Aging is an opportunity to transform society

In Japan, there are even comic books that teach young kids and adults what the needs of older people might be and how to care for them

Jason Danely, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and author of Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan

Those who know me personally have patiently heard me raving about Japan for years. A trip to the country was enough to realize how the Japanese culture is engaged in a never-ending quest for intrinsic beauty. When you’re there, you can perceive this longing in everything, from the most humble every-day object to the stillness of forest temples. What’s more striking is the fact that the sublimation of beauty in Japan is achieved by subtraction, by eliminating the unnecessary. 

The capacity to go to the core of things reappears in the plasticity of the language: Japanese created words like “Kogarashi,” to indicate a brisk wind that marks the beginning of winter and with “Petorikōru,” even the smell of rain before it begins to fall has finally a name. So, considering my fascination for all that is related to Japan, it was practically inevitable that I noticed the name of Jason Danely in the copyright page of a book I was browsing. Jason is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, member of the Europe-Japan Research Center and the Center for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University. His work stems at the intersection between aging and Japanese society and he’s the author of Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan, a book that examines how the fastest aging society in the world is coping with growing older.

Because of our common interest in the subject of aging and our passion for Japan, Jason and I had a very long and engaging conversation. I am particularly grateful not only for his time and the patience with which he welcomed my queries, but also for the rich catalogue of cultural nuances he shared with me. I was delighted to learn how the Japanese have created a set of coordinates to navigate aging. 

This is not just a divertissement: the more we can broaden our perspective by learning the way other cultures address the later stages of life, the more we can challenge our current assumptions on what it means to get older and how to get there.

Can you tell us about the scope of anthropology of aging? 

Anthropology has always been interested in human life course, in the way we organize our societies and anthropology of aging has been focused on age and social stratification. The discipline began to appear at the end of the 60s, propelled by the emergence of stronger feminist voices expressing critical points of view on the body and the need to include other experiences across the life course. Then, the advent of developmental psychology contributed to show how nuanced the whole concept of aging is. Anthropology allows us to see ways elders remain important and how development continues to the end of life.

Today, anthropology of aging studies welfare society, questions assumptions we take for granted and emphasizes the role of cultural contribution. A lot of research deals with changes in the field of gerontology, social sciences and humanities, and the potential problems with embracing the medicalization and the institutionalization of aging.

I read you began your research in Japan in 2005: why and how did you decide to look into aging and care in this country?

I’ve been interested in Japan for a long time. As a graduate, my major was comparative religions. I lived in Tokyo and began to study the religious life of older people. It seemed they were the ones responsible in maintaining traditions alive and it was while I was investigating their perspective that aging emerged as a discovery. Since then, it has always been a very fascinating topic.

Is aging feared in Japan like it is in the West?

It's a complicated picture. Japanese people live longer than anyone else in the world. They also have the longer healthy life expectancy. They are very active and independent and they seem to be taking their wellbeing very responsibly. In recent years, there was a quick increase in the number of people living with dementia and a growing insecurity on the traditional family system of care. 

From what I’ve learned, Japanese are enjoying aging, they are able to adjust to a certain degree to the fact that one day they might become old and frail. But they also know that among the “tasks” of aging there’s the need to develop the capacity to accept changes, a position that is not so pronounced in the West. Japanese people have practical concerns for their older self, but they don't show a strong obsession to stay young. They value the importance of aging gracefully and they are well aware that acceptance is part of the process. For them, it’s a matter of maturity. On the other hand, from a Japanese perspective, the focus on the sexiness of the body typical of the West is generally considered a childish thing, so it is not something that older people have to deal with.

Are the anti-aging claims so imperative as in the West? Do they apply to women only?

Generally speaking, it is not considered proper to undergo invasive treatment for the body. Japanese people value the importance of being active, to take care of themselves, but within reason, like they pay attention to eating well. Regarding the anti-aging claims, gender roles are quite unequal and rigid, even if things might be loosening up a bit now. The pressure is still stronger on women, but once they're over 60, the imperatives are more flexible. In my perception, the focus is on the well-being of the whole person, therefore the preferences go to holistic options that are not invasive, like natural supplements.

Compared with the first years of one's life, there's a general absence of rites of passage in the old age. Are things different in Japan and how does this impact on the experience of aging?

In Japan there are rites of passage for the old-age, but they are not extravagant. They are more like milestones. For instance, they have traditional, auspicious names for certain ages. Reaching an old age is considered an achievement and there are a lot of ways in which old people look forward to becoming a hundred.

The picture of a young man piggy-backing an old man is an icon of Japan with no correspondence in the West. Can you help us to understand the cultural meaning of this image?

Actually, it is a son carrying his mother to abandon her in the mountain, a practice called “Ubasute.” It is an image that really caught me when I was researching. It's very potent and moving for many reasons. It captures a sense of physical closeness, the warmth, but also the burden of caring. The image makes the ambivalence of care explicit: there is the desire of helping the parent and the need to leave them behind because the life is unsustainable. That is the grief of the moment, because this separation is not done lightly. There’s a tension on the perpetuation of the younger generation, it's like as if the parties involved know that they belong to a story that replicates generation after generation and, in fact, the mother would pick pieces of twigs from nearby trees and drop them on the ground to mark the road for her son’s return.

Are there other ways in which Japanese age differently from the West?

Old people in Japan are not shy to talk about rituals for stepping out of the way. It’s codified. Older people might go to temple to pray to die a quick death. There are temples where people pray not to become a burden, not too suffer from dementia. I guess it's a way to come to terms with your own fears.

Also in the home, there are small altars where it is possible to “communicate” with the people of the family who passed away. Older people take care of this place, they imagine that this is the place where they will end up, joining the other ancestors. They feel they will still be in the center of the house as a benevolent presence. 

The way children are socialized from infancy towards the elders can create stronger bonds and vicinity between generations. It seems that in the West we have developed a sort of no-touch taboo for the aging bodies. What have you learned in this regard in Japan?

Despite a sort of a distance in every day interactions, there is closeness between parents and children. There is a lot of emphasis on touch. You can see it if you go to a public bath. It is very common to spot children wash their parent’s back, the same goes for adult children. The baths are separated by sex and even adults are not concerned with being naked with their parents.

As I was studying carers, this was quite a different aspect compared with the UK. Carers, both man and woman, often spoke about the importance of feeling close, sleeping near the old person they care for, touching her to comfort and reassure her.

On the other hand, carers in the UK are generally very adverse to this kind of vicinity. A man, for instance, told me how uneasy he felt giving a bath to his old mother. He said he had to imagine she was not his mother and he looked forward to hiring a carer so then “I can be a son again, instead of a carer.” In Japan, to be a son or a daughter comes with a sense of continuity with the body of the parents, it is natural to take care of an older parent and hiring a professional carer is less socially accepted.

Care is undervalued in the West. At the same time people are very concerned with losing their independence and therefore needing care. How are things different in Japan?

In the West, there’s a layer of professional distance. In Japan, carers talk about difficulties, they confess to having black thoughts. It happens that carers turn into murderers. Because of their closeness with the older person, they feel sympathy for the suffering of the person they’re caring for. They acknowledge the other person is suffering for being a burden. Sometimes, instead, they feel isolated and trapped. In order to cope with the hardship of the situation, Japanese tend to relate to a Buddhist idea. They feel that caring is a process of cultivating themselves, to mature. Very often, they talk about a process of discovery in the carer’s journey.

Is the debate on the end of life more advanced?

The end of life is an ambiguous area. There is sympathy for these situations and a movement that promotes the right to die naturally in your home is gaining steam. The idea of euthanasia goes against the value of the family caring for the elderly and the social expectations. Basically, it remains very murky to draw a line between caring vs. keeping someone artificially alive.

Because it lacks the compensatory effect of immigration, Japan is the fastest aging country. Is aging still addressed as a problem to solve or an opportunity for a more inclusive society?

In the UK, we tend to look at the institutional side of aging: we are concerned with how we are going to pay for the needs of the aging population. In Japan, there’s still that concern, but there’s also a trend towards a community merging. Japanese are realizing the limits of the institutionalization of the elderly, they talk about how to change their communities.

For instance, there are experts who visit primary schools to explain to the kids how to behave if they meet an older person in the city who looks disoriented. They are experimenting with combining child day care with adult nursing care. They put together different generations from a very early age. Teenagers often volunteer in adult care centers, where they can keep company and serve food to the guests, easing their sense of isolation.

Japanese are well aware that while the number of older people is growing, the size of the family is shrinking. There’s a conscious change in society, at work, in the community. There are even comic books that teach young kids and adults what might be the needs of older people and how to care for them. The biggest difference with the West is that an aging population is not considered only as a burden, but as a chance to transform society.