As the world's fastest aging country, Japan accounts for nearly one-third of the country's population over the age of 65, three times the global average.
With an unprecedentedly low birth rate, Japan's 6.8 billion strong labor force is expected to be reduced by 8 million by 2030, and Japan seems to be heading for an inevitable crisis.
How will the growing elderly population change the country's future? How does this ultra-aging country intend to respond to the results of demographic changes?
According to the World Bank, the average life expectancy of Japanese people is 84 years, which is one of the highest in the world. The current retirement age in Japan is 65 years old, so theoretically, most Japanese people have more than a decade to enjoy the golden years of their old age.
However, working hours in this country, which takes up most of life, can be uncomfortable with the space after retirement.
It is not uncommon for retirees to become dazed because they have lost their goals, and sadly, they have become the fastest-increasing age group among Japanese suicide victims.
01 Older people should try unfulfilled aspirations when they were young to express themselves more
However, some elderly people still refuse to serve the old and are eager to show vitality.
A group of Japanese retirees known as "older monsters" have found a new chapter in their lives by discovering a variety of new skills, including dance, rap, and even pole dancing, to prove that they will never look old.
In Ikebukuro, Tokyo's entertainment district, Kyoko Watanabe is in her sixties and is a member of an elderly hip-hop dance troupe. In 2016, her hip-hop dance troupe became popular for uploading explosive dance steps on YouTube, and now there are still more than 1.5 million hits.
Kyoko Watanabe was invited to the dance troupe by a friend, and she clearly remembers that after her first dance class, her muscles stiffened the next day and she couldn't get out of bed, but she felt that the best thing was that she could express herself freely.
She said that many people have the impression of Japanese people that Japanese people are quite serious, so when they get older, they usually just quietly get older.
I thought I would grow old quietly, too. When I was a kid, my family was conservative and strict, and I never thought I'd fall in love with hip-hop or hip-hop. But then I found myself dancing well, I should say that I thought it was funny, I would stick to it until now, and the human body feels very flexible.
People who work in Japan have all their roles tied to being employees, and all their lives revolve around it, so when they retire, many suddenly lose their goals.
If they had something they wanted to do when they were younger but couldn't, they should try it again now, because they have more free time in old age and should try it, which may feel interesting.
Kyoko Watanabe's actions may seem like just play, but in reality, they are also a necessary way to maintain relationships.
In Japan, the number of deaths of the elderly living alone is increasing, and although it does not occur every day, it has begun to become a social problem.
If Kyoko Watanabe's friends hadn't invited her, maybe she would never have been in a hip-hop dance class, so some things can only be done through connections with others.
These old people create group connections for themselves, and maybe life doesn't have to end alone at age 60.
02 Let the community take care of the elderly together to reduce the burden on individuals
Today, many elderly people in Japan live alone, an estimated 6.2 million, and the number continues to increase.
The lack of support, combined with the declining ability to live, means that many of these elderly will not be able to maintain contact with the outside world.
For others in society, the problem of these elderly people is easy to ignore, because they can't see and don't think.
Within the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the largest collective residential area is "Murayama Group Land". In this residential area, more than 52% of the residents are over the age of 65.
The residential area is surrounded by a traditional shopping street called the shopping street, which is far from the residential building, and since 2009, some local shoppers have begun to provide free pick-up and drop-off services for the elderly in the area.
The initiator of the service is Seiichi Hiruma, who, according to him, has lived here since the 1970s and runs a clothing store in a shopping street.
At that time, Japan was in an era of rapid economic growth, and many young families were living in this residential area, and the shopping street was bustling with people at that time. Over the decades, the children born here have grown up and moved away, and the residents who remain have aged.
Because of the decline in the flow of people, the serious decline in business, and the aging of the population, the shops that have been operating here for many years have begun to find ways to repay the patronage of residents for many years.
There are a lot of elderly people here, they sometimes can't figure out where they are, or forget what medicine to take, or how to fill out the form, etc., the merchants have set up a nursing consultation center for the elderly to help the elderly deal with some problems, there are also seats, the elderly can go in for a cup of tea and chat.
There are many elderly residents in this residential area, who have become unable to move and can no longer go out, and there are many elderly people living alone, and it is estimated that about 1,400 of the 4,000 elderly residents live alone.
Merchants also take care of the elderly, and if they don't see someone for a long time, they will go to see how he is.
The people who provide these services are shopkeepers like Seiichi Hiruma, who are volunteer volunteers, but these volunteers themselves are not young people, and they are getting older.
We've heard many terrible stories of elderly People in Japan being abandoned, or caregivers being overwhelmed and even hurting or killing people they care for.
The burden of caring for the elderly alone is heavy, and here, it is more like a community system.
But when these volunteers, who are also getting older, also become the object of service, will someone inherit their behavior? This issue casts a shadow over the Japanese economy.
At present, Japan's birth rate is far from catching up with the shrinking labor force, so the Japanese government hopes to extend the retirement age to 70 years old to allow the elderly to be employed longer.
03 Use technology to help improve the autonomy of the elderly's limbs
Hiroshi Kobayashi, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tokyo University of Science, is working on ways to help the elderly extend their working years. He wants to use technology to keep the human body active longer.
He was tempted to do something design that would help increase the strength of human labor, because the thing he hated and feared the most was the loss of physical autonomy in old age.
Professor Kobayashi's company , Inofas , successfully raised more than $30 million in funding in 2019 to expand its size and began to study how to use technology to assist and support the human body so that people can work longer.
Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi has recently invented a product that looks very lightweight, "Exoskeleton Muscle Suit".
It is a powered wide exoskeleton assistive device designed to enhance the user's own strength, allowing the wearer to lift items that are much heavier than usual without the risk of injury.
When you bend down to lift a 30-kilogram weight, you use the core muscles, and the quadriceps, and people feel very hard.
But after putting on the muscle suit, inflating the artificial muscles with a manual charging bucket, lifting the heavy object again feels like it is in a stronger hammock, which can be lifted directly and very naturally and effortlessly.
The focus of the muscle suit is to support the original muscles of the human body, so that you feel that the weight is much lighter. This surprisingly simple design may change the way we think about aging.
Japan's image is often that of a technological power, but technology does not represent everything, and the focus is on how to make good use of science and technology to create a complete system to solve the problems of aging or limited mobility.
Today's Japanese society is not yet fully confronted with this major problem.
04 Pay attention to and develop scientific and technological products suitable for the needs of the elderly
Science and technology are bound to play an important role in the challenge of aging.
However, most of us have encountered the resistance of the elderly to the development of science and technology, so Japan is still facing the problem of how to narrow the generation gap of science and technology.
Masako Wakamiya, 84, the world's oldest app developer, became interested in technology after she retired from a bank.
Due to the lack of game apps for the elderly, Wakamiya Masako consulted a young designer to develop an app that the elderly would love.
But the young man said to her, we don't know what older people like, you should make one yourself. At that time, Wakamiya Masako was 81 years old, but she thought to herself, why not try it.
Wakamiya Masako designed a game suitable for the elderly to play, with the theme of the traditional Japanese Daughter's Day, the elderly are familiar with this custom, and it will not be difficult to play. The game was a huge hit and was later released in English, Korean, and Chinese.
If the elderly themselves do not use it, any technology that improves the problem of advanced age is meaningless. The Daughters' Day app is like the entrance of the elderly into the world of technology.
Wakamiya Masako's game design takes the content that the elderly are already familiar with as the theme, and uses particularly simple actions to give full play to the advantages of the elderly using the game.
Japan is a country with frequent natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods, etc., and in this case, the authorities usually send evacuation messages through mobile phones, which are provided to the elderly who need more help.
But some elderly people can't receive messages because they don't have mobile phones, so the focus is not only on the development of technology itself, but also how to make the elderly get used to operation and accept use is also very important.
As Ms. Wakamiya Masako said, "Is technology the most helpful for the elderly?" "This question, we must often ask in reverse, what do the elderly need most?"
This seemingly simple question may not have been thought of by the Japanese for too long.
05 Donate "idle houses" to increase the population of townships
Obviously, the impact of Aging in Japan is far more profound than the problem of simply caring for the elderly.
In the past 20 years, an estimated 200 towns across Japan have disappeared. It is expected that by 2040, more than half of Japan's 929 municipalities will disappear.
In Okutama, a small town on the brink of oblivion two hours from Tokyo, Niijima kazutaka is the head of the town's Youth Promotion Department, who has lived in this small town for 50 years, and his duty is to restore the town to prosperity.
When the town was first founded, it had a population of about sixteen thousand people, and now it has about five thousand people, about one-third of the previous population. The town has fewer than 20 children born each year, and the numbers are staggering!
They need new populations to fill the empty houses left behind by the death of the elderly. Mr. Niijima and Takashi push for an initiative to use these unused houses to save the town.
In 2015, he set up the Idle Housing Program, which was also adopted by withered towns across Japan, giving away vacant houses for free or giving high subsidies to young couples and families.
The condition is that they commit to reside here for at least 15 years, that married couples must be under the age of 45, that all family members be under 50 years of age, that children must not be more than 18 years old, and that they must be registered for naturalization and actually reside.
This program runs to see some signs of improvement, with some idle houses that are now inhabited.
Kaori Shirashima is a single mother with two children who are about to move into one of the houses and are currently renovating the house.
Her daughter has just turned 18 and is already studying at a university in Tokyo, so Kaori Shirashima and her 16-year-old son live here. She feels that the view is wide, the layout of the house is a Traditional Japanese house, and it is very comfortable to live here.
The Vacant Housing Program offers mostly traditional Japanese houses, which is part of the reason for attracting urbanites.
But if the goal of the plan is to attract the younger generation and make the town thrive again, will the young people settle down here and start a family here?
Kaori Shirashima's daughter believes that it is difficult to live in the countryside and then go to school or find a job, and if you have children in the future, it is also a big problem to find a nursery.
And it was stipulated that it would be 15 years before she could inherit the house, and after 15 years my mother would be over 60 years old, the children were out of home, and I was worried that my mother would be able to live here alone.
These young new homeowners do have some impact on the town, but unless they promise to let their children stay in town when they grow up, what if they get old?
The exodus of young people from the countryside is to find jobs, and there is no indication that this plan can improve the town in a short period of time, or will everything return to the original point?
06 Traditional crafts may disappear with the demise of townships
The gradual demise of the town allows us to see another thorny problem caused by it.
Most of Japan's most famous works of art are passed down from generation to generation. Craftsmen who have perfected their craftsmanship are known in Japan as "craftsmen", and their craftsmanship is usually passed down from generation to generation by family, most of whom live in the countryside.
Are these precious cultural treasures destined to disappear along with these towns?
In the city of Torashinako in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, the problem of aging has influenced local traditions in unexpected ways.
The history of the Kurosawa soy sauce factory dates back to the Meiji era, and today it is one of the few soy sauce factories that use traditional brewing methods.
Family member Makiko Kurosawa said that traditional soy sauce uses microorganisms in wooden barrels to ferment, and the microorganisms in each warehouse are different. Since the Meiji era, the Kurosawa family has used the same cellar, and the microorganisms here are unique to the Kurosawa family.
While modern technology has made soy sauce production faster and cheaper, the Kurosawa family chose to stick to traditional brewing methods.
The barrels in the cellar are handmade from Japanese cedar, and characterized by the absence of a single nail, have been used for more than a hundred years at the Kurosawa soy sauce factory.
This kind of wooden barrel is a traditional Japanese craft, and we need to continue the tradition, whether it is a soy sauce factory or a sake brewery, but the question is who will inherit it?
The ripple effect of Japan's demographic shifts is more profound than I thought. At present, there is only one master craftsman in the country who can create such wooden barrels. The number of craftsmen who can make the relevant tools is almost equal to zero, and the same is true for professional lumberjacks.
Without each other, these crafts will be unsustainable, and they will all fall into the same problem, and there will be no one to pass on the craft.
The younger generation, who do not think that making soy sauce can make money, they think it is not worth the effort, and it is a common problem that no successor is currently available.
This is common in many craftsmen in Japan today. So they now face two choices, to end business or pass on their traditional craft to people outside their families.
07 If you anticipate the end, you can better plan your life
The inevitable consequence of the increase in the elderly population is the increase in annual mortality in Japan.
Death is a taboo topic in Japan, so much so that people who pursue death-related occupations are often ostracized, and many consider them dirty and dirty.
But in the face of a super-old future, the topic of death has also changed.
Tucked away among Tokyo's skyscrapers, the Blue Ocean Café looks like an ordinary community café on the surface.
In fact, the purpose of the Blue Ocean Community Cafe is to help people prepare for the end of their lives, including emotional, psychological and after-events arrangements, to say goodbye to friends and family in the most beautiful and eternal way.
Although aging is a terrible thing, the thought of losing physical function, or the thought of having to rely on others to live a life, is frightening, and many people are facing this problem.
Blue Ocean Coffee Shop helps people find meaning in the issue of the end of their lives, it can prevent feelings of isolation, and it can also prevent people from feeling hopeless in many ways.
To think about death is to reflect on life, and if you can anticipate the end, you can plan your life and think about how to live each day.
The effects of Japan's aging population are complex and far-reaching, and require the joint efforts of all societies to find solutions.