Jundo Nagashima
Taisho University
Life expectancy in Japan was about 45 years in 1935 and reached 83.2 in 2015. In 2007, Japan entered the level of a super-aged society, where the population of 65 years or older accounted for over 21%. This aging rate now stands at 26%. This means that people in Japan have more time to process the idea of death and dying than 80 years ago when they tended to pass away while being relatively more active. It is also said that aging and religiosity have a correlative relationship. As a result, it is increasingly necessary for Japanese religions, especially Buddhism, to provide wisdom so that elderly people live comfortably towards the end of their lives.
This tendency, on the other hand, has created problems. One of them is the trend away from religion among young adults because of the generation gap caused by elderly-oriented religious activities. Moreover, some temples are suffering from a lack of successors and have difficulty in management.
Although a super-aged society is likely to be in favor of Japanese religion for the time being, the following generations are not necessarily going to be as religious and it is almost inevitable that Japanese population will decrease by almost half in the coming 100 years. Therefore, in this presentation, I would like to show the gravity of an aging population and discuss related issues surrounding Buddhism in Japan.
(Presented in the 2018 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Culture of Longevity, 15-16 August 2018, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University)