Population Decline and Ageing in Japan: The Social Consequences, and: Ageing and the Labor Market in Japan: Problems and Policies (review)

With increasing longevity and falling fertility, Japan faces an entirely new social and economic environment: a hyper-aging society. It is expected that close to 30 per cent of the Japanese population will be 65 years of age or older by 2025. Japan’s population aging has proceeded rapidly, causing acute and profound changes in intergenerational relations, national pension systems, medical care and long-term care programs, and gender relations in the family and the workplace.

The two books reviewed here offer timely research on demographic challenges to Japanese society and its labor markets. They are different in disciplinary orientation, target audience, and scope. Florian Coulmas’s book examines “social ageing” (vaguely defined as “social transformation on a large scale” [p. 16] caused by population aging) based on social and demographic data and opinion data published by governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Coulmas is director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, works in Japan, and also is chair of Japanese Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His book targets general social science readers and is excellent reading for students in courses on social gerontology and on Japan or East Asia.

In Population Decline and Ageing in Japan, Coulmas offers a broad, descriptive analysis of the demographic challenges and the resultant social transformations that confront Japan today and in the coming decades. It is well structured and clearly written. In chapter 1 (“Facts and Discourses”), he presents data on demographic changes and sums up current public discourse about the consequences of social aging in eight questions (pp. 15–16): Will it be possible to maintain Japan’s high standard of living in a hyper-aged society? How can social security be sustained without stifling the economy or causing too much hardship for the elderly? Why do Japanese women have fewer children than they would like to? How should a social policy be designed and what are its potential and actual effects? Why is it that affluence breeds childlessness? Are gender relations so askew that men and women postpone marriage and having children? Does the burden of caring for the old and infirm curb the younger generations’ ability and willingness to have children? How and to what end does immigration come into play as society adjusts to the realities of population decline?

Coulmas does a good job of describing how the shared aspirations of the “all middle class society” have clearly become a thing of the past and how Japan today faces challenges to reinvent itself, including the reconsideration of male dominance, striking a balance between family and work needs, and addressing rising inequalities.

In chapter 2 (“The Problems of Generations and the Structure of Society”), Coulmas stresses that Japan is not just getting older but its aging population is also causing fundamental changes in intergenerational relations. For example, the traditional multigenerational living arrangement has steadily declined and has been replaced by conjugal family units. Yet, Coulmas cautions readers that if “elderly living with their children in separate dwellings on the same site are counted as broadly defined co-residence, the rate of co-residence has hardly changed” (p. 24). The increased number of conjugal family units may indicate the modern adaptation of traditional living arrangements and accompanying qualitative changes in the family system. One question Coulmas might have asked would involve the changing parameters of the economic rationality of intergenerational living. One wonders if multigenerational living arrangements may become practical solutions in the future with the recent increases in unemployment, job uncertainty, and delayed marriage and divorce among young persons.

In chapter 3 (“Social Networks”), Coulmas argues that government, business, and civil society will play major roles in the development of new social networks for the elderly. The growing...