An elderly man comes to live with his son's family. The old man is bed-ridden and finds it awkward to ask for assistance going to the bathroom. Soon, his daughter-in-law is hospitalized too leaving his son, Hidehiko, to take care of the old man. Unfortunately the old man is even more reluctant to ask him for help than he was with his daughter-in-law. Hidehiko is also frustrated by the situation. In addition to working full time, he remembers how terse his father was with him when he was growing up. His long buried feelings are just waiting to boil over.
The Elderly in Japan - 2018 marked Japan’s 35th anniversary of reaching its status as the world’s oldest population in the world. More than a quarter of Japan’s population is aged over 65 and this is set to increase by 40% by 2025 when the overall population will have shrunk from 127 million in 2019 to 90 million. Japan stands out with 1.8 people aged 25 to 64 for each person aged 65 or over, and it has one of the lowest ratios of people of working age compared to those older than 65 in the world.
The country is home to the longest ever recorded life expectancies and the highest elderly population share worldwide at 27%. Japan also has one of the lowest annual birthrates in the world and a continuously decreasing birth fertility rate. In fact, the birthrate in 2016 was 976,978 children, the estimate was 918,397 children in 2018 – which is a decrease of roughly 6%. With the population declining, rapidly ageing, and the birthrate depleting, the economic, political, and societal prospects for Japan are grim especially for young people.
