Search

A demographic and ethnographic exploration of how the aging Japanese society is affecting the family.Incorporating qualitative and quantitative data and research methods from both demography and social anthropology, this book explores demographic trends in contemporary Japan's rapidly aging society. The contributors describe and analyze trends by addressing the ways in which demographic change is experienced in the context of family. The book considers the social effects, welfare issues, and private and public responses to demographic change and how this change has influenced the experiences of family caregivers and the elderly themselves. It offers both a specific regional contribution to the emerging field of demographic anthropology and an anthropological contribution to cross-disciplinary research on aging.John W. Traphagan is Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan, published by SUNY Press, and the coeditor (with Kiyotaka Aoyagi and Peter J. M. Nas) of Toward Sustainable Cities: Readings in the Anthropology of Urban Environments. John Knight is Lecturer at the School of Anthropological Studies at Queen's University Belfast. He is the editor of Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological Perspective.