Frail, Independent, involved? Care and the Category of the Elderly in Japan

Authors

  • Iza Kavedzija Sainsbury Institute for Japanese Arts and Cultures, Norwich

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2015.83

Keywords:

category of the elderly, care, Japan, personhood

Abstract

This article examines how the category of the elderly in Japan is constructed through diverse forms of care, understood as moral practices intrinsic to peoples’ senses of self. It offers an analysis of a range of informal as well as institutional configurations of care in the Japanese urban context, highlighting the complexity as well as the overlapping nature of these diverse arrangements. It also explores ethnographically how older people experience these arrangements as they move through different sites of care, and how they negotiate the conflicting demands on their sense of self.  The various types of care at work in these settings all contribute to different understandings of older persons, and different constructions of the category of the elderly: as clients; as visitors or guests; as fragile ‘struggling persons’; as ‘grannies’ in familial relations; as (caring) neighbours. More than a handful of labels, these variable configurations of personal identity affect care practices and social relationships in direct and tangible ways.

References

Aries, P. Centuries of Childhood. Vol. 339. London: Jonathan Cape, 1962.

Becker, Carl B. ‘Aging, Dying, and Bereavement in Contemporary Japan.’ International Jurnal of Group Tensions 28; 1/2 (1999): 59-83.

Bethel, Diana Lynn. "Life on Obasuteyama, or inside a Japanese institution for the elderly." Japanese social organization (1992): 109-134.

Brown, Naomi. "Under One Roof: The Evolving Story of Three Generation Housing in Japan." In Demographic Change and the Family in Japan's Aging Society, edited by John W. Traphagan and John Knight, 53-88. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Buch, Elana D. "Senses of care: Embodying inequality and sustaining personhood in the home care of older adults in Chicago." American Ethnologist 40, no. 4 (2013): 637-650.

Danely, Jason. Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan. Rutgers University Press, 2015.

De Beauvoir, S., and P. O'Brian. The Coming of Age: WW Norton & Company, 1996.

Goodman, R. "The 'Japanese-Style Welfare State'and the Delivery of Personal Social Services." In The East Asian Welfare Model: Welfare Orientalism and the State, edited by R. Goodman, G. White and H. Kwon, 139-59. London: Routledge, 1998.

Kleinman, Arthur. "Global mental health: a failure of humanity." The Lancet 374, no. 9690 (2009): 603-604.

Lamb, Sarah. "Permanent personhood or meaningful decline? Toward a critical anthropology of successful aging." Journal of aging studies 29 (2014): 41-52.

Martin, Alex. “Elderly offenders on rise. Traditional support systems seen failing the swelling senior ranks” Japan Times, 16/10/2008, Available online on: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/10/16/national/elderly-offenders-on-rise/#.VQgm2EI7ZHg

Matsumoto, Yoshiko, ed. Faces of Aging: The Lived Experiences of Elderly in Japan. Edited by Yoshiko Matsumoto. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Mol, Annemarie. The logic of care: Health and the problem of patient choice. Routledge, 2008.

Plath, David W. Long Engagements : Maturity in Modern Japan. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1980.

Thang, Leng Leng. "Touching of the hearts: An overview of programmes to promote interaction between the generations in Japan." Family and social policy in Japan (2002): 156-176.

Traphagan, John W. "Being a Good Rojin-Senility, Power, and Self-Actualization in Japan." Thinking about Dementia-Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility (2006): 269-284.

Traphagan, John W. "Localizing senility: Illness and agency among older Japanese." Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 13, no. 1 (1998): 81-98.

Traphagan, John W. Taming Oblivion : Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Vera-Sanso, Penny. "Experiences in Old Age: A South Indian Example of How Functional Age Is Socially Constructed " In Ageing in Asia, edited by R. Goodman and S. Harper. London: Routledge, 2008.

Walker, Harry. "Under a watchful eye: Urarina perspectives on society and self." PhD diss., Oxford University, 2009.

Wu, Yongmei. Care of the elderly in Japan. Routledge, 2004.

Downloads

Published

2015-05-22

Issue

Section

Articles