In Japan there are more 70-year-old gangsters than 20-year-olds. The famous yakuza is getting older and the vast majority of its members are in their fifties. More and more programs are being broadcast on television aimed at grandparents, and advertisements abound with offers for funeral services or medicines to relieve joint pain. Even in Japanese porn there is a booming market with actors past retirement age and consumers becoming increasingly wrinkled. The local star within that niche in the industry is Maori Tezuka, an octogenarian former opera singer that, although he recently retired from the spotlight, his videos continue to be among the most viewed on the platforms.
Japan’s population is aging at an unprecedented rate and that is shaking almost all fronts of society, from porn to depopulation, including medical centers, saturated in some prefectures, which have had to reinvent themselves by promoting telematic assistance to older patients who do not suffer from serious illnesses.
One in 10 Japanese is 80 years old or older. And that is a lot (12.59 million) in a country where more than 125 million people live. Japan, proportionally, is the nation with the most elderly people in the world. The latest official data published this week says so.
There is plenty of concern in the world’s third and grayest economy. They recently announced that the population will fall in 2022: 1.56 million deaths for just 771,000 births. It was the fifteenth consecutive year on this descending ramp. Now, on top of that, it comes to light that 29.1% of Japanese people are already above retirement age, although the elderly still support 13% of the national workforce. By 2040, those over 65 years old are expected to represent 34.8% of the census. It is an unprecedented demographic disaster.
The island nation, which has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, is grappling with a rate of birth rate in free fall and a deflating workforce, which can have significant implications for funding pensions and health services, especially as the demands of an aging population continue to increase.