Why Japan is the perfect place to turn 50
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So. A big, round and threatening birthday is coming up in a few weeks. I don’t want to give too much away, but the month I was born, Momoe Yamaguchi Fuyu no Iro electrified the charts, Terror of Mechagodzilla was about to hit theaters, and Okinawa was busy making last-minute preparations for Expo ’75.
There are several ways to put this grim milestone into context. I’m a year younger than Hello Kitty, a decade younger than them Shinkansen bullet train and 100,000 years younger than Mount Fuji. All of them are probably still doing well, although none of them are plagued by high cholesterol, regrets about rest periods, or the ever-louder click of the odometer of missed opportunities.
But then I remember more cheerfully that this birthday will take place in creaky, aging Japan – a country where gray is the new black, lumbago is the new “lambada,” and 50 is not just the new 20, but more or less the average age .
Because of the demographics that prevail at both ends, Japan is at the forefront of both foster care and youth erosion in the world. In a crisis now referred to simply as “Problem 2025” by both the public and private sectors, the vast, 8 million strong generation of postwar baby boomers born between 1947 and 1949 is in the “older” category. “older people” have moved to “advanced”. By 2030, the government predicts, more than 8 million Japanese will be in some type of care work, 40 percent of them in addition to an actual job.
It’s impossible to miss it. Starting this year, one in five Japanese will be over 75 and nearly 30 percent of the population will be over 65. Some economists warn that Japan’s demographic changes will be as devastating as the collapse of the asset bubble of the 1980s. Never before has a population on earth been so old in relation to the rest of the population and with so many unanswered questions about how it will cope. No population so peaceful, healthy and well-fed has ever shrunk so quickly. Japan’s numbers are economically, socially and existentially frightening, but they don’t even make a 50-year-old feel young.
And aside from being just another member of the average age group, all I have to do in theory is stay in Japan and hope the statistics take care of the practical side of counteracting the creeping disadvantages of age.
For example, on paper I should be getting healthier. After a three-year pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Japan resumed its decades-long trend of increasing life expectancy in 2023. Japanese women lead the world in average life expectancy, with a life expectancy of 87.14 years, but according to Health Ministry tables, a man my age can expect to live another 32.6 years.
The averages suggest I’ll roll in it too. As you reach your half-century in Japan, you move into the large “over-50” group, which statistically hoards nearly 66 percent of the country’s $7 trillion in cash and deposits. This part will now hand over the goods that the old people own to the very old people.
And in general: Anyone over 50 has a disproportionate amount of political weight in Japan. Even in an already all-silver democracy, there are more 50-somethings than any other cohort, and the country has delivered masterclass after masterclass in balancing financial largesse with electoral math. Dotage is Votage.
Japan’s over-50s are the last generation to be lifelong net beneficiaries of government spending (in terms of education, healthcare, etc.), according to the Ministry of Finance. All the younger ones are in the red and will remain so until the heat death of the universe. And the peripheral benefits are good too. If my generation needs one, the billions of dollars that went into developing nursing robots might have finally produced a half-decent Nurse-o-tron. Perhaps.
All of this, with the exception of increasing life expectancy, is clearly pretty bleak. Promoting a healthy, happy old age is an obvious good. But there is a financial (the 260 percent gross national debt to GDP) and emotional (who takes care of mom and dad) burden on the younger generations who have silently supported this and now seem completely shockingly unbearable.
And that’s ultimately why Japan is the perfect place to turn 50 for all the wrong reasons. As a nation, it is a global leader not only in age but also in the comforting mass delusion that it can get away with it. In an aging society, we are all technically getting younger. Relatively speaking.
Leo Lewis is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief
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