Ageing in Asia: Japan, the land where the sun never sets

Japan’s extreme demographics are well documented. It currently has the third highest life expectancy in the world, averaging 80.12 years; also the fastest ageing population on earth. Health Ministry records estimated the population fell by 51,000 in 2008. According to the former head of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, Hidenori Sakanaka, Japan will need 10 million new immigrants by mid-century to balance the decline in population. In other words, the population is shrinking. Japan is becoming a country of few births, few deaths, and fewer people, living a very long time. Economically, Japan is conservative. Whilst other governments dealing with ageing populations invest aggressively abroad, the risk-averse Japanese government chooses low risk bonds with minimum yields. There is relatively little saving amongst young people, except in low-return postal savings accounts. Despite policy changes, there is not going to be enough money to cover pensions. But Japan is approaching its population challenge with the innovation one would expect. More importantly, how Japan tackles ageing has implications for the rest of the world.

THE LAND WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS?

The elderly are venerated for making Japan the country it is today, and valued for their life experience. Japan bestows respect on wisdom that is passed down through generations – and expertise that is garnered through apprenticeship and practice. However, Japan is a culture built of wood, not stone. The Japanese are a secular society practicing Shinto and Buddhism largely for ritualistic purposes. Far removed from the weight of Christian doctrine, animism praises the natural world, our physical and metaphysical experience of it, and the transient character of all things. There is a powerful discourse of vitality, renewal and rebirth.

Many codes and symbols of ‘freshness’ exist in Japanese culture: the colour pink links the fleeting, evanescent beauty of ‘sakura’ cherry blossom in spring, and the very public sensual veneration of fresh-faced teenage girls. The glow and lustre of youth is celebrated much more overtly than in the ‘guilt’ cultures of Christian Europe. Yet the old are not pigeonholed as a discrete age group, a coda to active life. They are more integrated and on a continuum with others, actually not thought of as decrepit but newly young again. As in other markets, in Japan we see many intriguing examples of lifestage “stretch and shuffle”, with less defined periods of behaviour or roles. Teenagers grow up faster, mothers buy clothes in the same shops as their daughters, and baby boomers are doing many things not traditionally associated with the retired. Many elderly Japanese people take advantages of the benefits of older life, travelling and taking up new experiences and hobbies. Shigeo Tokuda looks like your average pensioner, but there is nothing average about this 73-year-old. Shigeo Tokuda is a porn star. “I retired and didn’t have anything to do,” says Tokuda, a former  travel agent. “This is my second life. I don’t know how long I can keep living, but I want to enjoy the rest of it.”

He brings to life an observation by Ruth Benedict in the slightly dated but still brilliant ‘The Chrysanthemum and the Sword’. She delineates a crucial difference between how levels of autonomy and age coincide in Japan and the West. The model is that in the West, early childhood and old age are times of restraint and dependency, while adulthood allows – encourages – free rein for self-expression and achievement. However, many ‘pensioners’ are treated as infantiles and given little respect. Conversely, in Japan, young children are given considerably more autonomy than British children, for example. Violence and the erotic can be part of a young child’s unfettered life in Japan, as they run around giving free rein to their instincts. However, once they enroll in Bukatsu training and serious school work, there is a sharp dip in autonomy that can last for the next 50 years. This is the beginning of the ‘if the nail stands up it is hammered down’ period. For the majority this continues throughout working life, until retirement when Japanese pensioners are looked after by family, respected by society, and allowed to indulge themselves again as they did in early childhood. National Respect the Aged Day is a public holiday in Japan. Make-up companies, toy designers, mobile phone manufacturers, and leisure companies are creating products to meet the needs of the elderly. Development in technology is key to providing for the elderly. Mobile phone models for the elderly are leading the way in Japan; containing specific features such as voice dialling, enlarged buttons and an automated GPS alarm function, which sends a message to a predetermined phone in case of an emergency. Other appliances are helping close the digital and physical divide. Rice cookers and kettles exist which send out an email twice daily to inform siblings living in the metropolis that the appliances have been in use: Mum or Dad is active and OK. Ekipedia and other mobile services allow elderly people to navigate their route through busy and overwhelming Tokyo metro stations, providing photos and detailed routes for planning. Animatronic “healing pets” like Paro the Robot Seal offer companionship and interaction through learning behaviour. It has sensors that detect light, tactility, temperature and sound. It develops personality over time and learns the owner’s interactions.

A PLACE TO STAY

About 93% of Japanese people who are over the age of 60 live at home, either on their own, with a spouse or with other family members. However, the number of people living in a nursing home or another welfare facility for the aged is increasing. Traditionally, family would look after the relative, but more young people live alone in the city working to support their family. The best Japanese nursing homes are state of the art. An article in Monocle reported on the advances in Japanese care homes. “Sakurajyuji Hospitalment complex in Kyushu, southern Japan, opened its doors earlier this year. Consisting of a hospital combined with 101 sleek apartments for elderly people, the project has been constructed by Takenaka, the company that also built Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Midtown. As well as providing round-the-clock medical assistance, there are hinoki wood communal baths, with views over traditional Japanese gardens. “The elderly are the very people who made Japan the highly developed place it is today and we need to respect them in their later life,” says Tomoki Nishikawa, COO of Takenaka. But the cost of homes is huge, and again there is not enough money for all. Many areas outside of the metropolis are coming to terms with a changing demographic. This is part of a broader trend to invigorate the “slow life” mentality amongst the population. Aomori, near the northern end of Japan’s main island of Honshu, has banned development work in suburbs to bring those living on the outskirts back to the city centre. The city of 300,000 has built a condominium with a clinic and nursing care service centre, and is also trying to transform the shopping mall in the city centre into a senior-friendly area. Attempts to create “compact cities” by concentrating the dispersed population in the city centre near railway stations is seen as a model for many other smaller cities in Japan and abroad that are facing steep drops in population. This model of homebuilding aims to integrate elderly people into communities rather than isolate them, and is in line with the efforts of electronics and toy makers to create proximity through internet connections and companionship. So, what can brands and businesses learn from all this? It is clear that traditional spheres of entertainment and behaviours are shifting; there is a cross pollination in activities between ages. In the UK we’ve seen how bingo is becoming popular for young people, as are pub quizzes, knitting, real ale, cruises and golf… Time and money are important, but the elderly in Japan also place great value on freedom and vitality. These are two values to be exported…Japan faces today Europe and North America’s problems of tomorrow, and there are lots of lessons on how to plan for the extended lifespan, a rise in dementia and diabetes, the necessity for improved care, pensions, savings, the importance of immigration. Japan already is poised to be an exporter of processes (lean manufacturing, technology, robots) rather than things, as it moves up the value chain. Could this be another instance? But Japan also demonstrates a sense of playfulness and enjoyment for the old that the West could do well to recognize and help deliver. For the consumer electronics and leisure industries in particular there is a world of opportunity through innovation and recognition that sometimes, even at 73, age really is just a number.

This post was written by Alex Wilson, Associate Director at Flamingo Shanghai  & Chris Francis, Director at Flamingo London

This post was originally featured in FYI, a bi-annual trends report published by Flamingo. For more information about FYI, please get in touch with us.

    This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 1:55 pm. It is filed under Asia, Geography and tagged with , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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