The popular coined word 終活/shuukatsu reflecting the Japanese society

In the Japanese language, job hunting is referred to as 就職活動/shuushoku-katsudo. However, from a certain point of time, the abbreviated form of the phrase 就活/ shuukatsu became more popular. These days, 就活/shuukatsu is being used more frequently than 就職活動/shuushoku-katsudo in society. In the past few years, the coined word 婚活/konkatsu has become very popular to the point where the word often appears in conversation among elderly people who always have a hard time catching up with new words. 婚/kon indicates 結婚/kekkon(marriages in English) and 活/katsu indicates 活動/katsudou(activities or acts etc in English). So, 婚活/konkatsu means doing something to find a marriage partner. I think that the great popularity of the word 就活/shukatsu partly helped the word 婚活/konkatsu become popular since these two sound similar. Currently, another coined word 終活/shuukatsu is becoming popular. Since both 就活 and 終活 are pronounced as shuukatsu, when I first heard of 終活/shuukatsu in a TV news show, I assumed that the show was going to talk about job hunting (就活/shuukatu) until I saw the word.

終活/shuukatsu means thinking about how to lead your late life and how to prepare for the end of your life. As you know, Japanese people live long. The aging population is increasing rapidly. The baby-boomer generation is already in their 60s. Many of the people are struggling with taking care of their parents and in-laws or have struggled with that. They often hear of family troubles after their parents and in-laws have passed away, such as family conflicts over inheritance. Under these circumstances, many people over 60 are willing to think about and decide how to lead their late lives and prepare for the end of their lives when they still have judgement so that their families will be able to avoid nasty battles. According to the news, many books and magazines related to 終活/shuukatsu have been recently published. Some of them are enjoying good sales. Specifically, the magazine, 遺言書キット/Will kit, and the notebook, Ending notebook, are engaging hearts and minds in many age groups. The former illustrates how to make a legitimate will by yourself, and the latter gives an opportunity to think about late life.