In a country with 36 million elderly people, or 30% of the population, providing them with help and care is a social responsibility. In Matsudo, a bedroom community east of Tokyo, this type of municipal notice is repeated every ten days. Residents patrol the town, wearing orange vests, to help disoriented grandparents. In 2019, they found all but one.
In the Japan described by anthropologist Ruth Benedicte during World War II, it was customary to provide care for the elderly. The Confucian legacy of the greatest respect for elders is still instilled in schools, and the national calendar celebrates a day in their honor. Today, it is no longer primarily families who care for the elderly, but society.
” The shift from the tradition of caring for family members to providing assistance was very rapid ,” says Florentino Rodao, a historian at the Complutense University of Madrid and According to the author, the aging population became a political priority in the late 1980s, and the consumption tax was increased to support public spending on care. This social security system is facing new challenges: the constant increase in the number of elderly people , the asphyxiation of public finances, and lonely deaths that escape the care system, a sad consequence of the isolation of the elderly.
Increased aging population? Increased investment in healthcare
The world’s fastest-aging country has become a ” silver society ” [a reference to its residents’ gray hair], a phenomenon that has its origins in the Japanese baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s. But while countries with aging populations such as Spain and the United Kingdom have made significant cuts to health care over the past decade, Japan is celebrating 20 years since the implementation of a social health care system that provides coverage in the last stage of life.
The principle is to avoid burdens on families and prevent the physical and mental deterioration of the elderly, with an emphasis on dementia, a disease that destroys the lives of nearly five million Japanese.
Naoko Hasegawa rides his bicycle through Matsudo. In 1953, this suburban Tokyo town was a cluster of cultivated gardens home to 40,000 people. Today, it has nearly half a million, and finding a piece of land has gone from normal to surprising. He parks his bicycle in front of the house of a centenarian resident. It’s the middle of the coronavirus crisis, and Japan has declared a state of emergency, but she can’t stop working. The elderly depend on her job as a care service manager. When she’s not in her office