On Respect for the Aged Day, which was observed last month in Japan, various statistics were announced. More than 28 percent of the population is now age 65 or older, the highest percentage in the world. Even more astonishing is the rapid increase in people 100 or older in this country. In 1963, there were only 153 centenarians, but by 1981, the figure had risen to 1,000. The number reached 10,000 in 1998 and continued its climb, getting to 50,000 in 2012. And there are now more than 70,000 people in Japan 100 years old or more.
My main experience with one of the oldest-old people has been my neighbor Mrs. T., who turned 100 this past July. I moved in next door to Mrs. T. 28 years ago, when she was 72 years old. She was a nice neighbor. When she received potatoes from relatives in Hokkaido, she'd share them. She brought over bags of mikan from her trees every year, and when she made sekihan red celebratory rice on special occasions, she'd always cook a bit extra for our family. I in turn would give her cookies when I made them and bring back presents from my trips within Japan and abroad. When I spent a year in Dublin in 2008, we exchanged a few letters.
Our friendship deepened after her husband passed away about 10 years ago. I began to drop by her house once or twice a week and we'd drink tea together and talk about all kinds of things. Mrs. T. has been hospitalized for a few years now, but for most of her 90s, apart from my own family she was probably the person I spoke to most about nonwork aspects of life.
Mrs. T. sometimes repeated the same stories, but that worked out fine, since I often didn't understand everything the first time around. This was not so much a problem of language as it was a lack of historical background. For instance, the things Mrs. T. told me about most often related to life in Sapporo in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly her recollections of her time as a student at Hokusei Girls' School, a Protestant school founded by the American teacher and missionary Sarah Clara Smith, who Mrs. T. remembered well.
Some of the anecdotes she related provided a snippet into what it was like to live in Sapporo at that time for an ordinary family. Mrs. T. told me that her older brother took her to a fancy department store before she started school so that she'd have a chance to practice pulling the chain on a flush toilet, for which she was very grateful as the sound of the water gushing forth made her anxious that she'd broken the apparatus.
Her most poignant memory was of several of the American teachers going back to the United States before the war broke out. They were escorted from Sapporo to their ship in Yokohama by a group of Hokusei students. After the war, some of the teachers came back to Japan and resumed teaching, an ending to the story that we both found heartwarming, so even as she did not tire of telling it, I also continued to enjoy hearing it. Her high school yearbook and a Hokusei star-shaped badge were often on her coffee table.
My relationship with Mrs. T. made me especially interested to learn about a study by centenarian researcher Grace da Rosa and five other researchers. They surveyed 239 centenarians and near-centenarians in the state of Georgia in the United States with average age of 99.7 years, and 304 Japanese centenarians living in Tokyo with an average age of 101 years. They asked the respondents two questions: "What was the most important experience you had in your life?" and "What was another important experience you had in your life?" (In some cases, proxies answered on behalf of the respondents.)
The groups were similar in many ways. The Americans had been born between 1895 and 1907, and the Japanese were born between 1884 and 1902. Women made up 82 percent of the American group and 79 percent of the Japanese. Forty-one percent of both groups had less than a high school education. Most were widowed, representing 87 percent of the Americans and 96 percent of the Japanese.
Despite these demographic resemblances, there were striking differences in the responses. For the U.S. group, marriage and children were the most important experiences, mentioned by 39 percent and 26 percent, respectively, for a total of 65 percent. On the other hand, only 23 percent of the Japanese stated marriage, and just 12 percent cited children, coming to 35 percent. When discussing another important life experience, the Americans again brought up marriage and children, with frequencies of 32 percent and 33 percent, but only 15 percent of the Japanese referred to marriage as another important life event, while 20 percent indicated children.
Most salient for the Japanese were historical events rather than family episodes. Forty-nine percent raised something related to this category as the most important life experience, and 38 percent mentioned it as another important life event. Conversely, historical events were alluded to by only 2 percent of the Americans as the most important event, and by a mere 0.6 percent as another important event. The next most frequent category for the Japanese was death/grief, remarked on by 25 percent as the most significant occurrence and by 19 percent as another momentous event. For this category, too, the frequency of the Americans' responses was much lower, at 6 percent for both "most" and "another."
Like the Japanese, the Americans had lived through significant historical events, including World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. On the other hand, the Great Kanto Earthquake and World War II were experienced on Japanese soil, which could naturally impact the prominence of the experiences. Only 0.5 percent of the Japanese respondents mentioned school or education as the most important life experience, while 5 percent of the Americans did. For both groups, this category as a second-most important event was mentioned with a frequency of 2 percent. Then again, Mrs. T.'s school reminiscences were historical as well, reflecting all the societal changes happening in Sapporo at the time.
As in much research, the results of this study are tantalizing, and questions remain that may be clarified as subsequent generations of centenarians are similarly surveyed. But the research stands as intriguing data of what it is like to be a centenarian now in two different cultures, reflecting on one's life.
Elwood is a professor of English at Waseda University's School of Commerce.
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