WHILE waiting for the bullet train that would take us from Kyoto to Osaka last Thursday, we saw a woman fall to the pavement on her belly. She lay motionless for a couple of minutes before she was finally able to get up with the help of another Japanese, who must have been her husband. From their looks, both could have been in their mid-seventies.
If my calculations are correct, then the couple belong to a quarter of Japan’s 127 million population who are 65 years old and above. Because of the country’s low birth rate and longer life expectancy (87 years), the percentage could rise to one third of the population in 2050, according to projections.
An article in Bloomberg in May last year referred to Japan as the “world’s senior citizen” in reference to the country’s “rapidly aging and shrinking population.” As a result, Japanese firms are finding it increasingly hard to fill job vacancies, Bloomberg said. We saw this mismatch at the Swissotel where we stayed in Osaka. At breakfast on our first day, we were served by two waitresses, Choi, a Korean from Seoul and Che, a Taiwanese from Taipei. On the second day, the waiters were Lee, also a Korean and Clarence, a French from a region in the French border with Geneva.
The government is trying to find ways to address the shortage of labor including the so-called “robot revolution” but unless they are able to invent robots that can produce babies, the shrinking population will remain a serious threat to the country’s existence. Immigration is not an option as the country is protective of its cultural identity.
Contrast Japan’s problem to our own situation. Our population is a few million lower than Japan’s but our birth rate is many times faster. If Japan’s problem is a rapidly shrinking population, ours is a consistently burgeoning one. Our life expectancy is 69 but the shorter life span is not enough to offset the gains from our baby-making overdrive.
In Japan, they are officially encouraged to practice three-generation households, under which a married couple supports not only their children but also their parents. Here, we have long practiced that, of course, without prodding from the government. In fact, our practice is multi-generational extending to great grandparents, great grandchildren, nephews and nieces, their spouses and other collateral relatives.
Our version is necessarily more burdensome but it has an upside. When the woman fell to the ground at the Kyoto train station, nobody bothered to help them. Celso Mayol, one of the 14 Gothong Southern Shipping executives who were on an all-expenses-paid four-day trip to Japan (thank you, Bob and Joy Gothong), tried but either the husband was an extremely jealous old man or it is against Japanese culture to be physically assisted even in times of emergency.
Here, that would have never happened. The old couple would not have been permitted by the family to travel alone. They would have had a grandchild or another relative or a maid to accompany them. I cannot say that we are more caring of our old. Maybe, it is just that we have the numbers and they don’t.
Given the choice, I would still prefer to live in the Philippines because while I may not live to be 87, I am certain that during my lifetime, I will not be alone.