Why Japan is the perfect place to turn 50 | masr356.com

Keep knowledgeable with free updates

Merely enroll to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered instantly to your inbox.

So. A giant, round-numbered and menacing birthday developing in just a few weeks. Not to give an excessive amount of away, however in the month I used to be born, Momoe Yamaguchi’s Fuyu no Iro was electrifying the charts, Terror of Mechagodzilla was about to hit cinemas, and Okinawa was busying itself with last-minute preparations for Expo ’75.

There are numerous methods to put this sombre milestone in context. I’m a 12 months youthful than Howdy Kitty, a decade youthful than the Shinkansen bullet train and 100,000 years youthful than Mount Fuji. All of these are nonetheless going robust, I suppose, though none are troubled by excessive ldl cholesterol, resting-rate ruefulness or the ever-louder clicking from the mileometer of missed alternatives.

However then I keep in mind, extra cheerfully, that this birthday might be taking place in creaking, ageing Japan — a land the place gray is the new black, lumbago is the new “Lambada” and 50 is not solely the new 20, however kind of the median age. 

Japan’s candle-at-both-ends demographics put it on the international frontline of each care house citizenship and youth-erosion. In a disaster now merely referred to by each the private and non-private sector as “the 2025 drawback”, the big, 8mn-strong technology of postwar child boomers born between 1947 and 1949 have moved from the class of merely “aged” to “superior aged”. By 2030, predicts the authorities, greater than 8mn Japanese might be performing some kind of caregiving function, 40 per cent of these on high of an precise job.  

By the time my technology wants one, the billions of taxpayer yen funnelled into the growth of carer robots would possibly lastly have produced a semi-decent Nurse-o-tron. Perhaps

It is unimaginable to miss. From this 12 months, one in 5 Japanese might be over 75 and nearly 30 per cent of the inhabitants might be over 65. Demographics, warn some economists, are about to wreak as a lot havoc on Japan as the collapse of the Eighties asset bubble. No inhabitants on Earth has ever been this outdated at this ratio to the remainder of the inhabitants and with this many open questions on the way it will cope. No inhabitants this peaceable, wholesome and well-fed has ever shrunk at such a fee. Japan’s numbers are economically, socially and existentially terrifying, however they don’t half make a 50-year-old really feel younger.

And in addition to being simply one other member of the common aged set, in concept, all I want to do to counter the creeping downsides of age is to stay in Japan and hope statistics care for the sensible facet.

On paper, for instance, I ought to turn into more healthy. In 2023, after a three-year hiatus attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic, Japan resumed its multi-decade sample of advancing life expectancy. Japanese ladies lead the world in common longevity with an expectancy of 87.14 years, however, in accordance to the well being ministry charts, a male my age can anticipate to stay for one more 32.6 years.

The averages recommend I can even be rolling in it. By hitting one’s half-century in Japan, you edge into the giant “over 50s” section of society that statistically hoards nearly 66 per cent of the nation’s $7tn stash of money and deposits. That section is now going to inherit the estates the very outdated depart to the merely fairly outdated. 

And extra typically, being 50 will get you disproportionate political heft in Japan. Even in what is already a totally silver democracy there are extra 50-year-olds than every other cohort, and the nation has delivered masterclass after masterclass in matching fiscal largesse to electoral maths. Dotage is votage.

The over-50s in Japan are the final technology that, in accordance to the finance ministry, has been a web lifetime beneficiary of state outlay (by way of schooling, healthcare and so on). Everybody youthful is in the crimson and can stay so till the warmth dying of the universe. And the peripheral perks are good too. By the time my technology wants one, the billions of taxpayer yen funnelled into the growth of carer robots would possibly lastly have produced a semi-decent Nurse-o-tron. Perhaps.

All of this, with the exception of rising life expectancy, is clearly fairly dismal stuff. The promotion of wholesome, completely satisfied older age is an apparent good. However there is a monetary (the 260 per cent gross nationwide debt-to-GDP ratio) and emotional (who will look after mum and pop) burden amassed for youthful generations that has quietly supported this and now seems completely, alarmingly insufferable. 

And that in the end is why Japan, for the unsuitable causes, is the perfect place to turn 50. As a nation, it is a world pioneer not simply of being outdated, however in the comforting mass delusion that it could get away with it. In an ageing society, we’re all technically getting youthful. Comparatively talking.

Leo Lewis is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief

Discover out about our newest tales first — observe FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to obtain the FT Weekend e-newsletter each Saturday morning