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FeatureSocietyJapan

Japan is writing the future of an ageing society

A country ahead of the demographic curve is inventing, by necessity, what much of the world will soon need.

By Rational Times Editorial · 1 min read
A street in Tokyo at night. Representational image.
A street in Tokyo at night. Representational image.Photo: Pexels

Japan is growing older faster than almost any society in history. It is also, by necessity, becoming a laboratory for the rest of the world, which is ageing more slowly but heading in the same direction.

The responses are everywhere: robotics in care, redesigns of housing and transport, a rethinking of work that stretches well past what was once a retirement age. None is a complete answer; together they are a draft.

The deeper question is cultural. A society organised around the young must learn to value, and to make room for, the old, not as a burden to be managed but as a part of the whole.

What Japan invents, the world will inherit. The country ahead of the curve is, in its quiet way, doing the rest of us a favour.

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