artificial intelligence, telecommunications technology and consumer electronics, robotics is destined to be a growth industry for decades to come. Medical care and welfare Although Japan’s elderly are relatively healthy, their needs for medical and nursing care services will inevitably expand as the baby boomers move up through the population pyramid. Growing health consciousness is an additional factor of market expansion. The Japan External Trade Organization, JETRO, expects the market for medical and nursing care services to reach a volume of 75 trillion yen by 2010.15 The world’s drug manufacturers, producers of medical devices and medical waste facilities are scrambling to position themselves in this market competing for lucrative government contracts for large-scale hospitals and research laboratories as well as private companies. In the welfare sector, activities that focus on the needs of the elderly are standing out. There is increasing demand for equipment to assist people with impaired vision, hearing, dexterity and mobility (Figure 7.5). Since the long term care insurance system was launched in 2000, the market for at-home health care and nursing services has been rapidly expanding. By the end of 2005, close to 3.5 million people were using these services, and that number will continue to grow for some time. Spare time and consumption Japan’s ageing marketplace is creating new business opportunities, some of which have been touched upon above. There are many others, however, such as the insurance industry, the IT market, (health) food and clothing. The retail sector is adjusting to its greying clientele in various ways, not just by providing merchandise for the aged. For example, female customers in the 50 and over age range account for more than 70 per cent of sales of the Keio Department Store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward (Kaneyama, 2005). Creating an environment where people in this group of customers want to spend time is just as important as offering the right selection of products. The challenge for business is to develop strategies to make the most of the huge potential of the silver market. Clearly, retirees have more spare time than they used to and more days to go shopping, simply because they live longer. Uncertainty, however, remains because they don’t know just how much more time they have and

84 ‘Mature’ customers

Figure 7.5 ‘I take pride in being a good walker and Super Collagen.’ JirÜ Basugi, 96, in an advertisement for a health drink. Reproduced with kind permission of Roicosmo Co.

how much money they will need to last through their remaining days. Business, therefore, cannot but actively develop the silver market. How to do this is a question marketing pundits have been greatly concerned with ever since it has become obvious that an ageing population is not just the same customers, only older, but a very different market to work with showing different consumption patterns, different preferences, and requiring different marketing campaigns. The business weekly Shñkan Ekonomisuto16 issued advice to companies how to beat ageing and low fertility in the form of the following five guidelines: (1) increase the amount of money obtained per customer; (2) increase your market share by mergers and acquisitions; (3) target the female ‘niche market’; (4) do everything to research the ‘senior’ segment; and (5) move to countries with population growth. The last point seems to say ‘if you can’t find customers here, take your business elsewhere!’ But there is more to it than that. Given the high degree of integration of Japan’s economy into the world market, changes in Japan’s population structure will have effects, directly and indirectly, reaching far beyond Japan’s borders.

8

Longevity risk and pension funds

The term ‘long-living society’ is synonymous with an ‘aged society’. Longevity is a phenomenon to be welcomed. However, due to a lack of adequate preparatory measures for risk incidental to longer life, if instead it becomes a source of incessant anxiety or anguish, it would certainly not be the kind of long life that we envision. 1 Shinichi Yokoyama, Chairman, The Life Insurance Association of Japan.

Living for a long time is a blessing and testimony to medical and economic progress; but it is also a risk. As a matter of fact, the term ‘longevity risk’ is quite familiar nowadays to financial experts, investors and fund managers, although it has gained currency only recently. The risk of premature death used to be more prominent in most people’s minds than that of a belated death and an unduly long life. Instead of ‘unduly long’ we should, perhaps, say ‘longer than anticipated’, but then at issue is not the absolute length of life that could or could not be deemed too long, but rather longevity as measured against economic security. In their non-productive years after retirement people need life annuities, but for how much and for how long? Can we make sure that we do not outlive our wealth, as individuals or societies? The impossibility of answering this question with certainty is at the root of the longevity risk. If the probability of dying at each age in the future were reliably known for a certain population, then it would be possible to design pension schemes to provide life annuities for most of its members. However, the major reason why demographic projections have had to be revised time and again is that accurate mortality forecasts have not been possible and are not possible now. That is the longevity risk. If, on average, people live longer than expected, they face the risk of finding it difficult in their final years to cover their expenses. This is the situation the Japanese national pension system is confronted with in the first decade of the new century.

The architecture of the pension system2 Japan’s pension system started as a publicly-managed fund from which retirees withdrew what they had accumulated during their working life. In a growth economy such a system works well and may even benefit the economy at large. Not long ago, in 1995, Japan’s social security accounts’ surplus was regarded as a source

86 Longevity risk and pension funds of cheap capital, even though benefit payments had surpassed revenues since the mid-1980s. However, over time the system evolved into a pay-as-you-go system in which pensioners’ benefits are financed by current contributions. Structurally, it is a multi-tier system (Figure 8.1). The first tier is a public programme providing all residents aged 65 and older with a flat pension. This National Pension System (kokumin nenkin, NPS) covers some 80 per cent of the working-age population or 71 million people.3 This breaks down to about 39 million salaried workers and about 20 million self-employed persons, the remainder being dependents of salaried workers. The second tier is the Employees’ Pension Insurance (kÜsei nenkin, EPI) or Mutual Aid Association. This is for salaried workers of the private sector and covers about 33 million members. Its funds, too, are publicly managed. A third tier comprises, in addition to the public pension system, private corporate pension funds that provide retirement income for some 12 million employees. NPS is a compulsory programme that requires all residents aged 20 to 59 except for the self-employed to enrol. Benefits are disbursed after reaching the age of 65, though until recently this was age 60 (see below). The qualifying period is 25 years. Benefits are non-income-related, depending solely on the length of enrolment. Voluntary enrolment is possible for persons between the ages of 20 and 59 who are covered by the EPI. NPS benefits after 40 years’ enrolment were 66,208 yen per month in the fiscal year 2005 as a basic old-age pension. Contributions were 13,580 yen per month, to be increased every year. Few pensioners live on the basic old-age pension alone, having earned various extra entitlements during their working life. Almost all Japanese firms offer private retirement payments, often in the form of a lump-sum severance pay. On average, retirement payments of this sort amount to about four years’ salary, if the worker has spent his or her entire working life with the firm. Under the EPI scheme, pensioners receive the fixed-

Figure 8.1 The structure of the Japanese public pension system. Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2005.

Longevity risk and pension funds 87 amount basic old-age pension and an earnings-related pension. At the present time, the fixed-amount component under the EPI scheme is being gradually reduced and will be phased out by 2013. The pension premium rate for salaried workers and government employees was 17.35 per cent of salaries in 2002. The total benefits from the combined NPS old-age basic pension and the EPI pension for a male salaried worker after 40 years of service amount to about 70 per cent of pre-tax monthly pre-retirement earnings and 80 per cent of after-tax monthly preretirement earnings. The monthly average per person was 230,000 yen in 2002,4 a comfortable retirement income that partly explains how the elderly came by the nickname rÜjin kizoku (the elderly nobility), as mentioned earlier. Will coming generations of pensioners be equally well provided for? The demographic tendencies of the ageing and depopulating society are crucial in answering to this question, and they do not bode well.

Worries about the future When it became known that Japan’s natural population growth was negative for the first time in 2005, the Asahi Shimbun conducted a nationwide telephone poll to find out how people reacted to the news.5 As many as 81 per cent of the respondents reported that they were worried. The older they were, the more they were worried; 73 per cent of those in their twenties, but 88 per cent of those 70 years and older voiced their concern. Asked to specify what worried them most, they mentioned: (1) ‘collapse of the pension system for want of funds’ (37 per cent), (2) ‘economic stagnation because of fewer workers and fewer consumers’ (33 per cent), and (3) ‘loss of society’s vitality for lack of young people’ (27 per cent). Concern about the pension system was strongest among the younger and middleaged cohorts: 50 per cent of those aged 20 to 50 reported anxiety in this regard. The fact that pensioners worried less about the future of the social security system is not surprising as current benefit levels are high and rising contribution rates need not concern them. The future of Japan’s national pension system is a matter of concern, both to the general public and to policy makers. Population ageing brings new restricting conditions into being in which the system has to work. Will this be possible in future, and if so, under what circumstances? This question has received a great deal of attention in the media and among experts on pension affairs. Why the surge of interest in this matter? After all, current pensioners were born more than 60 years ago. Why was the looming crisis not anticipated by the government? The answer is twofold. Firstly, to some extent it was, and secondly, to some extent it couldn’t be anticipated. As to the first point, over the past three decades the pension system has been reformed several times, some of the reforms being in response to the changing population structure, others reacting to economic development. For example, after a decade of high growth, a price and wage indexation for pensions and entitlements was introduced in 1973. A subsequent reform in 1985 was designed to secure the financial base of the system, which had produced a deficit for the first time in 1983, by restructuring different programmes and

88 Longevity risk and pension funds facilitating cross-subsidies (Conrad, 2001: 26f). Two further reforms followed in 1999 and 2004. In each event, reform proposals commanded great public attention. The 1999 reform mandated that the public pension system will be revised every five years to adjust to population ageing. Thus, the government has not been inactive on the social security front. Turning to the second point, despite the gradual reforms undertaken since the 1980s, there was a sense of crisis and fear that the pension system would be bankrupted around the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, as testified by the above-quoted Asahi opinion poll. A possible explanation is that, while gains in life expectancy and hence social ageing can be forecast to some extent and have been on the horizon of policy makers for decades, depopulation is much harder to predict. Even demographers were taken by surprise when they found out, at the end of 2005, that the first year of population decline was just drawing to a close. Moreover, depopulation is a problem for pensions only if it coincides with social ageing, as is the case in present-day Japan, for social ageing means a proportional shift of the working population and the non-working population. This shift has been going on for decades, but until the turn of the century it did not result in a significant reduction of the size of the working population or the overall labour participation rate. In the words of one prominent economist: ‘In spite of population ageing, the total labour participation rate has not decreased, thanks to the rising female labour participation rate and some other factors. It has been level since the 1970s’ (Matsutani, 2004: 130). For this reason, Matsutani argues, financial accounts of pension contributions and benefits have not worsened. It was tempting, therefore, to defer radical reforms of the system that would have been prudent but unpopular. For example, in view of progressing social ageing, raising the entitlement age was proposed as early as 1979 (Campbell, 1992: 322f) and again in 1989 (Takayama, 2001: 4), but government bills were voted down by the Diet on both occasions. The insight that a pension age of 60 years was too young for the ageing society was translated into policy only in 1995 (Conrad, 2001: 30), presumably because no financial crisis made a decision to this effect inevitable earlier. This is no longer so. The reality, sooner than expected, of the age of depopulation has raised the general awareness of the threatening prospect of higher premiums and lower benefits as the proportion of pensioners continues to grow. The most important indicator of social ageing is the aged dependency ratio. It expresses the proportion of the elderly no longer actively engaged in paid work relative to the working population, and is calculated by dividing the population aged 65 years and older by the population aged 15–64 and multiplying the result by 100. From 1920 to 1960, Japan’s aged dependency ratio oscillated around 9, but as of the mid-1960s it started to rise sharply, reaching 17.3 in 1990 and 25.5 in 2000. This shift is the combined result of fertility decrease and gains in life expectancy. To re-establish a more favourable age dependency ratio, pro-nativist policies, assuming they work, need 15 years to take effect. Hence it is easier to work from the other end. And as people not only grow older but stay fit and healthy longer, it stands to reason that the retirement age will rise further (Eijingu sÜgÜkenkyñ sentª, 2002: 21).

Longevity risk and pension funds 89

Trust The growing life expectancy and hence increasing number of pension recipients is just one of the factors underlying the lingering pension crisis. Additionally, people’s trust in the system is declining. Many people no longer believe they will get a fair return on their contributions. The erosion of trust became painfully apparent in connection with the government’s 2004 pension reform bill. As a spin-off of the heated debate about the bill, it had come to light that many politicians including cabinet members had failed to pay their compulsory pension premiums. They were not alone. As it turned out, in fiscal year 2003, 37 per cent of those required to pay premiums under the National Pension System did not do so.6 Pension evasion by politicians has a very harmful effect not just because it seems cynical that those who can easily afford to pay the premium neglect their duties, but because it seems to indicate lack of trust in the system by those who presumably are best able to assess its solvency. That in turn exacerbates the longevity risk, with even more people likely to flee the system, taking their individual longevity risk into their own hands by saving for a rainy day.7 Over-saving is a threat to economic growth, because, simply put, every yen saved is a yen not spent on consumption or investment. Because people plan on living rather than dying, they tend to save more money than they will need. A public pension fund that provides for people’s actual rather than assumed needs can be regarded as a brake on over-saving. But for it to work, trust in the system is essential, which presupposes an effective mechanism for collecting premiums. To address the problem of non-payment into the NPS, legislation was passed in 2005 to establish in 2008 a new pension service agency. The agency will be authorized to shorten the validity period of health insurance policy cards for those who have not paid pension premiums, the idea being that when defaulters come to renew their health insurance card they can be reminded to pay their outstanding pension premiums. Measures to raise the contribution percentage are crucially important, though not primarily because of solvency concerns but rather to arrest the declining trust in the system (Figure 8.2). Demographically adverse developments and drastic changes in the population structure such as, for example, the en masse retirement of 7 million baby boomers between 2006 and 2009, will affect the public pension system. This has stimulated debate about certain problematic aspects of what many assume is a stable system, because of their regular payments, which in actual fact is no such thing. One issue that has featured highly in public discussions of the pension system in connection with the so-called ‘2007 problem’, that is, the baby boomers’ retirement, is intergenerational equity or fairness. Many Japanese are convinced that the pension system has evolved into a mechanism that unfairly redistributes income from younger to older generations (Horioka, 2001) and, therefore, call for more intergenerational equity. This, most economists agree, is an awkward concept hard to define. At least four different notions of intergenerational equity are commonly used:

•

actuarial equity, which assumes a correspondence between contributions made and benefits received and stipulates the same rate of return for each age cohort;

90 Longevity risk and pension funds

Figure 8.2 Declining trust in the National Pension System: non-subscribers and defaulters, 1995–2001. Source: Wadai no tatsujin club (ed) (2004) Sekai ichiban omoshiroi nihonjin no dÂta. Tokyo: Seishun Shuppan; p. 22.

• • •

same rate of contribution to income; same level of benefits; and same per capita consumption level.

The basic question of how, given an unbalanced population growth, intergenerational equity should be defined remains unanswered; because of this messiness, economists tend to eschew the notion, although it has considerable appeal to pension contribution payers. Will they get as much out of the system as the generation they support with their premiums? Citing a projection by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Yoshitomi and Hosoya (2005: 4) show that the benefits a worker born in 1935 receives after retirement amount to 3.2 times the contributions he paid. This rate will be down to 1.5 for those born in 1955 and will further decline to 1.15 for those born in 2005. Such huge discrepancies in cohort-specific ‘rates of return’ are what irk present-day contributors. However, viewed against the background of macroeconomic variables such as wage growth, inflation and uneven capital market returns, as well as changes in social affluence, health, longevity, length of work-life and retirement age, intergenerational equity proves to be an elusive political goal. Society, economy and population evolve, influencing each other in multiple ways. Intergenerational relations are, therefore, more subtle than a simple tit for tat. Matsutani (2004: 138) argues: No matter how much you save for old age, there is bound to be a large gap between the savings of the previous generation and the following generation, and the standard of living of both in old age will also be different. But this

Longevity risk and pension funds 91 must not be considered unfair and is precisely the reason why transfer spanning the generations is desirable. For the high wage level and hence the high standard of living enjoyed by the following generation is a result of the economic foundations laid by the previous generation. Nevertheless, the notion of intergenerational justice/fairness/equity lingers on and cannot be ignored in legislation for pension reform (Takayama, 2004).

Reforms It is inherent in pay-as-you-go social security systems that they are in flux, having to be adjusted periodically to changing economic and demographic circumstances. In times of social transformation, this volatility breeds scepticism about whether a pension system will ‘be there for me’ in future and a tendency to defer or avoid paying one’s premiums. As we have seen, one of the problems that have beset the national pension system is that many people registered in this scheme are not paying their monthly dues. Improving the financial sustainability of the pension fund by raising the contribution percentage and re-establishing trust in the system are equally important reform goals. Social ageing is a complicating factor on the way to achieving them, because at the current time the working population is shrinking more rapidly than the total population, and the retired population is increasing every year, causing an imbalance in the ratio of contributors and benefit recipients of the system. In 2000, three workers supported one pensioner, but the support ratio is set to worsen rapidly, from 2:1 by 2014 to 1.5:1 by 2030. Unless benefits are cut or the level of government subsidies is raised significantly, the standard of living of workers will be detrimentally affected, which in turn will have negative effects on the economy at large. Even without higher premiums, disposable income is expected to rise much more slowly than it has over the past three decades. This leaves three unattractive options for pension reform plans to combine: benefit cuts, contribution hikes, and higher government subsidies – which in turn mean higher taxes. The 2000 pension reform measures have largely been along the lines of the first option. Benefit levels were reduced, while the contribution level was held stable. Employees’ earnings-related benefits for new recipients were cut by 5 per cent, and the entitlement age was raised gradually from 60 to 65, for men the transition will be completed in 2013, and for women in 2018. In combination with some other measures, these reforms will lead to a reduction of aggregate pension benefits by 20 per cent by 2025 (Takayama, 2001). Assuming no further benefit cuts are implemented, this would still necessitate a contribution rate of 25.4 per cent by 2025. Matsutani’s (2004: 132) projection is even gloomier. With benefit levels left unchanged, the contribution rate would have to rise to 34 per cent by 2030. In the media the question is often asked whether the pension system will be financially viable in the age of population decline.8 Considering the simultaneous appearance of the current problems of revenue shortfalls, the increasing number of pensioners and the decreasing number of contributors, this is quite understandable.

92 Longevity risk and pension funds However, the question is misguided because it suggests that the current situation is an acute deviation from what is usually a steady system, which it only appeared to be during the three decades of high growth from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. The huge surpluses the national pension fund produced during these years are as much a proof of the jerry-built nature of the system as today’s deficits, only a less disturbing one. A socialized solidaristic system of intergenerational transfer is in permanent need of fine-tuning and sometimes fundamental correction. Clearly, the beginning of an age of depopulation in Japan necessitates all-encompassing changes, but this just means that the social security system has to be adjusted to present circumstances, as is always the case. Every pension reform sows the seed of the next one, for our knowledge about the future is incomplete. Thus, rather than setting a system straight that for once has been thrown out of kilter, pension reform must be seen as ‘an ongoing process of adaptation to a changing and unpredictable world’ (Takayama, 2001: 11). The 2004 pension reform focused on avoiding future deficits. It mandated contribution increases of 0.354 per cent annually until 2017, at which point they will peak at 18.30 per cent of wages. Critics dispute the government’s contention that contributions can then be held level as being based on unrealistic premises (Matsutani, 2004: 134; Nishizawa, 2005). The reform, furthermore, increased government subsidies for the old-age basic pension from one-third to one-half. And, most importantly, a demographic indexation formula was introduced to account for the decreasing number of contributors and gains in average life expectancy at age 65. Under this reform, the proportion of social security benefits to retirement income will fall from 60 per cent in 2004 to 43 per cent 20 years later. The rationale for this reduction is that redistribution under the system so far made pensioners better off than individuals in the 30 to 45 age bracket, presumably with negative effects on fertility. If the standard of living is to be maintained in old age, a reduction of public pensions entails a shift towards more private funding.

More than numbers The debate over pension reform will continue. Securing financial sustainability by finding the right balance between increasing the burden of current contributors and reducing the benefits of current pensioners in a public pension system under the strain of demographic change is a number game for economic pundits. But more is involved than numbers: the big issue is the future of Japan’s welfare state. The national pension system is the biggest section of it by a large measure and, indeed, the biggest income source of the central government.9 This being so, every pension reform has implications for the course of society’s future development. At the present time the question is whether social ageing is a pretext or a compelling reason for scaling down the welfare state, for this is the direction in which Japan is moving. The state will shoulder less of the burden of providing for the elderly, individuals more. Mandating private funding of their own old-age pensions will make people more self-reliant, giving them more control over their own life; but it also exposes them more to longevity risk, which in the event takes

Longevity risk and pension funds 93 the form of investment risk, with the likely result of widening income disparities after retirement. What is usually presented as a balancing act between retirees’ perceived promise during their working life of a care-free old age, current workers’ call for intergenerational equity and the all-important imperative of not stifling economic growth by burdening workers and corporations with too high a tax rate obscures the view of the advent of a less solidaristic welfare state and a more highly stratified society. Exposure to risk – this is the central argument of ‘risk society’ theory as developed by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991) – is the main stratifying factor of late modernity. In Japan the contemporary decline in trust and security has arrived in, among other things, the cloak of an overhaul of the system of social insurance prompted by population ageing. This is a reverse of trends. Japan’s twentieth century was characterized by a never-ending tug-of-war between reward for achievement and a better life for all, between egalitarianism and elitism, between social advance and status perpetuation. On the whole, egalitarianism carried the day. Beginning with the abolition of feudal ranks in the early Meiji period, Japan took one step after another towards a more classless society, such as compulsory education and universal suffrage. Equal opportunity legislation was another egalitarian measure, designed to reduce gender discrimination. The national pension system, too, is part of this drive towards equity. The higher the old-age pension and the bigger the share of public pensions in the income the elderly receive, the narrower the range of their standard of living. According to a survey on household savings of the Central Council for Savings Information 1996, the elderly received about 55 per cent of their income from public pensions. This rate has been, and continues to be, driven down by pension reforms since the 1980s. Those who, like the Koizumi government and its neo-liberal advisors, advocate pension cuts and a gradual increase of private funding in the publicprivate mix, argue that Japan is affluent enough and no longer needs a strong welfare state to avert poverty. They are, moreover, convinced that Japan’s economy will be reinvigorated by stimulating private initiative and reducing reliance on public handouts. However, reducing pension benefits raises potentially explosive distributional issues that may lead to ‘a clash of generations’. The national pension system has been an effective means of curbing poverty in old age. Masuda and Kojima (2001) found that in 1996 those aged 65 and older with low incomes benefited most from redistribution through the pension system. Critics of the LDP government (Tachibanaki, 2006) maintain that this desirable effect will be hard to maintain under recent and planned reforms and that the retreat of the welfare state heralds a new class society. This, then, is the longevity risk for the society at large.

9

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly

The elderly bear a greater responsibility for the world than the younger generations. Having lived for a long time, they have shaped the country. And being endowed with a vote, they have been given the opportunity to pass judgement at the time of elections. The result is our present. And from now on, for as long as they live, they will continue to be active voters. This is a heavy responsibility. [...] May the experience of these elderly who lived through war be combined to form a force that moves history. Keiko Higuchi, Social critic and writer, former representative of the KÜrei shakai wo yoku suru josei no kai (Women’s Association for a Better Ageing Society); quoted from Nada (2003: 122).

Japan has often been described as a gerontocracy (Coulmas, 2000: 287f). To some, ‘gerontocracy’ is a slur used as part of the ‘Japan’s flawed democracy’ discourse (for example, van Wolferen, 1990). Others have used less judgemental terms such as ‘silver democracy’ (Uchida, 1986). However one chooses to view the nexus of age and power, there is no denying that the Confucian notion of respect for elders has left an imprint on Japan’s political culture. Whether or not this is a good thing and whether age is worse than other factors that come to bear in determining power in industrial democracies, such as, for example, money and special interests, are different questions. In the late Meiji era, after Japan had been transformed from a feudal state into a constitutional monarchy, the genrÜ, a group of about fifteen elder statesmen around the Emperor, were the real power brokers (Hackett, 1968). In matters of state, experience has always been highly valued and, arguably, Japan’s political system still testifies to the power of seniority. During the better part of the second half of the twentieth century, the tendency towards a relatively old government has not hindered but rather, some would claim, has paved the way for Japan’s rise from the ashes of World War II to become an economic superpower. This could mean that the decisions mature politicians and managers are likely to take were what was needed during the catch-up phase of post-war reconstruction, or alternatively that even their suboptimal decisions could not derail the high-growth economy that was driven by hard work and a young population. However, the aged society’s depressed economy since the early 1990s has given

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 95 rise to the question of whether a sclerotic leadership in politics and business is an impediment in the early twenty-first century, when innovation and creative solutions are more in demand than ever to defend Japan’s position as an economic powerhouse. Is the government young enough to face the risks of the world’s most rapidly ageing country? The relative and absolute increase in the number of older persons is an area of profound political impact. Considerations about social security discussed in the previous chapter clearly highlight the issue, but there are many other policy aspects of ageing. In politics, the flow of age groups through the population system has usually been taken as a given, warranting little attention. But when change in the population structure occurs elected politicians cannot afford to ignore it, especially not when the population pyramid is being turned on its head in the process, as is the case at the present time. For in democratic societies, it is most likely at the polls that a clash of generations will come to pass, unless it can be avoided. Is Japan prepared? Characterizing its political system as government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly is only slightly hyperbolic (Figure 9.1).

Government of the elderly The elderly are many and their relative weight in the electorate is steadily growing. In 1970, people aged 65 and older accounted for 7.1 per cent of the population. At

Figure 9.1 Japan’s most ardent voters. With permission of Japan Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs, Inc.

96 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly the time, the average age of a Japanese citizen was 31.5 years. Twenty years later, the proportion of the elderly had increased by five per cent and the average age by six years to 37.6. Another 15 years on, the elderly population had reached almost 20 per cent, while the average age was 43.1. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Kokuritsu shakaihoshÜ jinkÜmondai kenkyñsho 2005: 31) estimates that the average age will rise to 50 years by 2035, by which time the older segment of the population will be 30.9 per cent (Table 9.1). During the same period of time, the proportion of 15- to 64-year-olds will have dropped by more than ten per cent, from 68.9 per cent in 1970 to 58.0 per cent in 2035. These figures are a clear indication of the greying of the populace and the growing Table 9.1 Demographic change: the increase of the older segment of the population. Total population Year

Population (in 1,000)

Average age

0–14

%

15–64

%

65+

%

1920

55,963

20,416

36.5

32,605

58.3

2,941

5.3

26.7

1925

59,737

21,924

36.7

34,792

58.2

3,021

5.1

26.5

1930

64,450

23,579

36.6

37,807

58.7

3,064

4.8

26.3

1935

69,254

25,545

36.9

40,484

58.5

3,225

4.7

26.3

1940

73,075

26,369

36.1

43,252

59.2

3,454

4.7

26.6

1945

71,998

26,477

36.8

41,821

58.1

3,700

5.1

26.8

1950

84,115

29,786

35.4

50,168

59.6

4,155

4.9

26.6

1955

90,077

30,123

33.4

55,167

61.2

4,786

5.3

27.6

1960

94,302

28,434

30.2

60,469

64.1

5,398

5.7

29.0

1965

99,209

25,529

25.7

67,444

68.0

6,236

6.3

30.3

1970

104,665

25,153

24.0

72,119

68.9

7,393

7.1

31.5

1975

111,940

27,221

24.3

75,807

67.7

8,865

7.9

32.5

1980

117,060

27,507

23.5

78,835

67.3

10,647

9.1

33.9

1985

121,049

26,033

21.5

82,506

68.2

12,468

10.3

35.7

1990

123,611

22,486

18.2

85,904

69.5

14,895

12.0

37.6

1995

125,570

20,014

15.9

87,165

69.4

18,261

14.5

39.6

2000

126,926

18,505

14.6

86,380

68.1

22,041

17.4

41.4

2005

127,708

17,727

13.9

84,590

66.2

25,392

19.9

43.1

2040*

109,338

12,017

11.0

60,990

55.8

36,332

33.2

50.4

*estimate Source: Nikkei Research Institute of Industry and Markets, 2003, quoted from Sekizawa (in press).

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 97 numerical strength of the elderly, but the political power shift they bring about is even more pronounced if we look at the voting-age population (VAP) rather than the total population (Table 9.2). In 1980, those aged 65 and over made up 14.7 per cent of the VAP and those in their twenties 19.4 per cent; that is, the youngest voter cohort outnumbered the oldest by close to 5 per cent. By the time of the 1996 general election, this relationship had been reversed. The proportion of the 20- to 29-yearolds had dropped to 17.8 per cent of the VAP and the senior population had gained almost seven per cent, amounting to 21.5 per cent of the electorate. In the 2005 general election the 65-plus share of the VAP was 25.3 per cent. The elderly’s influence on election outcomes is further bolstered by the fact that their election participation rate is double that of their grandchildren. This corresponds to a general correlation between voter turnout rates and age observed in many democracies. Turnout rates increase with age, educational level, and length of time of residence in the electoral district. As in many other democracies, voter turnout in Japan has been on the decline across the board since the first post-war parliamentary elections of 1946; but the decrease was uneven. In 1980, 63.1 per cent of voters in their twenties went to the polls, as compared to 74.9 per cent of those aged 65 and older. By the 1996 election, the generation gap had widened, as political apathy spread among the younger cohorts. The turnout of the 65-plus segment of the VAP had declined to 70.7 per cent, but that of the youngest segment was down to 36.4 per cent. Thus, regardless of their numerical strength or proportion of the electorate, the impact of the older voter cohort was twice as strong as that of the younger cohort of those aged 20 to 29. The turnout of 67.5 per cent at the general election of 2005 was relatively high, but once again the old were more ardent voters than the young: 23.2 per cent of men and 33.0 per cent of women in the 20–29 age bracket did not vote, while the 60 years and older category had a mere 3 per cent of non-participants. The 40–49 cohort was midway in between, with 14 per cent non-voters.1 Although these latter figures are only based on a post-election telephone poll centred on metropolitan areas, they are indicative of the continued higher participation rate of seniors. The most active five-year voter cohort in the general elections of 2000 and 2003 were those aged 65–69, while the 20–24 cohort was the most inactive (Table 9.2). The same trend prevailed in the general election of 2005. The turnout of the 20–24 cohort was 43.28 per cent, that of the 65–69 cohort 83.69 per cent.2 The number of eligible voters of the two cohorts was 7,725,000 for the young cohort and 7,344.000 for the old cohort. Considering the fact that no one under the age of 20 is eligible to vote, while there are some 17. 5 million potential voters in the age bracket 65 and over, it is quite obvious that the old outweigh the young at the polls by a huge margin. Although turnout drops off in the age cohorts above the peak of 65–69, election participation is still markedly higher among the 80 and over VAP than in the 20–24 cohort. As the baby boomers reach retirement age, they further increase the size of the elderly vote – which politicians will therefore seek ever more anxiously. At the same time, the subsequent age cohorts entering the electorate are numerically small and disinclined to vote. Their influence on public opinion and political

98 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly Table 9.2 The age cohorts with the highest and lowest election participation rate. General Elections Turnout by age

2000

2003

2005

20–24

35.64 %

32.39 %

43.28 %

60–64

78.39 %

76.79 %

25–29

40.62 %

38.47 %

65–69

80.09 %

79.09 %

83.69 %

Source: Data from Japan Statistical Yearbook 2006 and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

decisions will further diminish rather than grow. As a result, the government of Japan will more and more become a government of the elderly (Table 9.3).

Government by the elderly The average age of the Japanese in 2005 was 43.1 years. That of the members of the Lower House of the National Diet was 56.8, rather young in comparison with previous diets, because Prime Minister Koizumi’s sweeping election victory had brought 80 freshmen parliamentarians to the chamber, known as ‘Koizumi’s Table 9.3 The growing proportion of the older segment of the electorate (65 and over). year

Elderly population (in 1,000)

Elderly ratio of population

Electorate (in 1,000)

Elderly ratio of electorate

1950

4,155

4.9

43,461

9.6

1955

4,786

5.3

49,235

9.7

1960

5,398

5.7

54,312

9.9

1965

6,236

6.3

59,544

10.5

1970

7,393

7.1

70,580

10.5

1975

8,865

7.9

77,051

11.5

1980

10,647

9.1

80,925

13.2

1985

12,468

10.3

86,036

14.5

1990

14,895

12.0

90,323

16.5

1995

18,597

14.8

96,759

19.2

2004

24,876

19.5

103,191

25.3

Source: data from National Institute of Population and Social Security Research and Japan Statistical Yearbook 2006.

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 99 children’. The diet members’ mean age was also low compared to that of prefecture governors, who were 59.2, on average. Prime ministers since 1946 had a mean age of 63.5 years at the time they took office, almost exactly the same age as the post-war governors of the Bank of Japan when they were appointed. The government is in the hands of experienced people and the more important the job, the older they are. Though not the only criterion, seniority is certainly an important qualification for rising to the top, and, conversely, old age has never stood in the way of attaining high office. Although the incumbency advantage is not, as is often assumed, stronger in Japan than in other democracies (Reed, 1994), elected politicians have a penchant for staying put in their seats way beyond regular pension entitlement age. While in a sense they are setting an example other workers will likely have to follow, postponing retirement indefinitely may not be in the country’s best interest. Those who concur with that opinion received support from unexpected quarters when then Prime Minister Koizumi asked two veteran MPs, Kiichi Miyazawa (84) and Yasuhiro Nakasone (85), both former premiers, not to stand in the November 2003 elections. One of the veterans (Nakasone) reacted with defiance, blasting the discrimination of the elderly and having his constituency pass a resolution to seek permission from the LDP to place him at the top of the party’s proportional representation list for the Lower House, as he had been promised ‘as long as he lives’. Koizumi eventually had his way and the LDP adopted a rule that bans candidates over age 73 from running in the proportional representation segment of Lower House elections. No age limit was set, however, for candidates running in singleseat representation districts.3 Clearly, the new age limit has lowered the average age of the Lower House, which is a little bit surprising because the LDP depends on the senior vote4 and wouldn’t want to make headlines for showing them disrespect. But, then, the party had to bolster its credentials as an engine of reform, and it can put up with a few disgruntled seniors because there are so many of them. Senior citizens are a huge and growing voter group, but there is not much for them in terms of organized political participation with particular political agendas. The elderly are a stabilizing element of Japanese politics. Older voters are more loyal (NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho, 2004:110) and more conservative (Uchida and Iwabuchi, 1999: 38f). The swing vote is lower among them than among younger voters, and support for political parties as the principal vehicle of the political process is higher. Their high election participation rate is indicative of vested interest in the status quo that senior citizens’ organizations have not usually pursued by aligning themselves with a political party. The powerful Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs has generally sought to realize its political goals by adopting a cooperative and government-friendly attitude, relying on amakudari5 networks. The president of the Federation is commonly a retired government official, such as (at the time of writing) Ritsuko Nagao, a former high-ranking official of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Justice Minister in the Hashimoto cabinet (1996–1998). The KÜrei shakai-o yoku suru kai (Women’s Association for a Better Ageing Society), whose Secretary General, Keiko Higuchi, is quoted at the beginning of

100 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly this chapter, is a more combative NPO. It has focused on gender issues and been at odds with the government, arguing that traditional gender roles are among the most serious problems of the aged society that politicians have failed to address. Like the Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs, the association has never aligned itself with a political party. In the past, elderly voters have seen their interests well protected by LDP-led governments, which may explain why a strong nationwide political lobby of the elderly has never emerged. In recent years, as the relative affluence of pensioners attracted public attention and calls for the elderly to share a greater part of the burden of social security expenses became more vociferous, some advocacy organizations have sprung up. An interesting case in point is RÜjintÜ (Party of the elderly), a virtual party founded in February 2003 by 74-year-old writer Inada Nada as an Internet platform. The manifesto of RÜjintÜ calls on Internet-savvy seniors ‘to vote for politicians who do not make a fool of the elderly’ (Nada, 2003: 14) and argues that pensioners should speak out on controversial issues because ‘they need not fear any sanctions for saying unpopular and unwelcome things’ (Nada, 2003: 28). Keiko Higuchi’s above-quoted address to RÜjintÜ is an appeal in this spirit, but it represents a minority position. While the elderly, as Nada says, need not be afraid of being reprimanded for expressing their views, their public voice tends to be restrained, averse to risk and radical change. They have long been the central element of LDP support,6 and the LDP has protected their interest in exchange. If we consider the mean age of Lower House members broken down for parties, the LDP features the highest average age with 53.82 years (Upper House, 59.9 years), ahead of its main rival, the Democratic Party of Japan with 48.5 years (Upper House, 55.1 years) by five years. In turn, the DPJ is also younger than the New Komeito Party, 53.9 (Upper House, 52.2 years), and the Communist Party of Japan (Upper House, 50.77). Senior voters like senior politicians. As their numbers will continue to grow in absolute and relative terms for some time, it is in the best interest of the LDP to avoid policies the elderly find unpalatable.

Government for the elderly In the sense that the aged have a disproportionately strong impact at the polls and that they occupy a disproportionately large number of elected offices and administrative career positions, the Japanese government is a government of and by the elderly. Is it also a government for the elderly? In a representative democracy, any group should be represented in government according to its numerical strength. In addition, the progress of civilization can be measured by how well the old and infirm are provided for.7 Under both of these assumptions, it stands to reason that any government is a government for the elderly, to some extent. The question is, however, whether state-sponsored care for the elderly has grown out of proportion as a result of their disproportionate political influence. Specific applications of public choice theory suggest a positive correlation between the proportion of elderly in the total population and the (over-)expansion of intergenerational transfer programmes.8 Many people believe that too big a

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 101 share of Japan’s welfare expenditures is channelled to the aged.9 And it isn’t only from welfare expenses and intergenerational transfer that the elderly benefit. Interregional transfer is another aspect of protecting the elderly. Rural election districts are both old and conservative and hence a mainstay of the LDP. For example, remote and rural Shimane Prefecture has the highest percentage of elderly voters and has been firmly in LDP hands for decades. Depopulated rural areas increasingly depend on hand-outs by the national government as their tax bases erode. They vote LDP, and LDP-led governments protect them from economic hardship in exchange. The consistent preferential treatment of rural areas by LDP administrations is at the same time a pro-senior policy. Is this a consequence of mounting senior power? The welfare state in Japan is not as old and entrenched as in Western European countries, but critics argue that it focuses too much on the elderly at the expense of public social expenditure for family policy and support for needy groups, such as children living in poverty (Osawa, 2004). In the social security budget of fiscal 2004, expenditure on health care for the elderly was twelve times the amount allotted to family allowance. How did the social security system develop such a pro-seniors bias? The first time the ageing society was put on the national policy agenda was in 1972 in a general policy statement delivered by then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka at the opening of the 70th National Diet, just around the time when the proportion of those aged 65 and older – that had hovered between 5 and 6 per cent for many decades – started to take off (Table 9.1). He said: To make an affluent life a reality for the Japanese people, a solidification of social security is indispensable. To this end, we must appropriate the fruits of economic growth unhesitatingly for the welfare of the people. Especially, since we are rapidly entering upon an ageing society, a policy for the elderly is becoming a national concern. It is moreover our duty to take care of those who brought about the present prosperity with their sweat and travail. As for a pension system, we have decided on annuities to support life in old age. Further, we promote support for the bedridden elderly, a comprehensive health-care system for the elderly, as well as employment opportunities for the elderly and deferment of the retirement age. Seventieth National Diet general policy speech by Prime Minister Tanaka, 28 October 1972 (emphasis added by the author). Available at www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/documents/texts/pm/ 19721028.SWJ.html The speech is interesting for directly linking ‘the welfare of the people’ with ‘a policy for the elderly’ and mentioning all of the topics under discussion nowadays now that the ageing society has turned into a hyper-aged society: support for the bedridden elderly, that is to say, long-term care, comprehensive health care, employment for seniors and rescheduling of retirement. Kakuei Tanaka was a shrewd politician who knew how to play to the gallery, and that more silver seats were needed in the gallery, with more comfortable upholstery, to accommodate

102 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly the growing number of senior citizens. These comfortable seats became the central component of Japan’s welfare state and a crucial anchor for the LDP’s hold on power. For the seniors whose ‘sweat and travail must not be forgotten’ were one thing above all: voters. Tanaka was ahead of his time. The ageing society was not a big issue when he brought it to the attention of the diet. Under his administration, free health care for the elderly was implemented in 1973, securing the pensioners’ steadfast loyalty and laying the foundations for a mountain of debt. Virtually every one of his successors followed his lead. As political scientist Paul Talcott (2001: 35) put it, ‘the strong bias of benefits toward the elderly, originally introduced in 1973 by LDP leaders over objections from the Finance Ministry, became institutionalized in the system of representation in health-care policy advisory councils.’ Shifting the burden of paying for the health-care system from the elderly towards the working-age population is the clearest indication that in response to population ageing, the Japanese government has increasingly become a government for the elderly. This has not been accomplished by organized interest groups of the elderly, but rather by politicians setting their sights on the next election and a growing voter constituency. At times of economic growth, this was affordable and a happy concurrence of the interests of the elderly and the ruling LDP, but making the protection of population groups dependent upon cyclical economic trends is impossible. Cutbacks, however, are difficult because they are perceived as unfair reductions of hard-earned entitlements, which politicians are loath to promote, particularly if the group in question translate their discontent into lost votes. ‘Alienating older voters is a risky strategy, as they tend to vote in much greater numbers than younger voters’ (Talcott, 2002: 116). Assuming that voters pursue their own interests rather than the common good, and assuming further that long-term developments are of less concern to elderly voters than short-term benefits, the ageing electorate poses serious questions about future-oriented policy decisions that depend on voter acceptance and support. There is ample evidence that the elderly are less supportive than their younger counterparts of social and legal changes that may have a bearing directly or indirectly on redesigning social relations in a way that does justice to the demographic challenge. This is quite apparent, for example, in gender relations. A 2002 poll by the Prime Minister’s Office found that the ‘male bread winner and full-time housewife’ division of labour was rejected by 32.7 per cent of females and 27.9 per cent of males in their 20s, but by only 23.2 per cent of females and 16.0 per cent of males in their 70s.10 Similarly, regarding the contentious issue of legalizing separate surnames for spouses, the elderly of both sexes, though predictably men more than women, have consistently supported the status quo more strongly than younger men and women.11 Opinion poll results usually exhibit an age gradient, with the older cohorts invariably coming down on the side of the tried-and-tested and habitual. Because, with regard to social security, the tried-and-tested system the elderly have become used to is to their advantage, it will be doubly difficult for politicians to get their approval for reform policies that imply both departure from established ways and cuts in financial support. The elderly are no more likely to vote against their own interests than other constituencies. Curbing their power to

Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 103 slow down the necessary overhaul of the welfare system is, therefore, one of the most pressing political issues resulting from population ageing.

Babies don’t vote In comparison to other industrial democracies Japan’s minimum voting age is high at 20 years. Thus, while the views and preferences of the elderly find full expression in voting behaviour, the influence of the young on the political process is seriously curtailed and bound to stay that way for decades to come. Against this background, electoral reform proposals aiming to lower the minimum legal voting age have been advanced in recent years. Although gerontocracy has never had a bad name in Japan, an increasing number of politicians realize that an unbalanced electorate with a disproportionate representation of the elderly may undermine Japan’s ability to adjust to the challenges of the future. A public discussion about lowering the voting age has been going on for years. The youth organization of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has urged the party to make it a priority issue, persuading it to advocate lowering both the age of majority and the voting age to 18 in its manifesto. The New Komeito, too, is in favour of setting the voting age at 18, while the LDP, which is less popular with younger voters, is not surprisingly dragging its feet on the issue (Saidel, 2003: 2). As turnout is so low among young voters, lowering the minimum voting age by two years would only slightly reduce the dominance of the elderly. To counterbalance the clout of the silver vote more drastic measures are needed. An interesting proposal was advanced by Masaru Mizuno, who, being a former director of the National Tax Agency (kokuzeichÜ), is in a position to assess the seriousness of the problem. Mizuno (2005) argues that all minors should be given voting rights. While some may find this an extravagant idea because, after all, babies do not and should not vote for a reason, it still deserves serious consideration. His argument is based on the Civil Code that stipulates ‘the enjoyment of private rights commences at birth’ (MinpÜ Art: 1, 3). That is, according to the Private Law, which is centered upon property rights, individuals can become holders of property rights at the time of birth. In the event, to exercise these rights, parents must act on their behalf. Further, minors must pay taxes if they own or inherit property or have an income, and again parents are charged with looking after their interests. In such a manner, private rights effective at birth could be interpreted as entailing the right to vote, which would be exercised by proxy until majority. As social ageing progresses, Mizuno argues, a new balance of intergenerational burdens and benefits must be found. If parents were to exercise the right to vote on behalf of their children, they would find it more difficult to abstain from voting and to disregard the future wellbeing of the next generation. Entrusting the voting rights of children to their parents could thus be expected to bolster the electoral strength of the child-rearing generation. The notion that parents have a say in shaping the future for their children, Mizuno (2005) speculates, might even positively affect the declining birth rate.

104 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly Presumably, parents, when they vote, already do so as the ensemble of roles that they have as individuals; that is, as men and women, as workers and employers, as taxpayers, as consumers, as children of their parents and as parents of their children. Still, Mizuno’s suggestion has a certain appeal because it would have the effect that the influence of younger voters on the outcome of elections would be strengthened, which might be a good thing at a time of population ageing. The voices of those supporting a lower voting age are getting louder. In some prefectures, Aichi and Akita, for example, 18- and 19-year-olds have already been allowed to vote in local referendums, and it seems likely that the enfranchisement age for national elections will also be lowered before too long. That suffrage will be extended to all minors is much less likely, but the question will remain on the political agenda of how the demographic structure of the electorate can be altered by legislation consistent with the Civil Code that is suitable for halting political apathy among the young and germane to enabling future-oriented reforms dictated by demographic change.

10 Limits to ageing?

Upon returning from the empire of perennial youth and immortality to the real world Urashima TarÜ aged instantly, as life caught up with him. As a matter of 1

fact, it is not clearly understood whether the phenomenon of ageing is brought about by a specific gene. Whatever you call it, ‘immortality’ or ‘longevity’, to what age will people live in the future? 150 years? 200 years? Will they really live that long? How on earth are they going to do it? And when will it become feasible? Mitsui (2006: 4)

Of the many challenges of demographic change one is particularly intriguing: the question of whether the human lifespan is fixed or plastic. It is a surprisingly complex question that is hard to tackle because conclusions cannot be drawn about the species from individual longevity. While religious thinking and common knowledge assume that ageing is inescapable and the limits to life are preset – for which there is a lot of inductive evidence – the scientific community is divided on the issue. Some insist that the length of human life is genetically determined, while others argue that it is subject to external influence and thus open-ended. The fact that irrefutable evidence for either position is wanting is not just theoretically fascinating, but also adds to the general uncertainty of life on this planet and poses very practical problems, for example, in actuarial circles and for health-care providers.

Stretching the limits A man’s life of fifty years under the heavens, Is nothing compared to the age of this world, Life is but a fleeting dream. This stanza by the playwright and critic Zeami (1363–1443) embodied received wisdom for centuries, although his own long life of 80 years somewhat relativized his statement. It was still quoted as a truism at the threshold of modernity in the middle of the nineteenth century, for example by ShÜin Yoshida, a

106 Limits to ageing? leading intellectual of the late Edo period,2 and retained proverbial qualities for decades thereafter. Life was both fixed and short. Change came with affluence. As Japan recovered from the bloodletting of World War II, life-expectancy gains were rapid and radical, and by the turn of the century old age had not only been postponed but also assumed new qualities. In 2003, YuichirÜ Miura marked his seventieth birthday by becoming the oldest man to scale Mount Everest. He had a good role model. His father KeizÜ, 99, celebrated his birthday the same year by skiing down a slope in the French Alps. He still continued skiing at age 100, before passing away a year later.3 In 2005, KÜzÜ Haraguchi of Miyazaki City set a world track record for his age cohort when he ran 100 metres in 22.4 seconds. He was then 95.4 Shigeaki Hinohara is a celebrity. The director of St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo is still practising medicine at 92 and keeping a busy schedule, giving lectures, writing books and appearing on TV shows. He is also the founder of ShinrÜjin kai, the ‘New Elder Citizens Movement’, whose motto is ‘love, endurance and curiosity’. His philosophy of staying active and living life to the full is immensely popular, reflecting a widely shared desire and a trend of the times (Hinohara, 2002). Hinohara is living proof that the limits of the lifespan can be stretched, an example followed by a growing number of Japanese. In the early 1960s, there were just 150 centenarians; 40 years later their numbers had exploded to over 25,000 (Figure 10.1). The importance of this development is that for the first time ever longevity can now be studied as a population issue rather than a medical condition of exceptional individuals. The oldest old population, especially of Japanese women, has grown by leaps and bounds, giving rise to a new statistical measure, the Centenarian Doubling Time (CDT), that is to say, the number of years needed to double the number of centenarians in a given population. During

Figure 10.1 A sharp rise in the number of centenarians since the early 1960s. Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, KÜsei

rÜdÜ hakusho 2005: 247.

Limits to ageing? 107

Figure 10.2 Infant mortality decline, 1950–2002. Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; www.stat.go.jp/english/index/official/f024.htm

the past 25 years, Japan’s CDT has been halved (Robine, Saito and Jagger, 2003). In Japan, female life expectancy at birth reached 84.6 years in 2000. The maximum reported age at death for both sexes shows an increase, and the number of those living 100 years and more continues to rise. Mortality decline is one of the big issues involved in understanding population change. Japan has been leading the world for some time in reducing infant mortality, that is, infant death per 1,000 live births in a given year (Figure 10.2). By 1996 the death rate under age 1 was below 4, and hardly any further improvements were thought possible, but the figure announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for 2003 was 2.99. The low infant mortality rate means that the effect of further reductions on the population structure will be insignificant. However, death rates have been on the decline not just for infants but across the board for all age cohorts. The decline has been linear, even for the older age cohorts (Feeney, 1990).5 This noteworthy fact is captured in Figure 10.3 where the growing number of centenarians is plotted onto the curve of infant mortality decline, showing a matching development in chronological terms. While there is no causal relationship between both trends, it is significant that they coincide. Both at the beginning and at the end of the lifespan the inescapable fate of death continues to be pushed back (Figures 10.3 and 10.4). In combination, both trends generate further life-expectancy gains. Other rich countries share with Japan a significant mortality decline during the past half century. During that time, the probability of an 80-year-old person surviving to age 100 has increased 20-fold. Therefore, and because of the linearity of the observed increases in life expectancy, Oeppen and Vaupel (2002) argue against the notion that humans are approaching the limit of their biological maximum lifespan. A definitive answer to the question of whether there is such a

108 Limits to ageing?

Figure 10.3 Infant mortality and number of centenarians.

limit6 and, if so, at what age, cannot be given at the present time. Life expectancy continues to rise, but there is a great deal of uncertainty about the forces that reduce mortality. Forecasts about lifespan increases until 2050 vary by as much as 10 years; Japan’s official median forecast being 82.95 years for both sexes combined, versus 93.20 years predicted by the Global Ageing Initiative (Tuljapurkar, Li and Boe, 2000). Though calculating future human life expectancy remains fraught with uncertainties, further gains in Japan are expected. Meanwhile, the quest for the secret of longevity goes on.

Lifestyle Between 1950 and 2000, Japan’s per capita income multiplied by a factor of 30. During the same period of time, life expectancy at birth rose from 59.57 years to 77.72 years for men and from 62.97 years to 84.60 years for women. The general correlation between a better life and a longer life is universal, which suggests the strong influence of prosperity on the length of life. The low average age and life expectancy of poor countries provides further evidence of the nexus of social ageing and social wealth. However, personal assets and disposable income are not unqualified predictors of life expectancy. Especially in the higher ranges of populations with high life expectancy it is the lifestyle, including prosperity, rather than socioeconomic status alone that is the decisive variable, or, more accurately, combined set of variables. Japan is number one on the World Health Organization’s index of disabilityadjusted life expectancy at birth,7 but is only ranked 18th for GDP per capita (2005). By contrast, the richest country of the world in GDP per capita terms, the United States of America, ranks 24th on the life expectancy index. Incongruence between social wealth and life expectancy is also conspicuous within Japan, the prefecture with the lowest industrial output and low values on other economic indices, Okinawa, having the highest life expectancy.8 The southernmost prefecture’s

Limits to ageing? 109

Figure 10.4 ‘The age of a lifespan of 100 years is coming. Iwao Yamakawa, 100, and Mirai Watanabe, 0.’ Newspaper advertisement by Kagome Co. Ltd., 1 January 2005. By permission of Kagome Co. Ltd.

average annual income per person is at the bottom of the pile in Japan, but its natural population increase is the highest. Poor but happy, in Japanese terms, characterizes Okinawa. A high birth rate and a low death rate are the hallmarks of the prefecture’s demographic dynamics, of which the growing population of people aged 100 and over are one eye-catching component. In 2003, the number of centenarians per 100,000 of population was 42.49, securing Okinawa the top rank for the fourteenth year running since 1990.9 The fact that Okinawa is home to a large number of healthy oldest of the old led to the establishment in 1976 of the Okinawa Centenarian Study, a long-term project under the leadership of Makoto Suzuki (Chair, Division of Gerontology, Faculty of Social Welfare, Okinawa International University) funded by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Bradley Willcox, researcher in Geriatrics, and Craig Willcox, a medical anthropologist, were other key members of the project team. In the population-based study over 600 centenarians were examined in order to discover the reasons why, within the total population of Japan, a significantly higher than average rate of Okinawans enjoy a healthy old age, escaping or delaying common diseases of ageing including dementia, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Investigating the genetic heritage of the population, dietary habits, physical exercise, psychospiritual health, and the integrative approach to healing that incorporates both Western and Eastern elements, the study came to the

110 Limits to ageing? conclusion that ‘while there is some genetic protection that helps the Okinawans live to extreme ages most of the “successful ageing” phenomenon is due to lifestyle.’10 Further evidence that lifestyle intervention has been the key factor in Okinawa’s remarkable life expectancy gains of more than 20 years over the past half century is found in migration studies showing that Okinawans who grow up elsewhere suffer from higher all-cause mortality rates than those who grow up in Okinawa. As in the rest of Japan, there is a marked difference in successful ageing between the sexes, favouring female over male centenarians by a ratio of eight to one.11 If the findings of the Okinawa Centenarian Study are any indication, lifestyle adjustments will enable further mortality improvements and gains in life expectancy. Whether socioeconomic conditions in Japan’s urban centres that are more exposed to the influence of globalization than the backwater of Okinawa will be conducive to such adjustments is another question. Meanwhile, immortality is also on the agenda in a different field.

Anthropotechology Progress in the medical sciences plays a major part in mortality decline, and it has been one of the crucial factors of population ageing in Japan. In addition to greatly reducing the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases and cancer by means of new drugs and innovative therapies, organ transplantation has become a lifeextending medical procedure with growing potential. Although its impact on reducing mortality has so far been less than that of piecemeal improvements via drugs and therapies, organ transplantation has more dramatic and irreversible consequences. It is a radical and conspicuous step along the road to immortality, with implications for the concept of death and thus human existence. In terms of theoretical knowledge and practical skills, Japan was at the forefront of transplantation medicine. After Christian Barnard’s groundbreaking operation in 1967 in South Africa, Japan was the second country where a heart transplant was performed. However, after that, cadaveric organ transplantation came to an abrupt halt because brain death was not recognized as death in Japanese society. Heart transplantation was only resumed 30 years later after a law defining brain death had been passed in 1997. It conspicuously sidestepped the issue of declaring brain death as death. Many Japanese are still reluctant to accept the notion of brain death as death and the implication that a body is a stockpile of harvestable spare parts.12 In an essay entitled ‘The wonderland of immortality’ that appeared in 1989 at the height of the debate about brain death, Osamu Nishitani pointed out that it was not our changed understanding of death that changed medicine, but rather the other way round: progress in technology and medical science forces us to accept a new definition of death suitable to functional needs. Technology prolongs the human lifespan […] and distances humanity from death. The issue of ‘brain death’ that is replete with troublesome and dangerous aspects is no longer even a problem of the event we call ‘death’.

Limits to ageing? 111 ‘Death’ must be redefined in order to allow medicine in its self-determined progress to obtain ‘dead bodies’ as its material resource. Nishitani (1989: 52–53) Nishitani expanded his much-quoted essay into a book, published under the same title in 2002, in which he addresses a number of related issues of anthropotechnology concerning the ongoing redefinition of life and death, such as artificial insemination, stem-cell production and genetic engineering, human cloning and anti-ageing drugs. While biologists and geneticists continue to pursue the question of whether the human genome holds information that determines a range for an absolute maximum of the length of life, this question may have lost its relevance once an answer has been found, as human life is being shifted by human intervention more and more from the realm of the natural into that of the artificial. Longevity will be further advanced by adaptive technologies. Genetic engineering has begun to manipulate the origins of life, while organ transplantation and various life-preserving methods contribute to the gradual delaying of death. The development of artificial organs is regarded as posing fewer ethical problems than either allowing a part of a dead donor to live on in a recipient or deliberately controlling a future individual’s genetic make-up.13 During the 30-year hiatus between the legal conundrum surrounding the first heart transplant and the legislation regulating organ procurement from brain-dead donors, Japanese scientists have devoted much effort to the research and development of artificial body parts (Mitsui, 2006: 164f). Because of the shortage of donors, some consider this avenue of approach to the extension of life more promising than organ transplantation. What organ transplant medicine and artificial organ development share in common is the reliance on highly-sophisticated technology that, in the event, brings to the fore the tension resulting from the fact that humans are at the same time the subject and the object of technological progress. Death is ever more becoming a technical problem, a matter of deliberate planning rather than destiny. The desire of Japanese public hospitals for legislation or guidelines for the treatment of terminal patients is a clear indication of that. Natural phenomena are not subject to legislation; manmade phenomena are. After an investigation was opened in March 2006 into the deaths of several terminal patients whose life-support systems were removed at Imizu City Hospital in Toyama Prefecture, a Kyodo News survey found that 85 per cent of public hospitals think that legislation for the treatment of terminal patients and hence for the determination of death is needed.14 The 1997 Organ Transplant Law was the first step towards legislating the end of life; others will inevitably follow (see below). Technological advance is modulated by culture. This is the lesson to be drawn from the Japanese experience with organ transplant medicine and the changed concept of human life brought about by it. By settling on a dividing line between life and death, Cartesian dualism provides a point of departure quite different from the Confucian notion of the oneness of body and mind and the idea that one’s body is sacred to one’s parents and should not be disfigured. Shintoism, too, is attached to the integrity and wholeness of the

112 Limits to ageing? body. Life – that is, a living body endowed with feeling and knowledge – is conceived as a gift, a link connecting past and future. Against this background, resistance to treating the body as a material shell is not surprising. The contradictions borne by the clash of technological progress and deep-seated cultural conceptions cannot be avoided. The modern way of dealing with them is the law. While technology is put to service delaying death it also induces the development of legal norms for its application. So far, the bioethical discourse about developments in anthropotechnology has focused on the definition of human life, personhood and the delimitation of one individual from another. In the present context, these questions are not of primary concern. It is only a question of time, however, before the collective implications will have to be addressed, that is, anthropotechnology as a population issue. As the delaying of death by technological intervention becomes more normal and widespread, the question of social limits to ageing will inevitably arise. Whether and under what circumstances life-extension measures for individuals should be applied or discontinued is one of the most vexing problems of bioethics today (Tateiwa, 2005); but it is conceivable that the hyper-aged society will have to deal with the question to what extent the not-dead population should be allowed to grow, and how far its growth can be afforded.

Grappling with death In response to population ageing and the technologization of death, several organizations dealing with the final phase of life have come into existence. The oldest and best known is the Nihon Songenshi KyÜkai (Japanese Society for Dying with Dignity), founded in 1976 by doctors, lawyers and academics as the Anrakushi KyÜkai (Euthanasia Society) and renamed in 1983. Its increasing membership, reaching some 110,000 in 2006, is indicative of the growing urgency of the issue (Figure 10.5). The society maintains a nationwide network with chapters in every prefecture. Reflecting the fact that women are both more involved in care giving and more numerous in the oldest age brackets, it has twice as many female as male members. Its mission statement declares: Nihon Songenshi KyÜkai is engaged in various activities in order to exchange thoughts with everyone about methods of terminal care, about the right to ‘death’, aiming at promoting the right to self-determination. 15

Promoting the legalization for determining the manner of one’s own death, specifically a ‘natural death’ undelayed by mechanical life support systems, is the principal objective of the Nihon Songenshi KyÜkai. The society advocates legal recognition of power of attorney for health care. If a terminal patient’s will is not clear, his or her family should be able to make decisions based on the assumed will of the patient. The Anrakushi, songenshi hÜseika-o soshisuru kai (Society for the Prevention of the Legalization of Euthanasia and Dying with Dignity) headed by Masazumi

Limits to ageing? 113

Figure 10.5 Membership of the Japanese Society for Dying with Dignity, 1976–2006. Source: www.songenshi-kyokai.com/dwd06.htm

Harada, a professor of Kumamoto Gakuen University and President of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology, was founded in June 2005 with the stated purpose of averting the legalization of any form of euthanasia, death by terminating life-support or assisted suicide. Arguing that cases of people changing their minds, comatose patients coming back to life, mistaken diagnoses and terminally ill patients not in a condition where death is imminent imply too many uncertainties, the society insists that the sole guiding principle of the medical profession should be to heal and preserve life. Upon its establishment it declared: Our position is that living life to the very end is the essence of humanity. We have therefore established the Society for the Prevention of the Legalization of Euthanasia and Dying with Dignity. Let us build a society that does not have to worry about the burden of the family and where medical service provides palliative care. soshisuru.fc2web.com (accessed 1 May 2006) As it appears from this statement, an additional argument against legalizing euthanasia is seen in the possibility that economic reasons may interfere, however indirectly, with a family’s decision to stop life support for a terminally ill patient.16

114 Limits to ageing? Progress in the medical sciences and technology has made it necessary to find a new balance between living long and living a humane life. In Japan today, the feeling that such a new balance has not yet been found is widespread. The religions do not have a conclusive answer, as a Yomiuri Shimbun opinion poll about legislation regulating dying with dignity conducted in February 2006 revealed. The general attitude was that the issue has not been discussed enough to warrant legislation.17 However, the social dimensions of coming to terms with death in the hightech hyper-aged society can no longer be ignored. A social consensus is needed but not at hand. In recognition of this fact, the Songenshi hÜseika-o kangaeru giinrenmei (Federation of Lawmakers Studying the Legalization of Dying with Dignity), headed by LDP Lower House Member TarÜ Nakayama, was formed in May 2005 to deliberate the relevant questions and prepare legislation. The debate is as difficult as it is contentious because both sides have compelling arguments. What legislation for regulating euthanasia and dying with dignity will look like and what role family members and physicians will play is uncertain, but that such legislation will come to pass is inevitable. Turning back to the ‘natural end of life’ is not an option. Technology and legal regulations set the frame conditions for dying, contributing to the taking shape of population engineering under the auspices of anthropotechnology.

11 Immigrants welcome?

In the face of an ageing society, Japan must accept foreign human resources. Not only skilled workers, but a wide range of workers. Taichi Sakaiya

Unless we accept a substantial number of foreign workers, it will be impossible to make up for a labour shortage in the future. 1 Atsushi Seike

Before the national census was conducted in October 2005, the population was prepared for the event by official announcements and advertisements in newspapers, including those catering for the foreign community. Readers were addressed directly in order to solicit their cooperation: You are a member of the Japanese society. The government of Japan will conduct a population census as of October 1, 2005. The population census is a statistical survey conducted according to Japanese law. Everyone living in Japan, regardless of nationality, must fill out the census form. The information obtained from the census will be used only for statistical purposes. It will never be used for immigration control, taxation or policing. Advertisement, The Daily Yomiuri, 13 September 2005. A national census hotline was established for foreign residents, with the service available in English Monday to Friday, Chinese on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Korean on Tuesdays and Fridays. Census forms were printed in a dozen languages in addition to Japanese. The population census website2 provides information in Japanese, Chinese, English, Korean and Portuguese. Despite the assurance that information obtained from the census ‘will never be used for immigration control, taxation or policing’, census takers were faced with an increasing number of people who refused to respond to the survey. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which is in charge of the quintennial census, therefore started to examine the possibility of conducting future censuses via the

116 Immigrants welcome? Internet rather than by means of a house-to-house survey by authorized personnel,3 because the rate of ‘survey refusers’ was thought to be especially high among groups that are of particular interest as they are indicative of ongoing social changes. Two groups stand out: unmarried couples and others living in alternative partnerships, and foreign nationals including those employed without proper work permits, visa overstayers, and others residents with defective immigration papers. People belonging to these categories tend to view population surveys with suspicion, but, as they are on the increase, reliable statistical data are desirable. However, notwithstanding the assertion that data will be used for statistical purposes only, many foreigners are disinclined to cooperate with governmentsponsored surveys because they are concerned about the protection of privacy or because they do not perceive the statement at the outset of the newspaper announcement quoted above as corresponding to fact; that is, they have qualms about their status as ‘members of the Japanese society’. This sentiment is shared by many, foreigners and Japanese alike, and forms one of the major intangible obstacles to increasing immigration. Moreover, it exacerbates the difficulty of arriving at accurate figures for the foreign population.

The foreign population Over the past couple of decades the number of foreign residents, both temporary and long-term, has grown noticeably, a development that has called into question the validity of Japan’s long-cherished self-image and reputation as a homogeneous mono-racial society.4 This has given rise to heated discussions about Japan’s future as well as numerous scholarly publications taking issue with ‘global Japan’ (Goodman, 2003), ‘multiethnic Japan’ (Lie, 2001), the advent of multicultural society (Douglass and Roberts, 2000) and multilingualism in Japan (Sanada and ShÜji, 2005). To be sure, Japan has become more colourful. Yet, the surge of interest in diversity notwithstanding, the foreign population of Japan is small. Discounting Japanese-born non-Japanese nationals, mainly ethnic Koreans and Chinese, it amounts to less than 1 per cent of the total population (Figure 11.1). This is far less than the migrant populations of other highly industrialized countries, but more than Japan has seen in the past. In 2004, the number of foreigners registered in accordance with the Alien Registration Law was 1,973,747. This was more than double the number 20 years earlier (1985: 850,612) when labour immigration to Japan began.5 Under then Prime Minister Nakasone, the Japanese government drew up a ‘Plan to Accept 100,000 Foreign Students’, as a result of which the number of foreign students began to increase sharply in the late 1980s. Yet the government only slightly changed its restrictive immigration policy. The revised Immigration Control Act, which came into force on 1 June 1990, imposed penalties on both employers and brokers for the employment of workers without proper permits. At the same time the law opened the door to Nikkeijin (Befu, 2002), that is, foreign nationals of Japanese descent, as well as their dependents, who want to live and work in Japan. This led to an influx of Brazilians and people from other Latin American countries, driven by labour

Immigrants welcome? 117

Figure 11.1 Registered foreign nationals, 1950–2003. Source: Ministry of Justice, Government of Japan, Basic Plan for Immigration Control, 3rd edition, 2004.

demand.6 Although the Japanese economy slid into a prolonged recession in the early 1990s, the number of foreigners entering Japan for the purpose of employment continued to grow (Komai, 1999), as did international marriages (Li, 2005)7 and the population of spouses and children of migrant workers. The number of foreign workers also grew, although it is still at a low level. In 2000, foreigners accounted for 1.07 per cent of the working-age population 15 years and older.8 The labourforce participation rate of resident foreigners was then 62.8 per cent. However, in its 2005 report the Health and Labour Ministry, responsible for the health insurance and pensions of foreign workers, gave the figure of 198,380 foreigners legally engaged in gainful employment (KÜseirÜdÜsho, 2005), that is, just 10 per cent of the registered foreigners. The discrepancy stems from the fact that this figure excludes nonJapanese permanent residents and foreigners who entered Japan as students and trainees (kenshñsei), although the latter and many of the former are in, all but visa category, to various degrees members of the Japanese workforce. But even if this figure is very conservative, it is indicative of the hitherto small scale of labour migration to Japan. This is the result of an immigration control policy that in principle bars unskilled workers from entering the country for the purpose of employment. Two loopholes that are exploited by industry and tolerated by the government are the regulations governing Nikkeijin and trainees. The Nikkeijin are allowed to work without restriction, and their employment is heavily focused on manual labour.

118 Immigrants welcome?

Migration dynamics Immigration is one of the most obvious forces that work for the pluralization of Japanese society. Integrating migrant communities into mainstream society and avoiding conflict between foreign and domestic customs are topics that have been propelled onto the agenda of social and education policy makers. To what extent immigration will change Japan is unknown, but it is common knowledge that current demographic trends are a strong pull factor that makes continuing immigration in some measure likely, if not inevitable, and, therefore, cannot be ignored in a comprehensive discussion of social ageing in Japan. In view of the relatively small numbers of labour migrants in Japan, conventional push–pull theories of migration are not easily applicable to explain the population dynamics of non-Japanese nationals in Japan. Hugo (1998) has argued that the asynchrony of the second demographic transition in Asia fuels inter-Asian labour migration. While the most mobile population cohorts, those aged 15–35, have been on the increase since the 1990s in countries such as China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, the same age group is decreasing in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, which is leading to a quasi-natural flow of people from the former to the latter countries. Yet this push-pull dynamics of young mobile populations in low-wage countries and old declining populations in high-wage countries is strongly distorted by immigration policies. What is more, labour migration has long ceased to be the irreversible once-in-a-lifetime decision to leave one’s home country to settle permanently elsewhere. The transnational ties linking host and home societies are much stronger today than they were in former times (Ishi, 2003). It seems obvious that population decline and a dependency ratio that will continue to change unfavourably until 2030, at least, will force Japan to come to terms with higher levels of immigration. At the present time, however, because of Japan’s restrictive immigration laws, it is not really known how strong the push factors from the young in low-wage countries are. For example, in the 1990s, Filipina women were brought to Japan with the purpose of marrying Japanese men, mainly in rural depopulating regions where heirs of farms had difficulty in finding wives (Suzuki, 2000). While this is a particular aspect of Japan’s demographic crisis, the numerical impact of this group of immigrants is small. By contrast, there clearly is demand on a much larger scale for workers willing to do so-called ‘3 K’ jobs that are hard (kitsui), dirty (kitanai) and dangerous (kiken). This demand is likely to grow, making it more difficult to uphold the principle of not importing unskilled labour (Ninomiya and Tanaka, 2004).

Increasing immigration In the past, immigration has rarely been viewed as something Japan needs, but rather as something Japan has to endure in the interest of its reputation as a responsible member of the community of nations. Thus, in the late 1970s, Japan was forced to accept some 10,000 refugees who had fled their homeland in the wake of America’s war against Vietnam (Kawakami, 2001). Immigration control has been

Immigrants welcome? 119 restrictive and strict, lest the inflow of foreigners change the ethnic composition of the domestic population or the economic position of certain social groups. It has been taken for granted that the beneficiaries of labour migration are the migrants, while, with respect to the host society, the costs have been highlighted. Immigrants tend to be poor and, perhaps as a consequence, more prone to be involved in illegal activities. They are also more likely to suffer discrimination because of their limited ability to speak the local language and conform to local customs. The cost of language and assimilation programmes is high, but the social costs of not providing such programmes are likely to be even higher. Such is the perception of immigration in general and in Japan in particular. The implicit assumption underlying immigration in Japan has always been that undesirable immigrants must be kept out and that, to the extent that immigration is allowed, it benefits the immigrants, who would earn lower wages (if any) in their home countries. It also benefits the low-wage countries themselves, because migrant workers send remittances back home, thus giving a boost to their economies. In combination, Japan’s demographic dynamics and the forces of globalization have begun to change this perception. The advocates of increasing immigration have become more articulate and influential. Economists, politicians and social scientists have presented a number of arguments why Japan should accept foreign workers on a larger scale. A United Nations study, published in 2000, on population decline and replacement migration in European countries and Japan has fuelled the debate, because it estimated that, in order to offset the projected population decline, Japan will have to accept 343,000 immigrants annually from the beginning of the millennium until 2050. Even more dramatically, for a decline of the working population to be prevented, as many as 647,000 migrant workers would be needed annually.9 Such a massive number of immigrants would mean that by 2050 a full third of the Japanese population would be foreign born or descendents of immigrants. Considering the fact that at the end of 2003 the number of foreigners with the status of ‘Permanent Resident’ stood at 267,011,10 while all other foreign nationals were considered temporary residents, immigration on this scale is an altogether unrealistic scenario. Nevertheless, increasing immigration is on the agenda in present-day Japan. The question, ‘how many do we have to let in?’ is being superseded by that of ‘can we get as many as the labour market requires?’ and, more critically, ‘can we get the kinds of migrants we need?’ In addition to the costs and risks, the benefits and promises of immigration are coming into view. Long-range projections of Japan’s population development are rather dramatic. By mid-century, the population of 127 million at its beginning will have declined to an estimated 109 million Japanese, and, according to the lowest projection, the downward slide begun in 2005 is set to bottom out at 64 million by 2100. Regardless of how accurate these figures are judged, there is universal agreement among demographers that prolonged depopulation will occur. As the labour force is shrinking even faster than the population at large, the prospects are that labour import will continue for many years. In certain branches such as nursing, immigration restrictions have been relaxed already. In November 2004, the governments of

120 Immigrants welcome? Japan and the Philippines concluded negotiations for a ‘Japan–Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement’, which allows Filipino candidates for jobs such as qualified nurses and certified care workers, for example, to work in Japan for three and four years, respectively. It is no coincidence that Japan opened its labour market to foreign migrants in the health-care sector, because a shortage of personnel is keenly felt here. According to one calculation, the number of nurses and home helpers needed will grow by a factor of 1.4 from 340,000 in 2005 to 470,000 in 2025. A shortage of 120,000 part-timers must be reckoned with.11 This raises the question of where the human resources can be recruited, with healthy retirees, housewives and foreign workers being the most obvious options though not alternatives, because all of these groups will likely have to be tapped to meet the demand. In any event, the Economic Partnership Agreement with the Philippines, and a similar one with Thailand, are no more than a stopgap remedy to a more general problem. Immigration is one of the variables that must be reckoned with as Japan grapples with population decline and a changing international environment. Placing the need to promote immigration within the context of declining birth rates and economic globalization, the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry in September 2003 issued a statement about the specific measures it advocates: At present, foreigners can be allowed to enter the country to work in 14 designated professional and technical fields. On the basis of its policy of revitalizing the economy and society and promoting internationalization, the government actively supports the acceptance of foreigners in these fields without any restrictions on their numbers. Yet, no more than about 100,000 foreigners are working in the specified fields (excepting those working in the entertainment industry). With regard to securing highly qualified foreign labour Japan lags far behind Europe and America. In order to prevail in this highly competitive era we will have to work on skill formation and human resources. At the same time, it is necessary to fundamentally change our approach to the importation of highly-skilled foreign labour. For highly value-added products and services even small and medium sized companies must plan to utilize qualified foreign workers. To this end, it is necessary actively to promote the acceptance of foreign workers with highly developed skills and knowledge, to extend mutual certification of qualifications, to ease restrictions on residence, and to revise the social security and health-care systems. Furthermore, we will have to enhance support for foreign students and improve the living conditions of foreign workers. Gaikoku rÜdÜsha no ukeire no arikata. www.jcci.or.jp/nissyo/iken/ 030917gaikokujinroudousya.htm (accessed 1 May 2006). Similarly, the Nippon keidanren (Japan Business Federation), in its vision statement for the Japan of 2005, calls for ‘vibrant diversity’ in a society where more choice is possible:

Immigrants welcome? 121 It is not only Japanese citizens who will bring these choices to our society. Non-Japanese who come to live in this country will bring diverse viewpoints and talents. Japan must create an environment where foreigners can actively participate in economic and social activities. On an individual level this will require greater tolerance towards diversity; on the administrative level, the government must open Japan’s doors to people from around the globe so that they can display their ability in this country. Nippon keidanren (2003: 7). The Nippon keidanren emphasizes the potential of immigration to revitalize and enrich Japanese society as well as the necessity of making it more hospitable for foreign residents. As it is generally considered a matter of course that immigrants not only have to blend in but also have to bear the cost of doing so, this a remarkable shift of perspective. Japan, while esteemed for its high wages and orderly and safe society, is not considered to be an easy place for foreigners to live (Komai, 1999). Despite all ‘internationalization’ rhetoric, as long as immigration was seen as serving only the immigrants’ interests, few efforts were made to change that. This is a matter of growing urgency, for, as the Nippon keidanren is keenly aware, Japan has not been able to attract the immigrants it needs. In 1999, the Japan Economic Council recommended for the government ‘to study and promote measures for actively facilitating the entry of foreign workers into specialized and technical fields’.12 The government consequently announced plans to recruit 30,000 IT engineers (Kajimoto, 2001), but this target has not been reached. Professor of Labour Economics Atsushi Seike (2005), quoted at the beginning of this chapter, therefore blames the government for not having given sufficient thought to the question of why Japan has not been able to attract highly qualified professionals from abroad in large numbers. His view is that in today’s highly competitive world this could become a serious problem, because Japan’s declining student population is unlikely to meet the growing demand for highly-skilled creative engineers and other professionals in innovative fields.

Foreign unskilled labour The other critical issue of Japan’s immigration regime is whether it is possible and prudent to keep the door closed to unskilled workers. Under current regulations, such workers are accepted only as trainees, for a limited period of time, or Nikkeijin, as mentioned above. However, large numbers of unskilled workers are in fact working on construction sites and on other manual jobs throughout the country, having found ways around official immigration channels. Japan is thus beginning to encounter problems well known in Western Europe and North America, though on a much smaller scale. It will have to confront them and design a consistent immigration policy that takes into account domestic demographic shifts, labour market demands and advancing regional economic integration.

122 Immigrants welcome?

Problems The two most basic questions are: (1) whether immigration policy change is a suitable means of responding to labour market demands, and (2) whether immigration is a viable solution to Japan’s demographic imbalance. Both questions allow for no easy answers and are accordingly highly contested. Fear of uncontrollable longterm consequences of mass immigration is one of the leitmotifs of the debate. Simulating the number of immigrants needed to keep the working-age population level in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Miyoshi (1999) arrived at the same order of magnitude as the UN study quoted earlier. Even if mass migration on such a scale were possible, the positive effects on economic growth and dependency ratio would quickly fade away half a century later as the immigrants grow old (Miyoshi, 2000). Japan, Miyoshi (2003) concludes, should therefore resist the pressure both from inside on the part of business and from outside on the part of unskilled labour migrants seeking work in Japan. He speaks for many in Japan who make the case against unskilled labour import in order to correct the ageing population structure. The main argument is that the society is not prepared to face the possibility of deep-reaching social and cultural changes brought about by mass immigration, and therefore should seek other means to boost the economically active population, such as raising the retirement age and the female labour participation rate, as well as increasing productivity by employing more robots. Setting aside the question of whether or not immigration is desirable from the point of view of social cohesion and harmony, the feasibility of an immigration policy suitable to correct the population structure is yet another matter. Inoguchi (2001: 88f) has shown that fine-tuning immigration so as to ameliorate the dependency rate is too ambitious a project because, at a time when age discrimination is an issue, migration is difficult if not impossible to control by age-defined quota. Further, mass acceptance of unskilled labour will aggravate the tendency to split the labour market, allowing a society to evolve where foreigners do the dirty work and thereby introducing yet another element of differentiation. Inoguchi (2001: 192) stresses the importance of developing an immigration policy as part of a longterm strategy for dealing with population decline and ageing, but he opposes relaxing the restrictions on importing unskilled labour, arguing that (1) foreign unskilled workers will be most vulnerable to lay-offs during recessions; (2) skill formation and promotion at the workplace are difficult; and (3) the likelihood that these workers will end up at the bottom of the social pyramid is very high (Inoguchi, 2001: 197). As an alternative to mass immigration, he advocates a ‘human resource development and circulation model’. Based on bilateral contracts with Asian feeder countries, such a model would be an expansion of the trainee programme under which unskilled workers now enter the country. Unskilled workers from lessdeveloped countries would come to Japan for a limited period of time to work and acquire technical skills, and then return to their countries of origin. With a good track record during their sojourn as trainees they could attain the right to return to Japan for the purpose of gainful employment, again for a limited period of time.

Immigrants welcome? 123 By putting labour migration into the context of human resource development and international cooperation, Inoguchi argues, a mutually beneficial circulation of workers can be institutionalized. Ideally, such a system would help Japan to overcome a shortage of unskilled labour, improve human resources in feeder countries, and spare Japan the social costs and cultural and social clashes that have come with mass migration in other highly developed countries. On the drawing board, the human resource development and circulation model looks promising because it takes into consideration the concerns of feeder countries, which Japanese policy makers have not given much thought to in the past. Whether in practice this model can become more than a front for the exploitation of foreign workers is doubtful. Replacement migration is not the solution to the problems caused by the declining and ageing population, but the policy mix to address these problems will have to include a more clearly-defined immigration policy than Japan has at present. Such a policy must resolve the discrepancy between the official refusal to permit unskilled labour on the basis of the immigration law and the tacit acceptance of these workers, albeit in legal limbo, dictated by market forces. A new immigration policy also has to bring an end to the infighting between government agencies. While the foreign ministry generally takes a favourable view of immigration, as shown, for example, by the Economic Partnership Agreements it has drawn up with the Philippines and Thailand, the justice ministry has been at the forefront of safeguarding Japan’s policy of limiting immigration to highly-skilled specialists.

Figure 11.2 Registered foreign nationals and visa overstayers. Source: Ministry of Justice; www.moj.go.jp/PRESS/050617-1/050617-1.html. Figures for overstayers as of 1990, from www.moj.go.jp/PRESS/050328-1/050328-1-1.html; figures before 1990, personal communication, Public Relations Bureau, Ministry of Justice.

124 Immigrants welcome? Immigration policy is not high on the agenda of the Japanese government, which evidently has no answer to the question of whether it is more difficult to boost fertility or to convince people to accept more immigrants. However, in combination, the large population of visa overstayers and other undocumented foreigners (Figure 11.2), the demographic dynamics, and international pressure to allow more migrant workers to come to Japan are likely to accelerate the policy planning process and eventually change the face of Japan.

12 Population ageing and social change

Still more troubling is the possibility that the public discussion about social disparities will reinforce the very trend. […] In system-theoretic terms, we are dealing with a situation where, with regard to the bi-polarization of society according to the theory of social disparity, the system is driven by positive feedback only, while it is hard to generate negative feedback. More simply put, when a trend intensifies, countervailing forces are cancelled out, just like a snowball effect. […] However, it is implausible to assume that nothing can bring the trend of social disparity to a halt. That a trend continues in one direction is exceptional. It invariably bottoms out at some point. Tamaki SaitÜ (SaitÜ and Sakai 2006: 11)

In a country where a song contest between a male and a female team continues to be a popular TV programme on New Year’s Eve, the penchant for dealing with relationships in terms of high and low is perhaps something of a tradition, even though the difference between man and woman is not one that can be measured by a standard of high and low, winner and loser, happiness and misery. I am convinced that unless we distance ourselves from this way of thinking, the trend towards late marriage and the falling birth rate will not be halted. Junko Sakai (SaitÜ and Sakai 2006: 220f)

Social ageing changes everything. An aged society is not necessarily better or worse than a young one, but it is different. How it is different is not so obvious, nor is what causes the difference. When we think of Meiji Japan as being different from the present, demographics is not the first thing that comes to mind, although population size and structure obviously are essential aspects of the change. From the beginning of the Meiji era until the present Heisei era, Japan’s population has grown at a continuous and at times alarming rate from 35 million to 127 million. Meiji Japan and Heisei Japan differ not only because they are separated by 120 years, but also because a society of 35 million is not the same as one of 127 million. The population structure reinforces the difference. A major reason why Japan today is unlike it was in former times is because it has an older population. Since World War II, Japan has gained 30 years in life expectancy. In 1950, the structure

126 Population ageing and social change of the Japanese population formed a classical pyramid, where each successively older age cohort is a smaller portion of the total population. Half a century later, the pyramid has been transformed into a pattern where the portion of the total population in each age cohort is more balanced, resulting in a shape that resembles a column with some irregular bumps. This means that in 2007 there are not simply just 50 million more Japanese than there were in 1945; they form a very different society. And in 2030, when the oldest cohort is predicted to exceed the youngest by a large measure, the difference will be even more pronounced (Figure 12.1). Population dynamics interact with socioeconomic change, accompany it, and drive it onwards, working as both cause and catalyst. Japan is in the midst of a sweeping transformation that leaves few arenas of the society untouched. As the social contract is being renegotiated, economic rules change, gender roles shift, and intergenerational redistribution patterns are adjusted; the entire social structure is in flux. That further changes are coming is generally agreed, but the nexus of demographic behaviour and social change is by no means self-evident. One of the difficulties is that demographic forecasting is a complex exercise subject to many interfering variables.

Precarious predictions Drawing lessons about social change from demographic change is, therefore, no simple matter. The most important demographic facts are well known. Population and the labour force will be shrinking until mid-century at least. Negative

Figure 12.1 The transformation of Japan’s population pyramid, 1950–2030. Source: Statistics Bureau, MIC; Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Population ageing and social change 127 population growth goes hand in hand with a massive change in the age structure of the population. Nevertheless, it is difficult to envisage what Japanese society will be like when the median age of the population is over 50, which, according to one projection (Ogawa, 2003: 137), will be reached at some point between 2020 and 2025, and how it will react to progressive ageing. Projections do not stand on firm ground. For example, a serious, scholarly book published in 1996 by Tokyo University Press stated on the basis of available vital statistics that, if the birth rate remained lower than 2.0 per cent, the population was expected to decrease after 2015 (Yoshikawa, Bhattacharya and Vogt, 1996: 235). Within 10 years, this projection was off the mark by a decade. In a much shorter time range, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research as well as all Japanese government agencies with their own statistical bureaus were taken by surprise when at the end of 2005 it turned out that the population had started shrinking that year, despite the onset of population decline being projected to begin in 2007.1 Demographic forecasts, in Japan and elsewhere, have regularly missed baby booms. This is because demographers do not understand why there are baby booms and busts, and they do not get much help from sociologists or economists. Other population shocks such as those caused by war, natural disaster or famine defy prediction by their very nature. What is more, it is quite unclear whether a hard look at population dynamics warrants any conclusions at all about social change. For most of history, when land was a crucial source of wealth, the Malthusian population model captured actual developments. Scarcity meant a territory’s population shrank; in times of plenty, it grew. Famine, epidemics and warfare acted as checks on population growth to ensure an adequate level of subsistence. In industrial society, this self-regulating dynamic does not seem to work. In some countries, notably Japan, income per capita has been inversely related to the population growth rate for several decades, turning the Malthusian doctrine on its head. Depopulation occurs in spite of unprecedented wealth, even, as some argue, because of it. To understand this phenomenon, history offers little guidance. What the Japanese experience teaches is yet another lesson about the incongruous idea that humanity shapes its own destiny without foreseeing the outcome. A longer, healthier life for a greater number of people is the unquestionable achievement of a highly successful social system; however, it brings in its wake unanticipated problems. If the Japanese population, or any national population, can be said to form a system, the forces that ensure stasis and cause change must therefore be identifiable. In the widest sense, four aggregate factors must be reckoned with: mode of production, technology, the state, and ideology. That in contemporary society these factors interact to produce a demographic equilibrium is an unproven proposition. Japan’s rapid transformation from a young society into a hyper-aged one raises questions about it. Nothing at present suggests that because of the homeostasis of the population structure, fertility rates will rebound to replacement level. But is the time span of observation sufficiently long for the possibility of a systemmaintaining feedback to be ruled out? No answer is available yet. Whether or not populations in industrial societies have homeostatic properties is an open question,

128 Population ageing and social change and so is the related proposition that a fertility rate consistent with replacement is ‘natural’. Rather, as discussed in Chapter 10, the natural aspects of population behaviour are increasingly subject to artificial intervention; this, however, does not make the outcome more predictable. In any event, what we are witnessing in Japan at present looks more like an alteration of the system’s fundamental characteristics than a temporal disturbance of its equilibrium. This alteration is expressed most succinctly by the transfigured population pyramid in Figure 12.1. For these reasons, among others, the demographic impact on the development of society is hard to assess. The best we can say is that demographic behaviour interacts with a multiplicity of factors discussed in the preceding chapters. These factors are

• • • • • • • • • • • •

the socioeconomic system; economic cycles; labour force participation rates; work organization; the distribution of wealth; the welfare state; gender relations; education; lifestyle and consumption patterns; intergenerational transfer and living arrangements; technology; values, preferences and fashions.

The resulting complexity frustrates any attempt to explain the consequences of population ageing and social change by means of a single theory relating cause and effect. A multifaceted approach is needed. As has often been remarked, Japan’s demographic transition from high fertility and high mortality to low fertility and low mortality has been faster than in other industrialized countries. Is that all that is different? The answer, of course, is no, because, compared with Western countries, Japan’s modernization and industrialization came late and proceeded fast. Its socioeconomic system therefore differed from that of other industrialized countries in many ways when the transition began. Similar forces acting on Japan and other societies, therefore, do not necessarily lead to less diversity. However, certain commonalities with other wealthy countries cannot be overlooked. Some big trends help explain falling birth rates and social ageing, up to a point, and Japanese scholars go out of their way to point out that population loss is a worldwide trend in wealthy countries. Far from presenting it as a peculiarly Japanese malaise, they seem to seek solace by identifying companions in distress, especially in Europe (Naikakufu, 2001: 59f; Eijingu sÜgÜkenkyñ sentª, 2002: 118f; Kono, 2003; Ogawa, 2003; Atoh, 2004; Kokuritsu shakaihoshÜ jinkÜmondai kenkyñsho, 2005; Hayase, 2005; KÜno, 2006). Throughout the industrialized world, improved hygiene led to reduced infant mortality, prompting parents to have fewer babies; this is the main factor involved

Population ageing and social change 129 in population ageing. Urbanization further strengthened this trend, as fewer children were needed to work the fields. City life, with more women in gainful employment, later marriage, higher divorce rates, more people who never marry, and family planning all work in the same direction. At the upper end of the population pyramid, similar trends can be observed, notably, higher survival rates due to better health care and higher divorce rates due to the isolating tendencies of urban as opposed to rural life as well as gains in life expectancy. But in spite of these well-known tendencies, our understanding is only partial. Two factors in particular make predictions of future demographic developments and their social consequences difficult. The first is social ageing itself, the second is volition. Effects of ageing A rising median age and a greater number of elderly people do not just mean that there are more people of advanced age than in former times. These factors also mean that old age isn’t what it used to be. It is not just the number of older people that is growing, but also the number of healthy older people able and willing to work. Japan’s labour force participation rate amongst persons aged 65 years and older stood at 31.1 per cent for men and 13.2 per cent for women in 2002, significantly higher than in other industrialized countries (Table 12.1). In future, more people in this age cohort are likely to work (Kiyoie and Yamada, 2004). Simply counting the number of people above a certain age, 60 or 65, for example, misses this important point. Social ageing changes the definition of old age. A society with a median age of 50 or more must not be conceptualized as one with a large number of people considered old by the standards of a society with a median age of, say, 35. Japanese men and women aged 65 can expect to live another 16 and 20 years, respectively. In such a society, the age of 65 holds different options and promises than in one where life expectancy at retirement is half that long. Notice that this is a very recent phenomenon. Between 1970 and 2000, life expectancy at retirement age for both sexes combined increased by oneTable 12.1 Ratio and labour force participation rate of persons aged 65 years and older. Ratio to Total Population

Participation Rate %

1980

1990

1995

2000

2010 2025

2050

Male Female

Japan

9.0

12.0

14.6

17.2

22.4

29.2

36.5

31.1

13.2

(2002)

USA

11.2

12.2

12.3

12.3

12.8

17.8

20.0

17.8

9.9

(2002)

France

14.0

14.0

15.1

16.0

16.5

22.0

26.4

3.3

2.5

(2002)

Germany

15.6

15.0

15.5

16.3

20.2

23.8

28.0

4.5

1.7

(2001)

Italy

13.1

15.3

16.6

18.1

20.6

25.5

34.4

6.1

1.6

(2001)

UK

15.1

15.9

16.0

15.9

16.4

19.6

23.3

7.8

9.3

(2002)

Source: The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (2005: 18).

130 Population ageing and social change third (as compared to less than 10 per cent overall life expectancy gains). In 1935, just one out of three Japanese survived to complete their working life at age 65. Since then, improvements in survivorship have raised that proportion to 88 per cent. No past experience helps us to envisage what this implies for work, family, social contribution rates, among other things. Motani’s (2005: 96) remark that the society is not yet prepared for the growing population 70 years and over is thus less an indictment then a statement of fact. It is a consequence of the fast pace of Japan’s population dynamics since the short-lived post World War II baby boom. Accelerated ageing continues, and, as a result, Japan is and will be for decades the world’s oldest society by a large measure. Expectations, customs and patterns of intergenerational co-operation and transfer are still predicated on a society with fewer old people and a shorter average lifespan. These premises are no longer consistent with the actual population structure. With social ageing, timetables and time consciousness change. When is the right time to go to school, to get married, to give birth, to retire from work, to receive a pension, to die? Answers to these questions change gradually, but not necessarily in a predictable manner. Volition The second factor that makes predictions problematic is volition. In a high-tech society having children is a conscious choice. Contraception, timing of conception, spacing of pregnancies, and abortion for various reasons are so common that the unplanned family must be considered a rare exception (Ogino, 2005). Prenatal diagnosis, gene analysis and assisted reproductive technology must be mentioned in this context for their potential rather than actual population effects.2 Their impact on individual choices concerning family planning, parenthood and the conventional understanding of the family is quite unclear and many social and ethical issues remain unsettled. At the other end of the lifecycle, voluntary death is an option used by a growing number of elderly people, dramatically in the form of suicide, less so by passive euthanasia or refusing life-sustaining treatment and ‘letting nature take its course’. In any event, a ‘natural death’ is less natural today than it was just one or two generations ago.3 Although the demographic impact of the various forms of voluntary death is unknown,4 it is clear that technological advances and the idea of self-determination and autonomy contribute to expanding the options of consciously designed life. Choices Against this background the expression ‘demographic behaviour’ acquires a new, more concrete meaning. How individual decisions coalesce to form collective trends is the cardinal question of population sociology that, applied to present-day Japan, has to reckon with volition as one of the factors of the equation. For today, more than ever before, life is a matter of choice. However, choices are not made in a vacuum, but on the basis of the options provided by the society that at the same time forces its members to make choices. Where there are options, choice cannot be avoided. Because they live longer, because technology has opened up new

Population ageing and social change 131 possibilities, because the labour market is more differentiated, Japanese today have to make more choices than their parents and grandparents. To be sure, many Japanese feel that their opportunities are rather limited. Nevertheless, they are compelled to make choices rather than follow a predetermined life course. The need to make choices is inconsistent with the feeling shared by many that their life is being shaped by developments beyond their control. This is one reason why predictions about demographic developments are precarious; they are just as risky as the choices that young Japanese inescapably have to make at the beginning of their working life, without full foresight of the consequences. This inconsistency is one of several that partially result from the process of social ageing and that in turn propel social change.

Inconsistencies The notion of status inconsistency that originates in Weberian social theory can help to explain some of the tensions that have emerged as a result, or concomitant, of population change. By ‘status inconsistency’ or ‘incongruence’ is meant a situation where an individual’s social characteristics imply both positive and negative rewards. The teacher’s high prestige and low salary is the classic example. Societies differ with regard to how much status inconsistency they exhibit and how willingly their members accept it. A tendency towards status inconsistency in contemporary Japanese society has been observed by Eisenstadt (1996: 68f) among others. For example, the hierarchical structure of Japanese corporations coupled with relatively small salary differentials makes for status inconsistency. A society that viewed itself as middle-class and egalitarian, and that was guided by the seniority principle, could live with this inconsistency. The fact that such a selfconception was based on continuous growth and a pointed, Mount Fuji-shaped population structure was rarely reflected upon. Both conditions no longer hold, and, consequently, the middle-class ideology has begun to fall apart. Social ageing has intensified status inconsistencies to a level that is less acceptable, leading to problematic situations that cannot be resolved without wide-ranging change, be it through the restructuring of status hierarchies, networks, markets, or gender relations and the family structure. Three examples may suffice to illustrate. Honourable and onerous elders Japan’s first elder abuse law became effective in April 2006 (see Chapter 6). Recognition of the problem of elder abuse and the need for a law to protect senior citizens against physical and psychological cruelty and financial loss came as a shock to many in Japan, because Confucianism dictates respect for elders. Why would this ideology that had served its purpose for centuries suddenly become ineffective? Demographically-induced status inconsistency holds at least part of the answer. When the elderly were few in number, it was easy to afford them high status and pay them respect. The experience and accumulated knowledge many of them had was useful and venerable. ‘Old’ and ‘wise’ were almost synonymous. In

132 Population ageing and social change Japan’s greying society, the elderly are no longer few but many; increasing numbers of them are afflicted with various forms of senility, and their status has changed as a consequence. Increasingly they are viewed as a burden to society and individual households. This experience clashes with the high status tradition requires for them. Not that the elderly never were a burden in former times, but under the condition of a pyramid-shaped age structure of society and a lower life expectancy, it wasn’t nearly as heavy. The ideologically-motivated status inconsistency was thus accepted. It no longer is. Society reacts by seeking ways to reduce it. The socialization of care, discussed in Chapter 6, and the elder abuse law must be seen in this context. The law is in effect an implicit admission on the part of the state that the social status of the elderly has changed and no longer suffices to protect their interests. Equal but dependent wives Status inconsistency effects can also be seen in female partner selection and marriage behaviour. Although female labour force participation has been rising steadily for decades (see Chapter 5), women’s preferences when selecting marriage partners have not changed much. They continue to have a strong tendency to avoid partners whose status is lower than theirs or their fathers’ in terms of education, occupation and income. The status of the husband as the main breadwinner thus remains largely unchallenged, which means among other things that men continue to work very long hours. During the 1990s, the proportion of male employees working in excess of 60 hours per week has grown. Among these, men in their thirties work the longest hours. At the same time, women expand their share of the labour market. However, increasing the overall working time of women without decreasing that of men evidently implies that balancing work and family becomes ever more strenuous. As a consequence the number of the lifelong unmarried grows and families defer having children, albeit with a sense of discontent. Many parents have fewer children than they would wish.5 There is a strong sentiment in Japan today that this is an unwelcome development. Under present circumstances, being a working mother is experienced increasingly as an intolerable status inconsistency. Likewise, taking parental leave is inconsistent with being a (male) salaried worker. Because the shrinking labour force and the government’s cautious immigration policy favour more women entering the labour market, a solution is unlikely to be found without far-reaching changes in the gender-based division of labour in Japanese society. The pressure is on for a thoroughgoing readjustment of gender roles, which is likely to see men work less and accept more domestic duties,6 and women accept men as marriage partners on an equal footing. Free and without a steady job Part of the difficulty women experience in finding husbands whose social status is on a par with their fathers’ stems from the restructuring the labour market has undergone since the early 1990s. The rapid rise in the proportion of the

Population ageing and social change 133 temporarily employed and part-timers in the first years of the twenty-first century that it has brought about has led to status inconsistency, which in turn finds expression in marriage patterns. A 2002 study conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare found that in the 20 to 34 age cohort, 40 per cent of male regular employees were married, compared to only 10 per cent of those without regular employment. The very term freeter embodies the inconsistency. Free is positively connoted, suggesting a conscious choice not to submit to the regimented life of a permanently employed salaried worker; but arubaito means low prestige and low pay. Since freeters first made their appearance in the late 1980s, the first part of the term has become a euphemism for most of them, as the number of those who do not have an alternative to work has risen sharply. ‘Formerly people chose to be freeters to suit their own lifestyle, but at present 70 per cent of them would like to be regular employees’ (‘Nihon no ronten’ henshñbu, 2005: 93). Freeters have middle-class backgrounds and self-understanding, but in the globalizing economy they form a swelling reserve army of dispensable workers increasingly favoured by companies as an effective means of reducing the cost of labour and staying competitive. Freeters are working long hours rather than enjoying the freedom of deciding their own schedule. Yet their income is low compared with regular employees. They can make a living and are by no means impoverished, but their middle-class upbringing doesn’t match with their actual status, which for a growing number of them amounts to social decline. Theirs is a sense of being left behind, as the chances of finding regular employment are ever diminishing and the drawbacks of being a freeter become more apparent. Their dominant attitude towards life is a sense of insecurity – fuankan – that has negative effects on their inclination to procreate. Freeters are the harbingers of a new, more highly-differentiated social structure that does not agree with society’s self-image. They embody the society’s discontent, which is most noticeable in the public debate about growing disparities.

Social redifferentiation and its discontents When the National Police Agency published the annual suicide statistics in May 2006, noting that for the eighth year running more than 30,000 Japanese had taken their own life, the Mainichi newspaper asked pointedly: ‘Effect of the “gapwidening society”?’7 Such is the concern about what many see as a threat to social cohesion and harmony, kakusaka, or ‘widening gaps’. The polarization of society arrived in conjunction with, though was not caused exclusively by, ageing and population decline. Egalitarianism, small income disparities and a uniform lifestyle (hitonami) fall by the wayside as the idea of ‘Japan alone in the world’ as a community of fate, so prominent during the high-growth period from the mid-1960s through the 1980s and the Nihonjinron discourse of Japanese uniqueness that accompanied it, is being replaced by a discourse of social cleavage and disparity. In the public mind the notion that Japan is a middle-class society, most influentially articulated by Yasusuke Murakami’s (1984) ‘new middle mass’ theory, is superseded by the perception that contemporary Japanese society is beset by growing

134 Population ageing and social change disparities. Kakusashakai ‘gap-widening society’ has become a household word almost on a par with shÜshika ‘declining fertility’. In 2000, the influential monthlies ChñÜ KÜron and Bungei Shunjñ published special issues on ‘the collapse of the middle class’ and the ‘new class society’, respectively.8 The issue has continued to attract much public attention since. In summer 2005, Yomiuri Weekly ran a title story ‘How to survive in the age of big wage differentials’.9 And in April 2006 the weekly Ekonomisuto asked its readers on the front page: ‘Do you feel “the gap”?’10 A flood of scholarly publications also address the issue, among them several bestselling books such as Tachibanaki (1998), SatÜ (2000), Higuchi and ZaimushÜ zaimu sÜgÜ seisaku kenkyñsho (2003), SaitÜ (2004), Hayashi (2005), ›take (2005), Miura (2005), SaitÜ and Hayashi (2006), among others. Early on in the debate, sociologist Toshiki SatÜ (2000: 26) introduced the disturbing notion of the ‘loser dog’, linking it to a shift in the reward structure of Japanese society from effort to achievement. As this reorientation both in education and work takes place at a time when the nation’s Gini coefficient (Figure 12.2), which gauges income inequality, is climbing steadily,11 this shift, he argues, is tantamount to a shift from an ‘open’ egalitarian mass society to a ‘closed’ elitist system. For rewarding effort means, ‘if you try hard enough things will turn out all right’, whereas reward for achievement (premised on standards defined by the elite) means, for a growing number of people – for example, freeters – ‘no matter how hard you work, you will never get ahead’ (SatÜ, 2000: 13f). The real change may be gradual, but the change in perception is dramatic, as witnessed by the sudden currency of the notion of the ‘“hope-gap” society’ (Yamada, 2004c). A lack of confidence, perspective, desire and ambition is, according to Yamada, what characterizes large sections of the young generation who have grown up in an affluent society that since the early 1990s had to grapple with stagnation if not decay.

Figure 12.2 Japan’s Gini coefficient, 1980–2005. Source: Statistics Bureau, Director General of Policy Planning, National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure; www.stat.go.jp/data/zensho/index.htm

Population ageing and social change 135 Seventy-four per cent of Japanese believe that income differences are getting wider.12 Growing economic gaps can no longer be denied.13 The question that dogs the Japanese government is how the Japanese can be made to accept the gaps and avoid becoming a new class-society in which, in spite of the introduction of meritbased pay (reward for achievement), the polarization between rich and poor not only intensifies, but also solidifies in the sense that the tendency for ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ to reproduce themselves becomes stronger, as SaitÜ and Hayashi (2006) among others predict. In addition to social class, widening economic gaps are also becoming visible between regions. Fast-developing industrial areas and old-fashioned rural areas are drifting further apart (Yazawa, 1999; Yoshida, 2006). In the event, the nexus of social cleavage and ageing becomes apparent. Ageing progresses faster in outlying rural areas, causing tax revenues to diminish. In the past, regional divides have been kept low by a national land development policy that channelled revenues from the centre to the periphery. Because of huge budget deficits this has become more difficult, while demographic ageing has made rural areas more dependent on the national government than ever. Not surprisingly, many expect the government’s drive for more local autonomy to result in widening regional disparities (‘Nihon no ronten’ henshñbu, 2005: 30f). To get out of the economic slump that set in in the early 1990s, the government embarked on a course of deregulation and economic reform, taking the stance that a certain measure of income inequality was both inevitable and acceptable. Keio University economist Heizo Takenaka exemplifies this attitude. A major intellectual force in the Koizumi government, where he served in successive cabinets as (among other roles) Minister of State for IT Policy, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy and Minister of State for the Privatization of Postal Services, Takenaka expressed his view on increasing disparities between the haves and have-nots as follows: Do we accept economic disparities? I believe in actual fact we don’t have a choice. If it means either everyone becoming equally poor or aiming at letting those who are capable raise the standard even a little, the way ahead can only be the latter. Kanemochi ha nippon o sukueru ka (Can the rich rescue Japan?) Nippon Business, 10 July 2000, special issue. What typifies Takenaka’s remark is the seeming inevitability of social cleavage. The choice for Japan is presented as one between equal and poor or stratified and rich. The Japanese are keenly aware of the ongoing changes, as many of them are directly affected by the diversification of employment formats, a widening gap in educational opportunities, or the difficulty of finding a marriage partner. The redifferentiation of society is patently obvious, but what causes it is a question on which even specialists are divided. There are two schools of thought, those who see it as a concomitant of the changed international environment and those who attribute it to demographic pressure. Japan cannot stem the tide of neo-liberalism

136 Population ageing and social change and deregulation swept to its shores by the gales of globalization, say the former. The hyper-aged society can no longer afford the mix of egalitarianism and seniority-based pay, argue the latter. As the temporal coincidence of demographic and global economic dynamics is generally acknowledged, these views are complementary rather than representing fundamentally opposing positions. Arguably, ageing helps to sell neo-liberal reforms to the Japanese people. The notion that widening income gaps and the consequent social cleavage are the result of population ageing was first advanced and is most forcefully defended by Osaka University economist Fumio Ohtake (Ohtake, 1999, 2005, 2006). A significant cause of increasing inequality, as he sees it, is that income differentials amplify with age and that the proportion of the age group with wide income dispersions in the total work force has increased (Shirahase, 2002). The overall income inequality has therefore been widening on account of population dynamics rather than social restructuring. However, income differentials have also become wider in younger age cohorts. Since the turn of the century, the rapid expansion of lowpay non-regular employment among young people entering the labour force has intensified the trend. The interaction with the changing reward system mentioned above is such that many employers willingly shifted to a more performanceoriented wage system not because they were committed to neo-liberalism, but because the ageing labour force causes the break-up of the seniority wage system that becomes unaffordable with too many older workers. The view that widening income disparities are an effect of social ageing, and hence no reason to be concerned, is welcomed by the Japanese government. Critics, however, contend that increasing inequality, rather than helping create a society where ‘losers’ are given another chance, as the government insists,14 goes together with growing poverty rates and the consequential increase in inequality of opportunity (Tachibanaki, 2006). At the present time, many Japanese are concerned about widening gaps. Economic critic Katsuto Uchihashi (2005: 37) quotes a poll according to which 83 per cent of the respondents expressed anxiety about growing old, and asks why so many people feel uneasy about their future. His gloomy answer is that, in stark contrast to the all-inclusive middle-class society, widening gaps in the society of disparity lead to the exclusion of the weak. From a somewhat different perspective, psychologist Tamaki SaitÜ and essayist Junko Sakai, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, draw attention to the fact that the ‘gap-widening society’ is not only a matter of hard economic realities, but also of attitudes and an outlook on life (SaitÜ and Sakai, 2006). As they see it, rather than engendering a more differentiated and pluralistic society that allows for a wider range of paths to happiness, widening gaps threaten to bring about a more pointed polarization between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, where success is measured only in terms of income. The debate about social cleavage continues against the backdrop of the process of accelerated population ageing and corporate globalization pressure. If the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the dot.com rich and the downwardly mobile, the highly educated and the unskilled continues to grow unchecked, the likely outcome will be a more steeply hierarchical distribution of wealth and

Population ageing and social change 137 opportunity that threatens social stability. If, on the other hand, social injustice and hardship can be held within limits, the ‘gap’ may turn out to be the requisite catalyst of what clearly is a social redifferentiation on a major scale. In the meantime, various social changes take hold, some in response to policy initiatives.

Engineering social change: between progress and decay For decades, pundits, both scholars and bureaucrats, have drawn attention to the problems falling birth rates are likely to cause and have advocated a variety of measures to halt the decline. Japan has a long history of public suasion campaigns (Garon, 1997) and, true to form, has responded to the fertility crisis with publicity campaigns. The media weren’t shy about repeating the message over and over again: something must be done. Such an enormous amount of attention has been devoted to the issue that it borders on hysteria. As a side-effect, most Japanese today are agreed that reproduction behaviour falls within the realm of government responsibility. There were no cries of indignation or even ridicule when the Minister of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs proposed a plan for government-managed marriage partner introduction meetings as a countermeasure to plunging fertility rates.15 However, that the government should concern itself with reproduction is hardly a matter of course, because obviously the state has been unable to reverse fundamental social trends. For reasons discussed in previous chapters, increasing numbers of young Japanese have come to lack the desire and confidence to have children, and the government has been at a loss as to which parameter it should adjust to change this: boost financial child support, improve child-care facilities, cover the expenses of childbirth, extend housing loans to young couples, enforce child-care leave for fathers, or promote gender equality at the work place. Among these options, the public clearly prioritizes the creation of a more family-friendly work environment.16 In the urban centres in particular this is the most pressing concern. In the nation’s capital, where the downward fertility trend is most conspicuous (see Chapter 4), the TFR fell below 1 for the first time in 2006 – another all-time low.17 Not surprisingly, the government has been criticized for failing to act decisively.18 The high priority it assigned the problem has raised expectations that the state is able to reverse the trend, but every new fertility statistic implies that it cannot deliver what it promised. The funds devoted to arresting birth-rate decline are considerable. In the fiscal year 2005, a total of ¥1.3 billion was earmarked for some 28 programmes grouped under four headings as follows: (1) promote the independence of young people and raise strong children; (2) review support for the double burden of work and raising a family and work organization; (3) promote understanding of the importance of life and the role of the family, and (4) child-rearing support and solidarity (Naikakufu, 2005: 169). It is hard to counter the charge that these programmes not only lack a clear policy focus but incorporate opposing goals. ‘Building a working environment that allows women during pregnancy and after giving birth to continue working without worries’, a subprogramme of (2), is hard to reconcile

138 Population ageing and social change with promoting the traditional family model, as emphasized in (3). While the government cannot close its eyes to the inevitability of fundamental changes in work organization and gender roles, it is also committed to traditional family values. It professes to be committed to shorter working hours, but plans to further relax restrictions on overtime work. More individual choice is being advocated, but more state intervention, too. If these are contradictions they characterize contemporary Japanese society as much as government policy. There is much inconsistency, uncertainty and contradiction in policies and the social reality they respond to. Japan is groping its way towards a hyper-aged society with mixed feelings. In the meantime, real change is taking place, as ageing continues and depopulation sets in. Whether this will bring progress or decay is largely in the eye of the beholder, but it is an issue that preoccupies the Japanese. Ageing forces individuals, the state and corporate Japan to restructure production and reproduction. A shift from production to consumption as the driving force of the economy cooccurs with an incremental rise in the retirement age, a growing population of elderly who play more active roles socially, economically and politically, more single-households, more diverse careers, more temporary jobs, more men on parental leave, more elderly female entrepreneurs, more competition for attractive jobs between the sexes, and more disparities. None of these changes can be attributed to demographic pressure alone, but the changes in the Japanese age structure that have happened over the past half century, combined with the incipient depopulation, cannot but profoundly affect the social system. Two dimensions where social changes take place stand out: gender and class. Labour force decline is likely to increase female labour force participation and boost gender equality, bringing a changed division of domestic work in its train. At the same time, the diversification of work and income opportunities is likely to continue, leading to the emergence of new social divisions. Many Japanese find these prospects disquieting. However, thanks to the vigour and openness with which the government and the media are confronting the demographic challenge, they are prepared for change. They have no blueprint for the future yet, but their encounter with ageing and depopulation is of acute interest. In the past, no country has experienced population ageing so rapidly on such a massive scale, but before long other nations will follow in Japan’s footsteps.

Notes

1 Facts and discourses 1 Laszlo (2002) notes that the word shÜshika began appearing in parliamentary records with more frequency in the early 1990s. According to his count, it was used just seven times in 1992, but 168 times in 2001. 2 Mainichi Shimbun, 22 August 2005: 9. 3 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 22 August 2005: 13. 4 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 120f. 5 Based on the following question: ‘All things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life-as-a-whole now? 1 dissatisfied to 10 satisfied’ Japan ranked 34th, according to www.nationmaster.com. 6 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 179. 7 ‘Social Trends’ 77. Glocom Platform, 5 August 2004. 8 According to one projection, the median age will be 53.4 in 2050 (dataranking.com). 9 Population Projections for Japan, 2002 Revision. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2002. 10 Ueno (1998): 108. 11 Asahi Shimbun, 20 November 2004: 15. 12 Umitai to omou shakai o. Asahi Shimbun, 5 June 2005. 13 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 54–56. 14 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 58. 15 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 57. 16 KÜsei rÜdÜ shÜ, JinkÜ dÜtai tÜkei, 1 June 2005; quoted in Asahi Shimbun, 2 June 2005: 3. 17 Malthus (1798/1803/1992) thus was the first social theorist to see a relationship between late marriage and social well-being. 18 www2.att.ne.jp/hamihami/uranai/uranai45/para.htm 19 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 29. 20 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Chapter 5, 24 February 2004. 21 Ibid. 22 Nenkin kaikaku, nao sedai kakusa (Pension reform, generation gap persists). Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 24 February 2004: 1. 23 From NEET, that is ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’. 2 The problem of generations and the structure of society 1 So far, female fecundity has been considered as a time-constant, and it will still be some time before biotechnological extension of fecundity will have an effect on fertility.

140 Notes 2 In an axiomatic paper, Lösch (1936) stipulated a 33-year repetitive interval characteristic of population cycles. His work has been the reference point of theories about generational cycles ever since. 3 During the last 2,000 years the world population expanded from about 300 million to 6.5 billion, the largest increase occurring during the last century. 4 Japanese Population Projection. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2005. 5 Life cycle models include changing family roles associated with life stages such as marriage, childbearing, child rearing, children leaving home, widowhood, and so on. The life cycle approach has been variously applied to the sociology of ageing in Japan; see, for example, Okamura (1997: Chapter 4), Okasaki (2002) and Takahashi (2004). 6 See Takahashi (1991: 963) for an elaborate comparison of life-cycle models beginning 1930 and 1950. 7 The proportion of married men who lived with their parents declined significantly faster than that of parents who lived with their married children. From this, Morioka (1997: 269) concludes that while co-residence continues to be favoured as a mechanism of intergenerational transfer, its association with eldest son’s household succession has weakened. 8 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions of the People on Health and Welfare, 2003. Tokyo: Health and Welfare Statistics Association. 9 Morioka (1997: 273) speaks of ‘the growing prevalence of the conjugal family system rather than a persistence of the stem family system’. 10 Kanreki literally means ‘return of the calendar’, that is, a new beginning of the 60-year cycle after one completion. 11 Motani, Kosuke (2005) JinkÜ seijuku mondai no honshitsu to taikÜsaku (Demographic maturation, its essence and countermeasures). Public lecture, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, IAA, Tokyo, 22 September 2005. 3 Social networks 1 Naikakufu ‘KÜreisha no seikatsu to ishiki ni kansuru kokusai hikaku chÜsa’. Government of Japan, Cabinet Office, 2001. 2 The notion of a ‘third life’ (daisan no jinsei) was introduced in an early study of the ageing society by Fumio Miura (1988). 3 Kazoku kakumei, a term that has gained currency in recent years among social scientists, serves as the title of a recent book by Shimizu et al. (2004). 4 NHK HÜsÜ Bunka Kenkyñsho (2004): 193f. 5 Of late, the growing numbers of elderly citizens who need care has stimulated research on the human communities around the elderly who are taken care of. Nursing of old people leads to the emergence of new kinds of relationships between home helpers, nurses, welfare officers and family members. See, for example, Shibuya (2001). 6 See House, Robbins and Metzner (1982). 7 The term nure ochiba is attributed to Keiko Higuchi, a former director of the Center for the Advancement of Working Women. It first came into currency in the late 1980s and was designated ‘fashionable expression of the year’ in 1989 by Nihongo zokugo jisho (zokugo-dict.com/23nu/nureochiba.htm). 8 For further information about the ‘Retired husband syndrome’ see the following websites, all accessed in March 2007: www8.plala.or.jp/psychology/shujin.htm; www.medicaltribune.co.jp/kenkou/2000005161.html; www.boople.com/bst/BPdispatch?nips_cd= 9980056142

Notes 141 9 TÜkyÜto rÜjin sÜgÜ kenkyñsho (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology). The survey entitled Teinen taishoku ni kansuru chÜkiteki kenkyñ (Longitudinal investigation of retirement at retirement age) was conducted three times between 1975 and 1990. Shimizu (2001) offers an overview of the results. 10 www.stat.go.jp/data/shakai/ 11 As of December 2005. ZenrÜ’s homepage (www4.ocn.ne.jp/%7Ezenrou/) provides detailed information about the distribution of clubs in each prefecture and their activities. 12 The name is a popular nursery rhyme recited to practice verbal skills. www.geocities.jp/ kono_yubi/main.htm 13 paokko.org 4 The lonely child 1 Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away). Studio Ghibli, 2001. 2 Takeda (2005) provides a detailed account of state influence on reproduction in modern Japan. 3 Kokumin seikatsu kiso chÜsa. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2004. 4 The trend is unequivocal, although statistics vary slightly as a comparison of Figure 4.1, using data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and Table 4.2, using data from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, reveals. 5 Japan Statistical Yearbook 2005. 6 An opinion poll conducted in November 2004 by Asahi Shimbun included a question about how many children made ‘a good number’. The response was as follows: 1: 2 per cent, 2: 42 per cent, 3: 50 per cent, at least 4: 4 per cent, 0: 0 per cent, others or no answer: 2 per cent. 7 ‘Hikonshakai ga yatte kuru’. ChñÜ kÜron, December 2005. 8 The Yomiuri Shimbun first used the term shÜshika shakai, or society with fewer children, on 24 June 1990. As of the mid-1990s, all major newspapers have used it frequently. 9 As there is no universally accepted definition of hikikomori, numerical estimates are inevitably vague and volatile. Zenkoku hikikomori KHJ oya no kai, an NPO, claims on its website that nation-wide there are ‘more than 1 million’ hikikomori (www.khjh.com/bunrui.htm). 10 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions of the People on Health and Welfare, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2004. 11 Data from Nihon kodomo shiryÜ nenkan 2005. 12 This figure refers to the population of the 23 ku (wards). If the 26 peripheral shi (cities) are included, the TFR is slightly higher, as indicated in Table 4.4. 13 KÜsei rÜdÜ hakusho, heisei 17 nen han. Government white paper, 2005: 88 and 92. 14 Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications, May 2005. 15 Japan Statistical Yearbook 2004. 16 www.misc.gr.jp/index.html (accessed 24 January 2006). 17 Officially called ‘Basic Orientations to Assist Child-Raising’, this 10-year agenda was developed jointly by the ministries of Education, Health, Labour and Welfare, and Construction. 18 Asahi Shimbun, 5 January 2005: 3. 19 Asahi Shimbun, 13 January 2006: 3.

142 Notes 20 Asahi Shimbun, 14 January 2006: 3. 21 This was the title of the tenth Annual Seminar of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo, 17 January 2006. 5. Women and men at work 1 Daini kai zenkoku katei dÜkÜ chÜsa, kekka no gaiyÜ (Second National Family Survey, outline of results). National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2000. 2 Teikoku Databank Ltd. provides information about some 224,000 Japanese companies. library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0502.html 3 For example, former Prime Minister RyñtarÜ Hashimoto has blamed the high educational level of women for declining fertility; quoted in Shirahase (2005: 47). 4 According to a survey of 200 major firms carried out in 2005 by Asahi Shimbun, the number one reason for firms actively to seek to hire women is the declining number of university and college graduates due to low fertility. Other reasons include the diversification of markets, superior female communication skills suitable for the service sector, and that women improve the firm’s performance. (Asahi Shimbun, 19 February 2005: b3). 5 Personal communication from Ito Peng, July 2005. 6 KÜgakureki, kÜshñnyñ, kÜshinchÜ. 7 Asahi Shimbun Weekly AREA, 18 July 2005: 31. Figures are for 2004 when Japan’s TFR was 1.29 as compared to France’s 1.90. 8 According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the proportion of women and men who took child-care leave in 1996 was 99.4 per cent for women and 0.6 per cent for men. By 1999 the ratios were 97.6 per cent for women and 2.4 per cent for men, a noticeable increase, but still a low level for men. 9 White Book of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2005: 224. 10 See, for example, ItÜ (1996) and Ueno (2002). 11 Statistical Department, Prime Minister’s Office, 2000. 6 The socialization of care 1 Chiiki to tomoni sasaeru korekara no shakai hoshÜ (Together with local governments, the future of social security). KÜsei rÜdÜ hakusho (White Paper of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare), 2005: 48. 2 The Japan Times, 1 September 2005: 20. 3 www.ipss.go.jp/pp-newest/e/ppfj02/suikei_g_e.html (accessed February 2006). 4 See Figure 4.4. 5 Kyodo News, 9 October 2003. 6 Figures from Kokumin seikatsu kisÜchÜsa. Ministry of Health and Welfare, 1995; quoted from Sugimoto (2001: 203). 7 The ratio of male nurses and social workers working as caregivers is still small, about 15 per cent (Long and Braudy Harris, 2000) but steadily growing. The advance of men into the formerly female domain of care is discussed in the media as an indication of changing gender roles. See for example, Takenaga (1998) and Inaba (2000). 8 ShÜgai sekkei keikaku. Nihongata fukushi shakai no bijon. Nihon keizai shimbunsha, 1975. 9 1978 nen kÜseihakusho. KÜseishÜ, 1978.

Notes 143 10 KÜreisha hoken fukushi suishin jukkanen senryaku (Ten-year strategy to promote health care and welfare for the elderly). www1.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/1112/h1221-2_17.html 11 Shin kÜreisha hoken fukushi suishin jukkanen senryaku (New ten-year strategy to promote health care and welfare for the elderly). 12 Kongo gonenkan no kÜreisha hoken fukushi seisaku no hÜkÜ (Five-year plan for the health and welfare of the aged). 13 RÜjin fukushi hÜ (Elderly Welfare Law). 14 www.mhlw.go.jp/shingi/2004/02/s0223-8d12.html 15 For a discussion of the legend and historical perceptions of old age in literary sources, see Formanek (1992). 16 KÜreisha gyakusatsu bÜshihÜ (Law Concerning Prevention of Elder Abuse and Support of Caregivers for the Elderly). Passed 9 November 2005. 17 NinchishÜ no tadashii rikai no fukyñ (Spreading a correct understanding of senile dementia). KÜseirÜdÜ hakusho heisei 17 nenpan. KÜseirÜdÜshÜ, 2005: 259f. 18 www7.ocn.ne.jp/ per cent7Ewabas/ (accessed February 2006). 19 ZÜka suru borantea jinkÜ (The growing population of volunteers). Statistics Bureau, General Affairs Office, Government of Japan, 2003. www.stat.go.jp/data/shakai/2001/ topics/tps0301.htm 7 ‘Mature’ customers 1 10 September 2005. 2 JinkÜ genshÜ ni katsu kigyÜ (Companies that gain from depopulation). Shñkan Economisto, 15 November 2005. 3 Mirai ga miemasuka: jinkÜgenshÜ jidai no nihon (Can you see what is ahead? The age of population decline). Mainichi Shimbun, 22 August 2005, morning edition: 9. 4 Hayashi, Hikaru (2006) Dankai sedai ha shÜhi ni sekkyokuteki (The baby boomers will actively consume). Shukan toyokaizai, 25 February 2006: 51. 5 Dankai no Sedai. Japan’s baby boom gets ready for retirement. Marubeni Corporation Quarterly Magazine, February 2006: 3. 6 Heisei jñgo nen kokumin seikatsu kiso chÜsa (www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/ktyosa/k-tyosa03/). 7 In a study of marketing strategies targeting elderly customers, Conrad and Gerling (2004) emphasise the ‘golden rule’ that merchandise must not be labelled as suitable for seniors. 8 For example, Palactive University Club (www.puc.cc), JR Tokai (www.jrtours.co.jp), or the Japanese Railway Group’s Gojñ kara no tabi kurabu (Fifty Plus). 9 White Paper on Construction 1996. Ministry of Construction. 10 White Paper on Land, Infrastructure and Transportation in Japan, 2004. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation. 11 Between 1 July and 31 August 2005, two leading newspapers, Yomiuri Shimbun and Nihon Keizai Shimbun published as many as 70 articles between them about the rise in home-repair scams victimizing elderly people. 12 Nakanishi (2004) offers advice for crime prevention to the 60 plus. The success of his book is yet another indication of social ageing. 13 Toyota’s sells specially designed cars under the Welcab concept, while Nissan is marketing its Life Care vehicles, and Daihatsu offers the Mira Selfmatic that allows wheelchair users to get behind the steering wheel in their chairs.

144 Notes 14 The concept of universal design is known as kyÜyÜhin or ‘articles for common use’. See also kyoyohin.org, the accessible design foundation of Japan. 15 Longer life expectancies driving growth of the health care market. Attractive Sectors; JETRO: www.jetro.go.jp/en/market/attract/ (accessed 15 March 2006). 16 Shñkan Ekonomisuto, 15 November 2005: 18–21. 8 Longevity risk and pension funds 1 From ‘Message from the Chairman’, The Life Insurance Association of Japan; www.seiho.or.jp/ (accessed 20 March 2006). 2 In this section I draw heavily on Conrad (2001). 3 Figures for 2005 from the Social Insurance Agency; www.sia.go.jp/e/index.html 4 www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/nenkin/zaisei/01/01-01.html (accessed 21 March 2006) 5 Asahi Shimbun, 1 February 2006, morning edition: 3. The response rate was 57 per cent; the total number of valid responses was 1,915. 6 The Asahi Shimbun Japan Almanac 2005. Asahi Shimbun, 2004: 207. 7 Companies do not behave any better than individuals. During the long recession of the 1990s, pension evasion, especially by small corporations, became a problem as a growing number of firms did not join the corporate employees’ pension system (kÜsei nenkin). The Board of Audit of Japan estimates that this holds for a quarter of Japan’s businesses (Kaikei kansain, 2006). 8 For example: Nenkin kaikaku, nao sedai kakusa (Pension reform, a wider generation gap). Nihon keizai Shimbun, 24 February 2004; RÜrei nenkin dake deha tarizu (The old age pension is insufficient). Asahi Shimbun, 18 February 2005; Kono kingaku de kurasemasuka (Is this enough to make a living?). Asahi Shimbun, 5 June 2005. 9 According to Takayama (2001), social security pension contributions accounted for 29.9 per cent of government revenues, more than personal income tax (5.7 per cent) and corporate income tax (10.4 per cent) combined 9 Government of the elderly, by the elderly and for the elderly 1 Figures from Dimsdrive Timely Research, www.dims.ne.jp/timelyresearch/enq/ 050915/ (accessed 30 March 2006). 2 Figures provided by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. 3 The Democratic Party of Japan has adopted a similar principle, although it hasn’t been enforced. 4 Commenting on the 42nd general election, the Association for Promoting Fair Elections (Akarui senkyo suishin kyÜkai) observed that LDP support goes up with age, is more male than female, and goes down with education level (www.akaruisenkyo.or.jp/ chousa/42matome.html). 5 Former government officials parachuting to high positions in private organizations. 6 See Akarui senkyo suishin kyÜkai (The Association for Promoting Fair Elections), a private foundation that monitors elections. www.akaruisenkyo.or.jp/chousa/ 42matome.html (accessed March 2006). 7 Non-industrial societies are often gerontophobic, not being able to feed many who cannot pull their weight. Senicide is reported from many premodern societies (Maxwell, Silverman and Maxwell, 1982), and the discussion about euthanasia and ‘death-hastening’ measures has not left modern society either. See also Chapter 10.

Notes 145 8 See Tabellini (2000). There is no generally agreed standard of what it means for intergenerational transfer programmes to be overextended, but when a programme incurs debts that threaten the viability of the system and negatively affects government finances to the detriment of other programmes, it is a strong indication of overstretch. ‘Both the size of the current deficit and the demographic outlook indicate that the current fiscal situation is clearly unsustainable’ (Faruqee and Mühleisen, 2001: 7). 9 See Chapter 4. 10 Danjo kyÜdÜ sankaku tokei dÂtabukku, 2003: 161. 11 See, for example, Sentakuteki fñfu bessei seido ni kansuru seronchÜsa, a 2002 opinion poll conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office on a system for electing separate names for spouses. Only 15.8 per cent of male respondents in their twenties, but 61.1 per cent of those above 70, thought that there is no need to change the present law that requires married couples to bear the same surname. www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h13/fuufu/ (accessed 6 April 2006). 10 Limits to ageing? 1 Urashima TarÜ is the main character of a Japanese tale who visited the Dragon Palace under the sea in a timeless world. After returning to his village he is transformed from a boy into an old man in an instant. 2 ‘Man’s life-span is 50 years; to live to 70 is a rarity.’ 3 Asahi Shimbun, 30 January 2006, morning edition: 8. KeizÜ’s memoirs were published under the sanguine title, A Boy of 101. See Miura (2005a). 4 Miyazaki City, www.city.miyazaki.miyazaki.jp/gyousei/html/administration/30/ 20050901111342/20050901112537.html 5 Feeney’s 1990 study analyzes mortality data from 1960 to 1985, but the trend has continued. 6 The seminal article making the case for a fixed limit to the length of human life is Fries (1980). His argument that in spite of life-expectancy gains the number of very old persons will not increase has been disproved by population developments in Japan, but the notion of a genetically-fixed ceiling to human life has not been discredited and continues to be discussed in biodemography. 7 www.photius.com/rankings/healthy_life_table2.html 8 Living extremes on Okinawa. Weekly Times, Okinawa, 25 August 2001. 9 Nihon Songenshi KyÜkai (Japan Society for Dying with Dignity), Kyñshu chapter; www.geocities.jp/songenkyushu/kakuken.html (accessed 13 April 2006). 10 okinawaprogram.com/study.html (accessed 25 January 2006). 11 Prefecture of longevity. Weekly Times, Okinawa, 13 September 2003. 12 See Feldman (2000: Chapter 5) for an excellent exposition in English of the intertwining of medical, legal and cultural arguments in the discussion that led to the formulation of criteria for determining brain death in 1985 and the campaign to legislate death until the passing of a transplant law in 1997. See also Ohnuki-Thierney (1994). 13 The website of Nihon zÜki ishoku nettowªku (Japan Organ Transplant Network) offers information on ongoing debates and a platform for discussion of bioethical issues: www.jotnw.or.jp/ (accessed 20 April 2006). 14 Hospitals want terminal care guidelines: survey. The Japan Times, 15 April 2006: 3. 15 www.songenshi-kyokai.com/ (accessed 1 May 2006).The homepage of Nihon Songenshi KyÜkai offers information and advice on issues such as terminal care, the ‘living will’ and the practical and legal differences between euthanasia and dying with dignity.

146 Notes 16 The literature about the medical, social, ethical and economic aspects of the euthanasia debate in Japan is vast. Machino (1997) and Hosaka (2000) offer introductions. 17 osaka.yomiuri.co.jp/kokorop/kp60111a.htm (accessed 15 March 2006). 11 Immigrants welcome? 1 Migration News, migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/comments.php?id=2218_0_3_0. Taichi Sakaiya was Minister of State, Economic Planning Agency, until 2000. Atsushi Seike is a Keio University economist specializing in labour economics. 2 www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2005/kouhou/ 3 Kokusei chÜsa, yñsÜ, netto de. SÜmushÜ hÜshin (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications aims at national census by mail or Internet). Asahi Shimbun, 9 July 2006, morning edition: 1. 4 For a critical analysis of the Japanese discourse about uniformity and diversity see Befu (2001) and Weiner (1997). 5 Japan Statistical Yearbook 2006. 6 Reliable statistics on the Nikkeijin in Japan are hard to come by, not least because of a pattern of multiple or ‘return’ migration (Sellek, 1997; Mori, 1999). Estimates of those who have settled in Japan since the mid-1980s vary between 200,000 and 330,000. 7 According to data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released on 7 October 2005, marriages between a Japanese citizen and a foreign spouse increased from 7,261 in 1980 to 39,411 in 2004. wwwdbtk.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/data/010/2004/ toukeihyou/0004982/t0109113/MG18 (accessed 5 May 2006). 8 Statistics Bureau, Director-General for Policy Planning; www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/ 2000/gaikoku/00/04.htm (accessed 10 May 2006). 9 www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/japan.pdf 10 Basic Plan for Immigration Control, 3rd edition. Ministry of Justice; www.moj.go.jp 11 Kaigo no shigoto ninau no ha dare (Who will do the nursing work?). Asahi Shimbun, 22 May 2005, morning edition: 9. 12 www5.cao.go.jp/99/e/19990705e-keishin-e-s.html 12 Population ageing and social change 1 In a paper published in 2003, the director of the Department of Population Dynamics of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research stated that ‘the total population is expected to reach its peak in 2009 at 128.15 million’ (Takahashi, 2003: 57). See also the 2005 Asahi Shimbun leader quoted in Chapter 2. 2 In the wake of advances in gene analysis and prenatal diagnostics, eugenics has attracted renewed attention in Japan, giving rise to several new terms indicative of the direction of interest in this field of research: family eugenics, spontaneous eugenics, individual eugenics and private eugenics, among others. See SaitÜ (2004: 314). 3 See Chapter 10. 4 According to the National Police Agency, officially registered suicides exceeded 30,000 in 2005 for the eighth consecutive year. Jisatsusha: hachinen renzoku de sanman nin koe. ‘Kakusa shakai no eikyÜ’ ka (Suicides surpass 30,000 for eighth consecutive year. Effect of the ‘gap-widening society’?). Mainichi Shimbun, 10 May 2006.

Notes 147 5 A survey conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in 2003 found that married couples are willing to have more children if husbands play a significant role in bringing them up (Kyodo News, 2 June 2006). The birth rate decline to 1.25 in 2005 therefore prompted the media to call for a change in work organization, for example, Hatarakikata o kaeyÜ (Change the way we work!). Leader, Asahi Shimbun, 2 June 2006, morning edition: 3. 6 The third National Survey on Family, conducted in 2003 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (Daisankai zenkoku katei dÜkÜ chÜsa) found that on average husbands of full-time working wives do no more than 20 per cent of housework; www.ipss.go.jp/ps-katei/j/Nsfj. Kaji shinai otto (Husbands who do no housework). Asahi Shimbun, 10 June 2006, morning edition: 3. 7 See note 6. 8 Tokushñ Shin kaikyñshakai Nippon (Special issue, Japan, a new class society). Bungei Shunjñ, May 2005; Tokushñ Chñryñ hÜkai (Special issue, the breakdown of the middle class). ChñÜ KÜron, July 2005. 9 KyñryÜ ‘daikakusa’ jidai o ikinuku (Surviving in times of huge wage gaps). Yomiuri uÌkurÌ, 3 July 2005: 10–19. 10 Kakusa’ o kanjite imasu ka. Shñkan Ekonomisuto, 4/25, April 2006. 11 A higher value of the Gini coefficient indicates greater inequality. While the number of workers in irregular employment in the 15–34 age cohort rose from 1.83 million in 1990 to 4.17 million in 2001, the Gini coeffienct rose from 0.3643 in 1990 to 0.3812 in 2002 (Higuchi and ZaimushÜ zaimu sÜgÜ seisaku kenkkysho, 2003). See also Bewaad Institute (2006). ‘Kakusa’ o kangaeru, dai ni kai: Nihon no shotoku kakusa ha kokusaiteki ni mite dÜ nano ka (Thinking about disparities, no. 2: Japan’s income disparity in international perspective), bewaad.com/20060119.html 12 According to a poll conducted by the Asahi Shimbun, 5 February 2006, morning edition: 14. 13 Nihon ha ‘kakusashakai’ ka (Is Japan a gap-widening society?). A debate between Toshiaki Tachibanaki and Fumio Ohtake, Asahi Shimbun, 10 February 2006, morning edition: 15. 14 Kakusa’ rongi surechigai (Discussion about ‘disparities’ at cross-purposes), Asahi Shimbun, 4 February 2006, morning edition: 4. 15 Omiai kokuei de (Government-managed marriage meetings). Asahi Shimbun, 19 May 2006, morning edition: 4. 16 Thirty-eight per cent of the respondents of an opinion poll found changes in the working environment crucial for reversing the downward fertility trend, a higher proportion than those favouring economic support for families with small children. Keizai shien yorimo rÜdÜ kankyÜ totonoete (Work place adjustment over economic support). Asahi Shimbun, 2 April 2006, morning edition: 1. 17 ShusshÜritsu saitei 1.25 (Lowest birth rate 1.25). Asahi Shimbun, 1 June 2006, morning edition: front page. 18 The Yomiuri Shimbun, in its 3 June 2005 editorial, pointed out that the Angel Plan of 1995 and the New Angel Plan of 2000 have done nothing to stop the birth rate from sliding. ShusshÜritsu 1.29. Teika keikÜ o dÜ hanten saseru (Birth rate 1.29. How can we turn the downward trend around?). Yomiuri Shimbun, morning edition, 3 June 2005: 3 (page leader). And the Asahi Shimbun in its 5 June 2005 editorial called these policies ‘almost useless’. ShusshÜritsu teisÜ. Umitai to omou shakai o (Birth rate drop. Towards a society that wants children). Asahi Shimbun, morning edition, 5 June 2005: 3 (page leader).

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Index

actuarial equity 89 Adachi, Kiyoshi 70 Adult Guardian Law 67 age, bio-physical 76; psycho-social 76 age classes 23 age cohorts 23, 44, 89 age-integrated facilities 34f. aged society 5 age of first marriage 39, 41, 45 age-stratified society 23 ageing 4, 25, 63, 74, 76, 95, 127, 129, 130, 135 ageing population 84 ageing rate 63 ageing society 5, 101, 102 ageing, successful 110 Akagawa, Manabu 5 Alien Registration Law 116 Angle Plans 48, 148n18 anthropotechnology 111, 112, 114 Araki, Takashi 56 arranged marriage 43 Atoh, Makoto 7, 128 automobile industry 80 average age 96, 108 baby boom 18, 19, 38, 39, 127 baby boomers 20, 21, 61, 74, 83, 97 baby boomer generation 19, 20, 64, 75, 76; second 20 barrier-free housing 79 Basic Law for a Gender-equal Society 54, 55, 67 Basic Law on Measures for the Ageing Society 67 Basic Law on Measures for the Society with a Declining Birthrate 47 Barnard, Christian 110 Bhattacharya, Jayanta 67, 127

Beck, Ulrich 93 Befu, Harumi 116, 146n4 bioethics 112 Bishop, Beverley 53 birth order 24 birth rate 7, 9, 12, 25, 37, 41, 49, 56, 103, 109, 120, 128, 137, 148n18 birth-rate decline 5, 38, 47, 48, 137 birth-rate, falling 6 Boe, Carl 108 Bourdieu, Pierre 66 brain death 110, 145n12 Braudy Harris, Phyllis 65, 142n7 Budak, Mary-Anne E. 24 Campbell, John C. 88 Cartesian dualism 111 care 64, 68, 70; institution-based 65; professionalization of 29 census 115, 146n3 centenarians 106, 107, 109, 110 Centenarian Doubling Time 106 child-care leave 55, 56, 59, 60, 142n8 Childcare Leave Act 47, 59 childcare leave for fathers 137 childcare, mandatory 59 Child Care Support Plan 48 Child Welfare Law 47 China’s one child policy 10 civil society 70, 72 Clammer, John 75, 149 class 138 class society, new 15, 93, 134, 135 community 31, 69, 70, 76 Confucian(ism) 111, 131 conjugal family 24 Conrad, Harald 88, 143n7, 144n2 consumer behaviour 76 consumption 74, 75, 77, 83f., 138

162 Index contraception 37, 130 co-residence 24, 28 Coulmas, Florian 23, 94 cultural norm 24, 57 daughter-in-law 64, 65 day-care programmes 35 death 30, 85, 107, 110–14, 130, 145 death rate 109 dementia 69, 109 demographic behaviour 11, 45, 126, 128, 130 demographic developments 131 demographic equilibrium 127 demographic forecasts 7, 127 demographic projections 75, 77 demographic transition 38, 118, 128; second, 118 dependency ratio 62, 64, 74, 88, 118, 122 depopulation 1, 37, 74, 80, 88, 92, 119, 127, 138 disparities 133, 134 division of labour 52 dokushin kizoku 11 double burden 59 double-income households 50 Douglass, Mike 116 dying with dignity 112, 114, 145n9 economic disparity 14 egalitarianism 133 Ehara, Yumiko 52, 53 Eisenstadt, S.N. 131 election participation rate 99 elder abuse 131 elder abuse law 131, 132 elder-care (services) 64, 70 elderly citizens 38 elderly customers 75, 76 elderly, discrimination of the 99 elderly day-care centres 35 elderly people 62 elderly population 74 election participation rate 97, 98 electorate 97 employment practices 65 employment system 23, 54 Employees Pension Insurance 86 Equal Employment Opportunity Law 55 equal gender participation 4 equal opportunities 50, 93 eugenics 146n2 Eugenic Protection Law 38 euthanasia 113, 114, 130, 145n7, 146n16

Euthanasia Society 112 family 35, 36, 42, 52, 64–7, 130 family, attitudes toward the 29 family care 69 family composition 29 family, ideal 52 family name 12, 60 family planning 10, 38, 130 family, pluralization of the 28, 29 family policy 101 family, shrinking of the 42 family size 10, 37, 41, 44 family structure 25 family system 26, 60 family, traditional 138 family types 25 Faruqee, Hamid 145n8 fecundity 17, 18, 19, 139n1 Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs 99, 100 Feeney, Griffith 107 Feldman, Eric A. 145n12 female labour (force) participation 52, 54, 58, 122, 138 female workforce participation 40, 47, 50 fertility 12, 13, 19, 42, 43, 54, 67, 74, 124, 128, 137, 139n1 fertility, age of highest 18 fertility, below-replacement-level 8 fertility decline 1, 38, 39, 45, 55 fertility rate 12, 127, 128 fertility, time path of 22 filial piety 64, 66, 67, 69 foreign labour 120 foreign migrants 120 foreign population 116 foreign workers 115, 117, 119, 123 Formanek, Susanne 143n15 freeter 15, 133, 134 Fries, James F. 145n6 Fuji, Masatake 74 Furukawa, Toshiyuki 74 gap (widening) society 4, 133, 134, 136 Garon, Sheldon 137 GDP 39, 74, 108 genetic engineering 111 Genda, Yuji 11 gender 100, 138 gender bias 54, 65 gender discrimination 93 gender equality 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 137, 138 gender equality policies 54 gender-equal society 54, 55, 59, 60

Index 163 gender gap 27 gender inequality 49 gender relations 16, 49, 50, 58, 59, 65, 102, 128 gender roles 12, 27, 52, 57, 58, 60, 65, 100, 126, 132, 138 gender roles, traditional 59 gender-segregated society 27 generation 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 75, 91, 93; biological 19, 21 generation, clash of 95 generation free 76 generation gap 14, 97 generation mixing 24 generation, mean length of 17 genrØ 94 Gerling, Vera 143n7 gerontocracy 94 Giddens, Anthony 93 Gini coefficient 134, 147n11 globalization 54, 110, 119, 120, 136 Gold Plan 67 Goodman, Roger 116 government 95, 98, 100, 102 guardianship 65 Hackett, Roger F. 94 happiness 3, 136 Harada, Masazumi 112, 113 Harada, Yutaka 38 Haraguchi, KØzØ 106 Hashimoto, Akiko 66 Hashimoto, Hiroko 68 Hashimoto, RyËtarØ 142n3 Hayase, Yasuko 128 Hayashi, Hikaru 75, 143n4 Hayashi, Shingo 134, 135 health care 2, 48, 67, 81, 83, 101 health insurance 89 Hewitt, Paul 74 Higuchi, Keiko 94, 99, 100, 140 Higuchi, Yoshio 15, 74, 134, 140, 147n11 hikikomori 44, 141n9 Hinohara, Shigeaki 106 Hiroshima, Kiyoshi 25 Hirschman, Charles 39 Hisatake, Ayako 60 Hodge, Robert W. 57 Hoffman, Michael 80 home helpers 65, 120 Horioka, Charles Y. 65, 89 Hosaka, Masayasu 146n16 Hosoya, YËji 90 House, James S. 140n6

household composition 45, 47 household head 23, 58 household size 43 Hugo, Graeme 118 human lifespan 105 human relations 29, 70 human resource development 122, 123 human rights 70 hyper-aged society 4, 5, 15, 17, 27, 30, 62, 68, 72, 101, 114, 127, 138 Ichikawa, KØichi 20 Ibe, Hideo 58–60 ie family 64, 65 ie system 63, 64 immigration 16, 116, 118–22 immigration control (Act) 115–17 immigration laws 118, 123 immigration policy 116, 121–4, 132 immortality 110 Inaba, Keiko 142n7 income differences 135 income disparities 14, 93, 136 income gaps 136 income inequality 134–6 inconsistency 138; see also status inconsistency incumbency advantage 99 individualism 29, 42, 64 inequality 136 infant mortality 2, 4, 8, 107, 108 Inoguchi, Yasushi 122, 123 Inoue, Teruko 52 intergenerational contact 36 intergenerational equity 21, 89–91, 93 intergenerational fairness 14, 15 intergenerational relation(ship) 14, 21, 24, 63, 65, 66, 90 intergenerational redistribution 126 intergenerational transfer 64–6, 92, 100, 101, 128, 145n8 internationalization 120, 121 Ishii, Angelo 118 ItØ, Kimio 142n10 Iwabuchi, Katsuyoshi 99 Iwagami, Mami 11 Iwao, Fujimasa 39 Iwasaki, Motoki 30 Jagger, Carol 107 Jenike, B. Robb 65 Kajimoto, Tetsushi 121 Kaman, Simon 80

164 Index Kaneyama, RyËichi 83 kanreki 25, Katagiri, Keiko 30 Kawakami, Ikuo 118 Kikuchi, Mayumi 28, 32 Kimura, Rihito 68 Kingston, Jeff 70 Kiyoie, Atsushi 129 Kohara, Miki 24, 66 Koizumi, Jun’ichiro 93, 98, 99, 135 Kojima, Katsuhisa 93 Komai, Hiroshi 117, 121 Kono (KØno), Shigemi 128 Kusaka, Kimindo 74 Kusuda, Yoshihiro 82 labour force 11, 15, 50–4, 56–8, 74, 119, 126, 128f., 132, 136, 138 labour force participation (rate) 51, 57, 88, 117, 129 labour force participation rate of women 11 labour immigration 116 labour market 47, 54, 120, 131 labour migration 123 Laszlo, Tony 139n1 Law to Prevent Abuse of the Elderly 67, 69 LDP 54, 70, 71, 93, 99, 100–3, 114, 144 legal marriage age 37 length of life 22, 85, 108, 111 Li, Nan 108 Li, Setsuko, 117 Lie, John 116 life annuities 85 life cycle model 22, 140n5 life expectancy 2, 17, 22, 24, 25, 27, 31, 88, 89, 92, 108, 132 life expectancy at birth 3, 107, 108 life expectancy at retirement 129 life expectancy gains 106, 107, 110, 130, 145 n.6 life expectancy of the elderly 4 life-extension measures 112 life satisfaction 3, 4 life, length of 145n6 lifelong learning 79 lifespan 107, 108, 110 lifestyle 2, 11, 15, 25, 30, 31, 42, 45, 50, 53, 54, 76, 108, 110, 128, 133 lifestyle family 28 lifetime employment 20 Linhart, Sepp 64 living arrangement 25 local community 32, 67 Lösch, August 140n2

Long, Susan Orpett 65, 142n7 longevity 2, 3, 14, 17, 76, 85, 90, 104, 106, 108, 111; of women 27 longevity risk 85, 89, 93 Long-Term Care Insurance (Act) 68, 70, 71 long-term care 69, 101 long-term care insurance system 67, 83 love marriage 9, 43 Machino, Saku 146n16 MacKellar, L. 74 Malthus, Thomas Robert 10, 127, 139n17 Mannheim, Karl 19, 20, 24 marital fertility 37, 59 marriage 11, 43, 52, 54, 58, 60, 133 marriage age 9 marriage, attitudes towards 58 marriage behaviour 132 marriage, international 117 marriage, late 9, 10 marriage, patrilocal 64 marriage rate 40–2 Masuda, Masanobu 93 Matsutani, Akihiko 39, 88, 90–2 Maxwell, Elenor 145n7 Maxwell, Robert J. 145n7 median age 4, 16, 17, 127, 129 Metzner, Helen L. 140n6 middle-class 131, 133 middle-class consciousness 14 middle-class society 41, 58, 133 migrant workers 119 migration 75, 110, 146n6 Mitsui, Yoji 106, 111 Miura, Atsushi 40, 56, 58, 134 Miura, Fumio 140n2 Miura, KeizØ 106, 145n3 Miura, YuichirØ 106 Miyamoto, Michiko 11 Miyazawa, Kiichi 99 Miyoshi, Hiroaki 122 Mizuno, Masaru 103 mobility 36 Möhwald, Ulrich 42 Moerke, Andreas 80 Mori, Kenji 28 Mori, Koichi 146n6 Morinaga, TakurØ 41 Morioka, Kiyomi 23, 140n7, n9 mortality 3, 17, 22, 30, 74, 85, 110, 128; infant 107 mortality risk 31 Mosk, Carl 38 Motani, Kosuke (KØske) 25, 130, 140n11

Index 165 Mühleisen, Martin 145n8 multicultural society 116 Murakami, Yasusuke 133 Muramatsu, Minoru 38 Nada, Inada 94, 100, 155 Nagao, Ritsuko 99 Nakanishi, Takashi 143n12 Nakasone, Yasuhiro 99, 116 Nakayama, Fukiko 65 Nakayama, TarØ 114 national pension system 85–7, 89, 93 nativity 17 neighbourhood 31 network 30, 36 network density 30 New Elder citizens Movement 106 New Gold Plan 67 NGOs 70 Nihonjinron 133 Nikkeijin 116, 117, 121 Ninomiya, Masato 118 Nishitani, Osamu 110, 111 Nishizawa, Kazuhiko 92 non-state actors 70, 71 non-state organizations 35 Norbeck, Edward 23 NPOs 36, 70, 72, 100 nuclear family 23, 64 nursing 66, 70, 119, 140n5 nursing care 62, 83 nursing hell 62 nursing homes 67 Obasuteyama 69 Ölschleger, Hans Dieter, 29 Oeppen, Jim 107 Ogawa, Naohiro 22, 57, 62, 127, 128 Ogino, Miho 130 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 145n12 Ohtake (Ú U Otake), Fumio 65, 66, 136 Okamura, Kiyoko 140n5 Okasaki, Yoichi 140n5 Okinawa Centenarian Study 109, 110 one-child family 44, 45 only child 44, 45, 50 one-person household 45 Organ Transplant Law 111 organ transplantation 110, 111 Osawa, Mari 55, 101 U Ú Otake, Fumio 134, 147n13 otaku 44 parasaito shinguru 11

parental care 66 parental leave 132, 138 part-timers 133 Pekkanen, Robert 70 Peng, Ito 65, 142n5 pension age 88 pension funds 86 pension premium rate 87 pension reform 91, 92 pension schemes 85 pension system 12, 20, 29, 87–9, 91 per capita income 42, 108, 127 political culture 94 population ageing 2, 16, 17, 22, 23, 39, 54, 62, 67, 88, 102–4, 110, 129, 136 population control 10, population cycles 140n2 population decline 1, 4, 7, 9, 80, 118, 122 population density 46 population development 119 population dynamics 126, 127, 136 population engineering 114 population growth 8, 10, 38, 87, 90, 127 population policy 49 population pyramid 19, 36, 83, 95, 126, 129 population, retired 91 population structure 84, 87, 89, 95, 122, 125, 127, 130, 131 population waves 18 postmodernity 37 Public Long-term Care Insurance Act 67; see also Long-Term Care Insurance Act public pension fund 89 public pension system 88, 92 public welfare 68 redifferentiation (of society) 133, 135 Reed, Steven R. 99 regional differences 45 regional disparities 135 replacement-level fertility 45 replacement migration 119 reproductive control 38 reproductive technology 130 respect for elders 69, 70, 79, 94 Retherford, Robert D. 62 retired husband (stress) syndrome 31, 140n8 retirement 31, 35, 61, 74, 75, 85, 89, 99, 101 retirement age 88, 90, 122, 138 retirement income 86, 87 retirement payments 86

166 Index Robbins, Cynthia 140n6 Roberts, Glenda S. 116 Robine, Jean-Marie 107 robotics 80 Sagaza, Haruo 36, 43, 62 Saidel, Andrew 103 Saito, Masahiko 65, 107 Saito, Yasuhiko 107 SaitØ, Takao 134, 135, 146n2 SaitØ, Tamaki 44, 125, 136 Sakai, Junko 60, 61, 125, 136 Sakaiya, Taichi 115, 146n1 Sanada, Shinji 116 SatØ, Toshiki 134 Schmid, Josef 22 Seike, Atsushi 115, 121, 146n1 Sekizawa, Hidehiko 78, 96 Sellek, Yoko 146n6 senile dementia 62, 69, 82 seniority 14, 23, 94, 99, 136 senior citizens 27–9, 32–4, 63, 73, 79, 80, 99, 102 senior citizens clubs 31, 32 senior customers 76 senior population 97 seniority principle 24, 131 Shibuya, Ken 140n5 Shimazaki, Naoko 25 Shimizu, Hiroaki 32, 140n3, 141n9 shinguru kizoku 11 Shintoism 111 Shirahase, Sawako 51, 58, 136, 142n3 Shire, Karen 56 ShØji, Hiroshi 116 shØshika taisaku 5, 6 Silverman, Philip 145n7 silver democracy 94 silver market 77, 83, 84 silver seats 101 silver vote 103 single (person) household 26, 27, 35, 43, 47, 63 single women 27, 60, 61 single population 58 social ageing 1, 15, 21, 24, 28, 63, 79, 80, 88, 91, 92, 118, 128,129 social change 16, 57, 58, 72, 116, 126–8, 131, 137f. social cleavage 135, 136 social contract 65, 66, 126 social death 30 social disparity 125, 133 social engineering 10, social inconsistency 133

social isolation 30, 31, 79 social ligatures 29, 30, 37, 61 social networks 25, 30, 31, 36 social participation 32 social restructuring 136 social security 13, 92, 95, 100, 102 social redifferentiation 137 social redistribution 14 social wealth 41, 108 social welfare institutions 35 social withdrawal 44 socialization 44, 48, ~ , primary 63 socialization of care 132 Special Non-profit Activities Law 70 standard of living 3, 15, 90 status inconsistency 131, 132 stem family 23, 24 suicide 2n4, 130, 133, 147n4; assisted 113 Sugimoto, Kiyoe 65, 68, 142n6 survival rate 30 Suzuki, Nobue 118 symbolic equity 66 Tabellini, Guido 145n8 Tachibanaki, Toshiaki 14, 93, 134, 136, 147n13 Tago, Akira 44, 45 Takahashi, Hiroko 140n6 Takahashi, Shigesato 140n5, 146n1 Takayama, Noriyuki 88, 91, 92, 144n10 Takeda, Hiroko 141n2 Takenaga Mutsuo 142n7 Takenaka, Heizo 135 Talcott, Paul D. 68, 102 Tanaka, Aurea Christine 118 Tanaka, Kakuei 101, 102 Tanaka, Naoki 70 Tateiwa, Shinya 112 telecare 83 Thang, Leng Leng 35 Thompson, Warren S. 38 Tomioka, Emiko 12 total fertility rate (TFR) 5, 8, 11, 45, 46, 137 trainees 121 trainee programme 122 Tsuchiya, Hiroyuki 83 Tuljapurkar, Shirpad 108 turnout 97, 98, 103 Uchida, Mitsuru 94, 99 Uchihashi, Katsuto 136 Ueno, Chizuko 5, 62, 139, 142n10

Index 167 unemployment 74 universal design 76, 80, 144n14 urbanization 51, 129 van Wolferen, Karel 94 Vaupel, James W. 107 viri-locality 24, Vogt, William B. 67, 127 volunteer activities 34, volunteerism 36, 70 voluntary organizations 70, 71 voting age 103 voting-age population (VAP) 97 voting rights 103 wage disparities 53 Weiner, Michael 146n4 welfare 83 welfare expenditures 101 welfare policy 68 welfare state 65, 71, 92, 93, 101, 102, 128 welfare system 65, 103

Whelpton, Pascal K. 38 Whitten, Darrel 75 world population 18, 91 workforce participation 57 working-age population 12, 13, 62, 86, 102, 122 working hours 47, 61, 138 working life 53, 54, 86, 93, 130f. working mother 132 working population 54, 86, 88, 91, 119 work-life balance 61 Wu, Yongmei 66 Yamada, Atsuhiro 129 Yamada, Masahiro 11, 15, 58, 129, 134 Yazawa, Hirotake 135 Yoshida, Hiroshi 135 Yoshida, Masaru 73 Yoshida, ShØin 105 Yoshikawa, Aki 67, 127 Yoshioka, Matsuko 12 Yoshitomi, Masaru 90