Is this a longevity crisis? I have mixed feelings about longevity.

It's been reported that the average life expectancy of Japanese women has given up the lead to Hong Kong women for the first time in 27 years. In this report, two major reasons are pointed out. The one is that many people died from the massive earthquake and tsunami which happened about a year and half ago. The other is that the number of women in their 20's who committed suicide has increased. When I first heard of this news, I remembered that in the Tokyo area, for a while after that earthquake, trains were often delayed because of people jumping on to the rail track from the platform. Sadly, this kind of "accident" often happens in Japan, but during that period, my friends and I felt that train delays happened more often than usual due to people attempting to take their lives. I wondered why such many people were in a rush to die under the circumstances where tens of thousands of people had been washed away by the massive tsunami. I'm sure that these victims didn't want to finish their lives that way.

Japanese people, especially women, are known to live long. However, I've been wondering how many of them enjoy their lives without any medical support. I've heard that the longevity of Japanese people is questioned because they tend to be overly dependent on advanced medical treatment. As a matter of fact, the issue of what kind of medical treatment patients over 70 or 80 with a fatal disease should get has been controversial. More people than before frown on medical treatments for these patients just to prolong their lives. I think that this tendency has also put downward pressure on the average life expectancy of Japanese people.

I think that I know about pension, medical and nursing care service for elderly people better than others because of my mother-in-law with dementia. The more I know about that, the more I realize these services are on the verge of collapse due to the rapidly growing number of elderly people. On top of that, my experience has brought home to me taking care of elderly family members with dementia at home is a tough job. It's been reported that the number of people who were forced to quit their jobs to take care of their family members has sharply increased. It's very hard both mentally and financially to deal with these issues.

Every time I hear about the longevity of Japanese people, I have mixed feelings.

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.

A very impressive 102-year-old woman !!

In Japan, yesterday was the Respect for Senior Citizen Day /敬老の日, so some senior citizens were reported in the news. A 102-year-old woman was the most impressive among them (click here). In the news, she looked like around 70. Her compelling and reasonable statements really made me doubt her age, making me wonder what was the secret to becoming an impressive elderly person like her. When she was asked for a comment on the Respect for Senior Citizen Day by a reporter, she insisted that elderly people should make efforts to be respected, saying that it was wrong to assume that elderly people should be respected only because of age. This statement convinced me that she deserved to enjoy longevity.

Her husband died young. She doesn't have children. Although she had lived with her sister for some time until her sister died, she has been living on her own for many years. She always cooks meals by herself, believing that it's important for her to eat anything she wants. She teaches some people Japanese calligraphy (書道/shodo in Japanese) which she started studying when she was around 50. When she was 92, she first went on a trip abroad and fully enjoyed the trip to Italy.

Generally speaking, elderly people tend not to listen to others, sticking with traditional ideas and insisting that younger people should listen to them. Needless to say, we need to respect elderly people. However, as the 102-year-old woman said, regardless of age, we should try to improve ourselves, listening to others.

In Japanese society, people over 65 are often considered as senior citizens. According to the newspaper below, senior citizens comprise 23.1% of the entire Japanese population.

Is longevity good or bad? It depends on how you have led your life

About a week ago, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan announced that the average life expectancy of Japanese women was 86.44 years old and that of Japanese men was 79.59 years old in 2009. The average life expectancies of both men and women reached the record high consecutively for the last four years. The average for women has ranked top for the last 25 years in the world.  Right after that announcement, it was reported that a 113-year-old woman who is the oldest in Tokyo was missing. She doesn't live where the resident registry data shows that she is supposed to be living. It turns out that 34 people over 100 are missing throughout Japan. These incidences reveal our social problems. It's a sad fact that nobody, including their children, know where such elderly people are. However, given the current social situation, it can happen.

I have a lot of relatives and longevity runs in those on my mother's side. My great-grandparents on my grandmother's side enjoyed their lives for over 100 years. Since both of them died of old age without struggling with diseases, I would say that they literally enjoyed their lives. Ironically, before my great-grandmother passed away, her daughter (my grandmother) started suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type. A 92-year-old female relative still enjoys playing mahjong with her friends every day. According to her granddaughter, every time I lived in a foreign country, she tried to get to know about the country well. Actually, her strong curiosity often astonishes younger people. In contrast, some elderly relatives are so selfish and persistent that their families, friends, et cetera have a hard time taking care of them. As a result, their peers tend to drift away from them.

Every time I see these situations, I realize that your last life stage reflects how you have led your life, although some diseases are beyond your control.