Usually we think of the elderly as a weak and sickly category. But in Japan the stereotype doesn't apply. Tanaka Yuki, 99 years old, is the caretaker of a stalactite cave and keeps a small shop on the outskirts of Tokyo. A former prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, at the age of 90 travels the country promoting the policies of his social democratic party. And Yasushi Akashi, former deputy secretary general of the United Nations, chairs the board of directors of the International House of Japan at the age of 83. Japanese women, for more than a quarter of a century the longest-lived on the planet, lost their primacy in 2011 only because of the thousands of deaths caused by the tsunami.
For a Japanese girl born in 2013, life expectancy is 86,6 years, an increase of 0,2 years since 2012. But of course, there are not only advantages to living longer, at least from the country's point of view as a whole. Japan is today one of the three "super-old" countries, together with Germany and Italy (the definition refers to a country where over-65s cover more than 20% of the population). And the problem is not just those three countries: Moody's Investor Service has calculated that by 2020 another ten nations will have exceeded that threshold, with the problems connected to the fact that a decreasing percentage of the inhabitants will have to maintain a growing percentage of the elderly ; unless, like Tanaka Yuki, they continue to work into old age.
Attachments: The China Daily article
