Whenever we return to Japan from an overseas trip, I am always struck by just how many old people there are in Japan. It is easy to say, “There are a lot of old people in Japan” but if you look at the statistics it is pretty startling. A few years ago a full 20% of the population was aged 65 and older, and in 30-40 years they expect that it will be more than 40% of the population over age 65.
When you think about lots of old people living in a country, it is easy to imagine some of the effects. High governmental spending for medical care. A crunch on the national pension system. Lots of slower people walking around town.
However, there are some even deeper effects that I have started to notice the longer that I live in Japan.
The trains are filled with travel advertisements for domestic trips in Japan. They show older people walking around empty villages, smiling and remembering their youth. TV advertisements focus on sore muscles, aching backs, green tea supplements, insurance, insurance, and more insurance.
Shops and restaurants serve foods that are popular with older people. Most menus seldom stray from the dishes that are traditional and popular, and coffee shops that cater to old people with lots of time on their hands during the day are especially popular.
Politicians know where the voting power is in the country, and so they push forward legislation designed to pad the nest of the older today, borrowing from the uncertain future of the fewer and fewer younger Japanese.
Then there are the things that are even harder to see – that lie just below the surface of daily life in Japan. Each home belongs to a neighborhood (or apartment building) association. Each association collects dues and manages a budget, elects members and adds a level of bureaucracy. These are managed by the people with the time to do it – older people that are automatically respected in their communities based on their age.
New ideas, fresh approaches to problems, doing away with inefficient and outdated systems – these are jobs for the young. Unfortunately there aren’t many young people these days in Japan, and so things move along as they have always been.
It may sounds like I’m complaining about it, but that’s not the case at all. As a foreign person living in another country I keep my eyes open, observe how things happen, and comment when I feel like it. I’m perfectly happy to float along this river wherever it leads, and take notes as I go. It is not my job to change anything, and as a foreign person it would be next to impossible anyway. Best just to go with the flow and enjoy the experience.
One of our recent activities is to visit some of the old places in Japan – places that are mainly frequented by old people and feel like they haven’t changed much since the 1960’s. There are a lot of these kinds of areas in Japan – whole neighborhoods that are a living snapshot of another time. The bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and shops are a little darker, a little worn, but filled with older people who like things just the way they have been for the past 50 years.
It is easy for us to step backward in time by shifting away from the nightlife areas of Kobe and Osaka, and we’ve been digging into neighborhoods like old Akashi, Shinseikai, Tsuruhashi, and Nagata. It is the part of Japan that is harder for foreigners to experience, because it takes sort of a sixth sense to figure out what areas to visit and you certainly need to be fluent in Japanese to navigate the menus and conversation. We feel like explorers from another world – there is usually a 20-30 year age gap between us and any other customer. They don’t seem to mind us – we are almost invisible – and we can sip our sake and laugh and enjoy an afternoon of time travel.
