Page 21 - IJPS-8-2

International Journal of

Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Japan’s death-laden society: Five areas of
prospective policy challenges

Masa Higo*

Institute for Asian and Oceanian Studies, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka,
819-0395, Japan

Abstract
Today, Japan stands as the world’s leading super-aged society. In the coming
decade, preceding the rest of the aging globe, the country will phase into the next
demographic stage called a “death-laden” society. Due in part to the aging and
prospective mortality of the country’s two major baby boom generations along with
a projected decline in the number of the working age population, Japan will be laden
with ballooning deaths from old age from 2030 onward for several decades to come.
Only in recent years have researchers started paying attention to this demographic
prospect, and to date, little study has been done to systematically examine how the
coming of a death-laden society may affect the health, well-being, and comfort of
those in advanced age in the country. This paper aims to contribute to the newly
emerging body of literature on this subject by exploring, based mainly on findings
from expert interviews, five key areas of policy challenges with which Japan’s death-
laden society will likely contend. These areas include: (1) shortages in basic medical
resources for the dying; (2) mounting public burden of disease; (3) potential prevalence
of ‘lonely deaths’ among those in advanced age; (4) urgency to facilitate national
*Corresponding author: discussions on end-of-life options; and (5) crematorium shortages and their cultural
Masa Higo (higo.masateru.644@m.
kyushu-u.ac.jp) impact. The future research is called for to help mitigate the impact of a death-
laden society not only for Japan but also for other countries that may follow Japan’s
Citation: Higo, M. (2022). Japan’s demographic path in the conceivable future.
death-laden society: Five areas
of prospective policy challenges.
International Journal of Population
Studies, 8(2):15-24. Keywords: Population aging; Japan; Death-laden society; Death and dying; Policy
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.301
Received: June 17, 2022
Accepted: September 20, 2022 1. Introduction: The coming of Japan’s ‘death-laden’ society
Published Online: October 11, 2022
Over the past several decades, Japan has led the rest of the world in population aging.
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). Preceding the rest of the aging globe, in 2007, Japan grew to be a “super-aged” society,
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the a stage of population aging in which those aged 65 or older account for at least 21%
Creative Commons Attribution of the total population (Higo and Klassen, 2016). By October 2021, the figure had
License, permitting distribution, reached 29.1%, a much higher rate than that of any other super-aged societies in the
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is world. The dependency ratio of older people to those of working age – those aged 65
properly cited. and over to those aged between 20 and 64, including both men and women – have also
Publisher’s Note: AccScience significantly increased over the past two decades; the ratio jumped from 28.7 in 2002
Publishing remains neutral with to 55.2 in 2021 (United Nations, 2022). The ratio for Japan in 2021 stood substantially
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional higher than for any other country, suggesting that the burden of population aging on
affiliations. the younger population is greater for Japan than for any other part of the world. While

Volume 8 Issue 2 (2022) 15 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.301