Global IssuesJAPAN: Gloom Grips the Land of the Rising Sun
Mitsuko and Koji Iwatsuki, both in their senior years, spend their days taking walks, playing golf occasionally and going on foreign trips once a year.
Still, as a retired couple, they worry about their future. 'Our health is not that good. With no children to depend on, we are not sure about what will happen when we become too old and sick to be able to look after ourselves,' says Koji, 75.
His 68-year-old wife Mitsuko, who is fitted with a pacemaker, agrees. 'Every day I pray that I will be gone before my husband,' she says over a cup of tea. 'Living alone will be terrible.'
The Iwatsukis, by most global standards, live a comfortable retirement, representing the best of Japan’s post-war economic expansion that brought stable jobs and a high quality of life to the large middle-class Japanese population.
That era appears all but gone. With the economy shrinking, leading to cuts in government spending on social benefits such as the privatisation of elderly care give years ago, Japan’s aging population, now at 30 percent of the country’s estimated 123 million population, is bracing itself for more difficult times.
'People in their 60s and 70s continue to draw good pensions that support the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by the Iwatsukis. But that era has ended in Japan,' says Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging population at Tokyo Kasei University, indicating that people can no longer expect stable pensions when they retire. The prospect of facing such a situation is causing a lot of depression among the people today, she adds.
Such a situation has cast a pall of gloom over Japan. Its unemployment rate stands at 5 percent, one percent higher than two years ago. Poverty incidence in the country, according to a 2009 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is pegged at 14.9 percent. This means one in six people is struggling to make a living.
Little wonder why many seem unhappy with their lives. This much can be gleaned from a landmark survey undertaken in March by Japan. A total of 4,000 respondents were asked to rate their degree of happiness on an 11- point scale.
The Cabinet Office-sponsored survey showed that the Japanese people generally rated happiness at 6.5 points, just slightly above Russia and Poland with 6.0 points each, but way below Europe, in particular France, with 7.1 and Britain, with 7.4, based on similar surveys conducted in the region. Denmark topped the list among industrialised countries at 8.4.
Among the biggest concerns shown by the Japanese survey was fear of old age, with many respondents pointing to the unstable economy, soaring unemployment and a growing gap between the rich and the poor, all of which have led to a high incidence of suicide.
The English-language ‘Japan Today’ says the number of suicides in the country has consistently exceeded 30,000 in the last 12 years.
Tomoaki Ohara, a member of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Cabinet, says the survey is the first step to introducing Japan to the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), a term coined by Bhutan’s former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, who wanted the small Himalayan kingdom to pursue a people-centric type of development rather than sheer economic growth, as measured by the conventional gross national or domestic product.
'The government feels GNH is a better way of measuring development. Thus more research into how to develop this concept in Japan is underway,' he reveals.
The government has announced the need to develop a GNH measure that will determine the levels of satisfaction across Japan and supplement economic measures such as GDP.
Higuchi of Tokyo Kasei University welcomes this initiative. The country has seen major social, economic and political changes in the last decade, he says.
'Japan has undergone tremendous social changes this past decade and people now realise material wealth has nothing to do with their personal happiness,' says Higuchi. 'Developing a GNH index will help give economic growth a softer face.'
According to Higuchi, the biggest change in Japan is the breakdown of a corporate social support base that had as its platform in the ‘70s and ‘80s the famous lifetime employment system and job security and support for employees.
'Japan’s embrace of globalisation and a market economy has forced Japanese companies to take tough remedial steps such as job cuts to stay buoyant. Now there is a need for an enhanced government-led social security system, which, however, is not forthcoming,' she says.
For example, Japan spends 20 percent of its national budget on social welfare compared to 30 percent in the United States and 45 percent in Sweden. Critics say this has to change.
Eichi Shinohara, head priest at Cho-ju Iin, a Buddhist temple nearly 900 years old, sees the need for such a change. He spends his time whizzing across Japan, giving lectures on how to be happy.
'I tell them let’s make life better by looking back to our old tradition of sharing and supporting each other, a culture that we lost in our march to become economically rich,' he told IPS.
Shinohara, who receives hundreds of letters seeking advice on happiness, says the government must now concentrate on how to make the Japanese people happy by supporting programmes such as education and health through, say, increased budgetary allocations, in order to bring a sense of security and well-being to the people.
Shinora adds that the government must also initiate efforts to rebuild the community spirit, which was broken when the government’s priority turned to competitiveness to survive globalisation.
This, however, did not turn out to be the panacea that government had imagined it to be, he says, highlighting the need to redirect its focus on a more realistic and holistic measure of development.
The Iwatsukis cannot agree more. 'Loneliness results from a drive to become rich. It is time people realised that money cannot buy happiness,' says Mitsuko.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service