Aging Disgracefully

After the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, Japan's Nobel-prizewin-ning novelist Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country) said: "If it was a case of suicide, then it was better to see no notes left behind. A silent death is an endless word." When Kawabata, at 72, took his own life last month, that observation of a decade ago became his own epitaph: he left no notes.

Endless words have a way of expressing boundless guilt. No one can say whether or not the author's death was intended to be a comment on the loneliness of Japan's elderly--a subject Kawabata had written about with exactitude and tender sympathy. Nonetheless, his suicide focused attention on an alarming fact about Japan's aged citizens: fully one-third of all suicides occur among those 60 and over. Among women over 65, the rate is 45.9 per 100,-000--the highest in the world.

Fewer Children. To be sure, Japan, unlike many Western societies, has long recognized suicide as a morally permissible act, a kind of supreme statement. Not so in this case, say the sociologists. Most of the suicides among the old stem from loneliness, miserable living conditions and the worries of trying to get by on an insufficient income. Other statistics are equally grim. Of the deaths caused by fire in Japan, 40% involve the elderly. About 660,000 older people now live alone--a circumstance that was unheard of before World War II.

The plight of the elderly is a novel problem for Japan, a country where for centuries age was equated with wisdom and filial respect was a sacred responsibility. Now the young no longer seem to care. In fact, Japanese girls often sum up the qualifications of an eligible boy friend in a cynical cliche: "lye tsuki, car tsuki, baba nuki" (with a house, with a car, without an old lady). "To our old folks, all this proves shocking, depressing and downright exasperating," observes Professor Soichi Nasu, a sociologist at Tokyo's Chuo University, who specializes in the problems of old age. "Just like their ancestors, they had anticipated companionship and support from their children, only to discover that the foundation had crumbled."

What happened? The traditional Japanese family system, in which parents lived with their children, gradually broke down in the aftermath of World War II. In the rush to the cities for jobs, and the severe housing shortage that followed, many children were simply unable or unwilling to care for their elderly relatives. During the past five years, average family size has shrunk from 4.9 members to 3.7. At the same time, life expectancy has risen sharply since the war (46.9 to 69.2 for men, 49.6 to 74.7 for women). The result is fewer children to care for more and more oldsters.

Relieved of Duty. Though most of Japan's aged continue to live with their children, particularly in rural areas, many others have been shunted into bleak housing projects or crowded nursing homes. "Both my sons have one-room homes and are married," explains Mrs. Take Kikuchi, a diminutive widow of 70, who lives in a nursing home on the outskirts of Tokyo. "I shuttled endlessly between them, but at last the message was so deafening that I had to leave them and come here." Adds Kotaro Uchida, 88, a retired Tokyo printer: "My son after the war told me that this thing transplanted from America called democracy meant everybody for himself and that he was therefore relieved of his duty to support me. I disagreed, but what could I do?"

Though the problem of Japan's aged still ranks low in priority, government officials have recently begun to take steps to alleviate the situation. Earlier this year, for example, Tokyo Governor Ryokichi Minobe launched a corps of volunteers to act as counselors for older people living alone. The biggest problem remains money. Since most firms have a mandatory retirement age of 55, middle-aged workers are faced with finding other means of support for 15 to 20 years. There is no Social Security in the American sense. National annuities and corporate pensions cover a limited number of workers, but they are woefully inadequate for a country where the cost of living rivals that of the U.S. Moreover, three-fourths of the 7,000,000 Japanese over 65 have little income of any kind. "What we need," says Dr. Sadamu Watanabe, "is a sweeping reform that makes it mandatory for the government to provide all old people with an adequate livelihood through their declining years." Watanabe should know better than anyone. At 80 he is Japan's leading gerontologist.

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