POPULATION-JAPAN: Elderly Women Seek, Find Social Support

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 2 2000 (IPS) - To her children, Kazuko Iwatsuki, 82, is a “woman of vigour”. This description was bestowed on her after her husband died five years ago, which also marked the start of her “new” life.

“After my husband died, I found myself free from boring household duties. I then decided to enjoy the rest of my years and I don’t regret that decision one bit,” says the cheery grandmother who spends most her afternoons singing on her ‘karaoke’.

She sets aside one weekend each month for an outing with friends. Iwatsuki, who lives in a little town in southern Japan, belongs to the nation’s growing elderly, expected to hit 25 percent of the population by 2015. They make up 17 percent of the present population.

Iwatsuki and other elderly Japanese women also represent the largest proportion of the ageing population in Asia. They are also known to outlive their male counterparts by around seven years, a trend which analysts say has been observed in the country since the early 20th century.

Statistics released by the government in September reveal that there are 10,870 centenarian Japanese women, compared to 2,158 men. The oldest person in Japan is a woman who turned 113 on Sep. 16.

The government reported that centenarians racked up a record this month, with more than 1,690 from a year before.

In terms of people in their seventies, an official study in August showed that women again outnumbered men. In the category for 75 years and older, women stood at 5.76 million, while men’s numbers were lower at 3.11 million.

“Japanese women have been outliving men since the early 20th century when women, in general, lived two years longer than men. But the last 30 years witnessed a more dramatic growth in the disparity between the sexes with women living 6.8 years longer,” explained an official of the Health and Welfare Ministry.

Various reasons have been cited by experts to support this trend, including women’s hormonal balance being more suited to longevity than their male counterparts, as well as the lack of stress in women’s lifestyles compared to their husbands’.

Ikuko Sakamichi, who runs Tatsukeai Ota Hasesanzo, a non-profit organisation that supports the ageing, offers an explanation.

“Elderly women lived at home most of their lives taking care of their families while their husbands were the breadwinners. This allowed them to take care of their health and make friends with the community, a much more healthy lifestyle compared to the high-stress lives of their husbands who had to work from morning till night.”

Sakamichi’s group helps its 150 elderly members – 90 percent of them women – to cook, clean or bathe.

She says most of her clients live alone and need help. With Japan’s traditional extended family system breaking down, there is a growing need for support services for the elderly.

In a bid to support healthy elderly women, local government offices have been setting up homes and other day care services these past few years. Kaoru Iida, 71, runs one of the newest such facilities, Kawaji-san-chi, a meeting place for the elderly.

Nine women, all of them widows who live alone, meet at the home and spend the day knitting or cooking or chatting with each other.

“These women are relatively healthy, are well-off financially but what they lack is a social life as they live alone,” says Iida, who herself is a widow and is working for the first time.

“They love this place and seem to have got younger since using our services,” she says, adding that the two brand-new television sets placed in the house have never been switched on because the women prefer chatting.

Sawamichi, however, says that a large number of elderly women do not lead happy lives. “While these women are not financially in trouble, they are quite lonely,” she says, pointing out that her female members are not looked after by their children.

This is a situation that leaves women more vulnerable because they represent a generation which was taught that keeping a low profile was virtuous, thus an outgoing lifestyle was discouraged, adds Sawamichi.

“While there is no doubt that women find themselves free to start thinking about themselves once they are widowed, many of them do not have the courage to break out of social traditions,” she explains.

A Health and Welfare Ministry official says a growing number of elderly people need medical attention for physical ailments and emotional or psychological problems such as dementia and depression.

A social worker points out that 99 percent of Japan’s bed-ridden elderly are cared for in nursing homes.