＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Added on 7/31/2021> In 2020, the average life expectancy of Japanese people reached a record high
The average life expectancy of Japanese men in 2020 was 81.64 years (81.41 years in 2019), the second highest in the world after Switzerland, and for women it was 87.74 years (87.45 years in 2019), continuing to rank first in the world.
The baby boom generation (those born between 1947 and 1949) is currently around 69 to 71 years old, and was about 6.78 million people in the 2005 census. As of 2018, the number is likely to have decreased a little more.
By 2025, all baby boomers will be aged 75 or older and considered “senior citizens,” which is expected to create a problem known as the “2025 problem.”
1. The 2025 Problem
According to the Institute of Life and Living’s “Future Timeline,” the following problems are listed:
(1) The proportion of women among the baby boomer generation will rise, and the number of “single-person households of baby boomer women” will increase.
(2) The number of elderly people who receive “certification of nursing care” will reach approximately 7.8 million.
(3) The population of “late-stage elderly” people aged 75 or older will reach approximately 19 million.
(4) The “medical treatment rate” of the baby boomer generation will peak.
(5) The number of people eligible for “home medical care” will double.
(6) Japan’s medical system will not be able to continue if the “coordination between the acute and recovery phases remains unclear.”
(7) “Social security costs” will peak.
(8) Of the population aged 65 or older, the number of people with “dementia” will reach around 7 million.
(9) The baby boomer junior generation will be faced with the “double care of nursing care and childcare.”
(10) The number of people who “need home medical care” will exceed 1 million.
2. The current state of nursing care for the baby boomer generation
Currently, I have a mother who turned 95 this year and is in the “care level 2” category. She is residing in a “care home for the elderly” and I leave her daily care to the home.
However, twice a week, he and his wife go to the nursing home with fruit, sweets, and washed clothes, help the residents get changed, and then take the laundry home to wash.
My children are now in their 30s, so I no longer have to deal with the “double care of nursing and childcare,” but I still worry about them.
As life expectancy has increased, I imagine that many of you are in similar situations. This is what is known as “elderly care for the elderly.”
Furthermore, as the Future Timeline points out, in seven years the baby boomer generation will become “elderly,” meaning there is a high possibility that we ourselves will develop dementia or become in need of assistance or nursing care.
This raises concerns about whether there will actually be vacancies in various public and private nursing homes (regular nursing homes, fee-paying nursing homes for the elderly, special nursing homes for the elderly, nursing care facilities for the elderly, low-cost nursing homes [care houses], group homes, etc.).
If things continue as they are, it is clear that there will be a shortage. This will result in a large number of “elderly people waiting for care,” rather than “children waiting for care.” In other words, the emergence of “care refugees.”
In addition, due to the “shortage of nursing staff,” an increase in “foreign nursing staff” and the introduction of “nursing robots” are becoming more realistic. However, in the case of “foreigners,” there are concerns about whether they will be able to communicate properly in “Japanese” even as “nursing assistants.”
3. Extend the time when you need nursing care as much as possible through self-help efforts
What we can do as individuals is to try to maintain and improve our health through self-help efforts, and to postpone the time when we need nursing care as much as possible. And when we finally need nursing care, we can enter a reliable nursing home.
Even if a pamphlet says that the facility is “affiliated with a hospital,” you will fail if you do not thoroughly investigate whether they will actually work closely with the hospital to respond in an emergency, whether the affiliation is in name only, and what the actual situation is.
Former Prime Minister Koizumi once recommended and advocated the ideal of “children and grandchildren caring for the elderly at home,” but it is questionable how many people are actually able to provide this “home care” in reality.
I have serious doubts about whether former Prime Minister Koizumi really understands the “difficulty and difficulty of home care.” This could lead to “elderly care for the elderly,” “care fatigue,” and even “care fatigue murder” cases.
In mild cases, I think it makes sense to use “day care services.” “Home care” is expensive, and the burden is huge because the family has to take care of the elderly when there is no home care provider. (This is something my wife and I have experienced.) There is no choice but to leave care to the professionals at a care facility.
However, if we rapidly increase the number of nursing care facilities in response to the “nursing care needs of the baby boomer generation,” we will end up with an excess of facilities after the baby boomer generation has passed away, so it may become necessary to set up not only full-scale facilities but also “temporary” facilities. This issue is beyond the reach of individuals, so I hope that the government will quickly consider and respond to it.