generalspeaking

Japan's 41,000 Centenarians

For a country for whom face-saving is of huge importance, to discover that a huge hoax has been perpetrated upon the government and by extension on the country's international reputation for statistics and population longevity is a heavy blow to their prestige. And, in fact, a surprising event. For the fact is, Japanese as a population tend to be discreet and humble and quietly attentive to society's imperatives on their tight little islands.

The Japanese pride themselves on their homogeneity. Not just that their population has very similar physical attributes so that when one is walking amidst a flood of people on main thoroughfares one sees a sea of shining black healthy heads on sturdy limbs. Sharing quiet Buddhist Shinto values. Eschewing stringently any public disturbances. Courteously and trustingly living among one another in small village enclaves within the greater metropolis of say, Tokyo.

Where families live in expensive, cramped high-rise apartments of dull concrete or within narrow, modest houses. And where the temples are well attended in low-key religious trust, and where employment was once a life-time commitment at a particular enterprise about which the family life revolved. Robust young boys would be carried on the backs of elderly grandmothers, and school-uniformed children would rush through the streets.

The Japanese diet was a celebrated one. Indeed, small mom-and-pop shops scattered throughout every neighbourhood offered the freshest and most perfect specimens of every type of fruit and vegetable available, and the fish monger's stalls were washed clean every evening before closing time, and rice and tea were purchased at special-purpose shops.

The extreme elderly in Japanese society were legendary in their longevity, and the country was celebrated for the immense numbers of its centenarians. And then reality struck, when it was discovered that those who had achieved the ripe old age of 100 had died long before reaching that century-mark, and their children were claiming their pensions.

Those whom it was thought had reached 120, even 140, had been dead for fifty years, their pensions enriching the avails of their children. Alas, the realization that pride is often hollow.

"We trust people to provide us with honest information and the whole system is planned on that basis. To switch to an administrative system that assumed people had criminal tendencies would be so different that I think it would be impossible." Manabu Hajikano, residential registry section of Adachi ward.

"Japan lives this dream that people are good and makes it too easy for people to tell lies. As the economy and unemployment levels worsen, the temptation to commit fraud will rise." Mariko Bando, Showa Women's University: "The true problem, what is so terribly difficult for Japan to accept, is that we are living an illusion. The missing old people are a symptom of a misplaced belief in the goodness of people and the competence of the state. We must start seizing reality."

And so it has come to pass. Over 230,000 Japanese registered as alive and at least 100 years of age cannot be found, inclusive of 884 thought to be 150 or older. The miracle of extreme longevity has been pierced by reality.

Labels: Health, Human Fallibility, Human Relations, Japan

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, September 16, 2010