1
Introduction

This is an ethnographic study of social life in Japan. Our purpose is to describe the process of community creation by aged residents in a Japanese setting. The theoretical focus is on the issue of social integration, but this is first and foremost a study of how the elderly Japanese residents approach a type of environment that is new in their culture.

Although our method is descriptive, our aim is not so much to grasp and convey the consciousness of the people at Fuji-no-Sato as to explain to Western gerontologists and Japanologists how the historical, cultural, and material settings of Japanese retirement housing render the social results unique. In contrast to those ethnographies that strive to speak for the "other"—to tackle the gulf of inner experience that separates observer from observed—we are dealing with very large social issues from a comparatively remote perspective. Even from this distant vantage point, we can see numerous troubling mysteries created by the massive scale and speed of the phenomenon we are watching.

We agree with those anthropologists who question the value of the old unself-conscious ethnography, in which a neutral "expert" offered his heavily worked observations as though they represented some transparent truth about the way of life under study. We have tried to deal with this by giving the reader a perspective "over our shoulders," that is, by describing what we did and by giving concrete examples from field notes to draw attention to the material from which we generalize.

The problem of authority in ethnography is also complicated by the effects of the reporter's value biases. We can scarcely be accused of colonialism in describing an industrial giant like Japan, and yet the attitude of the social planner does have an element of elitism in it. To be honest, we can only do our best to keep an eye on our own attitudes and to announce them when we think their effect on our

vision is especially refractory. To this end, the collaboration of two very different writers has been especially useful.

For example, fieldwork unavoidably produces some strong relationships, and it should become clear to the reader that Kinoshita grew close to some of the administrators of Fuji-no-Sato's parent corporation. A leader of the Fuji-no-Sato Residents Association probably would have described the conflict with management differently than we have. Knowing this, we have simply done our best to be fair.

We do not claim greater overall objectivity or accuracy of reporting on account of Kinoshita's status as a "native observer"; but we do think it gives us a check on how common a given behavior is within Japanese society, as well as how a "typical" Japanese might be likely to interpret the more common occurrences.

Perception cannot be separated from interest; different interests unavoidably produce different and often irreconcilable descriptions. In the long run, the consensus of interests among users and the practical outcomes of applications produce consensual judgments about the "truth" of an ethnography. This can be dearly seen in the recent dramatic loss of credit suffered by much painstaking anthropological writing done before the postmodern revolt of the 1970s. We therefore submit our work to be tested against the interests of its users without any claim that its veracity goes beyond its practicality.

The Message of Japan's Aged

There are few cross-cultural, descriptive studies of the social life of the aged in age-homogeneous settings. To our knowledge, this constitutes the second cross-cultural study of old people in such a setting outside the United States, the only other being a study of an apartment complex for working-class retirees in France (Ross, 1977). Ours is the first study of the phenomenon in a non-Western society. Theory building in this subfield of gerontology should arise from the accumulation of careful descriptions of the phenomenon in a variety of cultures, and this study is intended as a contribution to that effort.

Although the graying of Japan is now a fairly well known fact, little is known about Japanese retirement communities. Such com-

munities are new in Japan, having emerged during the last twenty years, and their number has grown quickly—to about 155 in 1989. They are, therefore, in the experimental stage, and many communities are planning for the future without systematic knowledge appropriate to their culture and society. Yet there are strong indications that retirement communities are about to emerge in Japan in great number.

Because there was no previous study on a Japanese retirement community, even by Japanese researchers, we began with very general questions. What would happen when a group of old people who had lived in a traditionally family-centered society in which human relationships are hierarchically organized came to live together in a Western-style, age-homogeneous, and peer-group-oriented residential setting? Who were the residents of Fuji-no-Sato? What were their demographic characteristics? Why and how did they come to live there? What were the governing principles of their social interactions? To what extent was social integration possible? We also wondered what Fuji-no-Sato would be like as an environment; how it operated; and most important, what social significance it was likely to have in Japan.

We will not ask whether retirement communities are good or bad for the Japanese aged—a question that is simply unanswerable at this point. Not only can it not be answered by a single study of a retirement community, but any attempt to answer this question involves value judgments that we are not ready to make. It is true that most Japanese still believe that family care is the most desirable arrangement for the well-being of the aged and that it is basically wrong to segregate old people. The Japanese are far more suspicious than Americans of any form of congregate residential arrangements for the elderly. But a growing number of Japanese, young as well as old, are now searching for new alternatives to the traditional family care system, which demographic and social changes since World War II have rendered increasingly problematic.

Fundamentally, we take the value-laden position that it is desirable for a society to provide as many living alternatives as possible for its aged members so they can choose those that best fulfill their needs. As for what those needs are, we are struck by the fact that aging is (among other things) a process of losing individual physical

and mental function, ultimately leading to death. It is usually too much to ask that an old person bear this shadow side of a lengthening life span alone. If we put this together with the fact that the work of caring for the elderly unavoidably involves intergenerational relations, we can understand the basic need for a certain kind of social environment. The old need to feel secure that they are and will continue to be listened to, understood, and supported—by both their peers and the next generation—through this difficult process of decline. They need hope not only for tomorrow (beyond their days on earth), but for the immediate day-to-day struggle to live meaningfully. For us, this is the ethical basis of a scientific interest in communities of and for the aged.

In short, this is a descriptive study of the social life of the residents in one retirement community in Japan; as such, it is limited in time (the current generation of Japanese elderly during a single year) as well as in space. Future generations of the Japanese aged will be different in many ways from the present generation, and the social life of the residents at Fuji-no-Sato will probably change as time goes on. The present residents will establish experienced relationships. They will get older and more frail. The natural process of aging and death will alter the social environment. Different people will manage these processes differently.

Mass longevity is a gift of industrialization. For the first time in human history, the average person can expect to attain nearly the full span of life allotted to our species. This fact has led to a major social problem in all postindustrial societies in the West and, as we will see in Part I, in Japan as well. Although there are differences in history, culture, and socioeconomic conditions among aging societies, particularly between the Western societies and Japan, aging tends to pose similar social problems for all (the need to provide sufficient income, adequate housing, and cost-effective, quality health care services), problems that can be solved only through well-coordinated and sensitive social policies. The Japanese have long considered the democratic socialist societies of Great Britain and Sweden the models to emulate in social policy. However, it has become apparent in recent years that these and other advanced welfare nations in the West are having serious problems remaining solvent while maintaining a high standard of public services for

their citizens. If the aging of populations is an inevitable consequence of industrialization, it is a challenge that all societies of our time may have to face. No one nation can provide the model answer, and aging is now a global problem that requires international collaboration.

The increase of the older population creates similar problems in different societies, but how each copes with them will be uniquely shaped by its sociocultural characteristics. Only parts of the knowledge gained by a given society in this process may be transferable to other societies.

Aging in Japan attracts our scientific attention for several reasons: (1) Japan is the first non-Western society to experience an explosion of its aged population. (2) It has achieved a high level of industrialization and political stability. (3) It has developed high standards of health care. (4) Japanese culture appears to encourage old people to be socially responsible and to venerate the aged themselves. (5) Japan is traditionally a family-centered society in which the elderly members appear to be better socially integrated than their counterparts in the West. Thus, the study of how Japan is coping with the problems of aging may reveal dynamic interactions between a society's unique sociocultural characteristics on one hand and the imperative impact of industrialization and concomitant social change on the other. Here is a nation that has accomplished an economic miracle in this century. Will it be able to achieve another miracle, this time conquering the massive social problems resulting from its economic success—especially the problem of an aging population?

However, a strategic and pragmatic approach to the immediate social problems of aging may leave the really crucial problems unsolved. This does not mean that we underrate the significance of such an approach, for the immediate practical problems are enormously difficult themselves and must be solved. A more serious problem in the long run is that neither Japan nor the United States has a viable philosophy on which to base social policies for the aged. Put another way, today we need a new philosophy of human values, for the era of mass longevity is also the era of the mass dependency of the aged. The rationalism that was the propelling philosophy of industrialization in Japan as well as America appears,

with all its benefits, to be dysfunctional when it comes to coping with the mass of dependent elderly. It is a philosophy that judges individuals on the basis of their productive capabilities.

The end of a historical era is often contained unforeseen in its beginning. As Max Weber (1904) demonstrated, the religiously motivated economic activities of the stoic early Protestants contributed to the primitive accumulation of capital, a process from which an intrinsically secular and materialistic culture was born. Similarly, the growing number of unproductive elderly whose presence re-suits from an industrialized living standard now acts as a brake on the continued rise of that standard. Wealth cannot increase indefinitely. Therefore, failure to acquire a new philosophy of human values may result in an intensified generational conflict over shares of social wealth. Rosow (1962) was aware of this problem in the United States nearly thirty years ago and called it the moral dilemma of an affluent society. In the meantime, the prospects of the industrial world have darkened. Rosow's problem is now a major one in all postindustrial societies.

The question seems simple: Is it right (and if so, how can we convince ourselves) that the value of an individual should. not be based on his independence or productivity, and that human existence itself is of the utmost importance even if it means heavy sacrifice on the part of the socially productive? Throughout human history, and particularly in this century, the prolongation of human life has been regarded as a yardstick of a society's level of maturity. The extension of life expectancy has validated our boast that our societies are continuously progressing. But we are now at a stage to pause and ask ourselves what the quality of human existence or the meaning of prolonged life should be. The questions are simple, but the answers are not ready in our minds.

A new philosophy of human values should embody the possibility of equality for the dependent old. Whether it is in the macrocontext of American or Japanese society or in the microcontext of the individual retirement community, the essential effect of our philosophy should be the same, for modern civilization itself is being tested by the growth of the dependent aged population.

In this regard, the United States may be in a much more difficult position than Japan because the notion of equality for the socially weak and dependent may be inherently incompatible with Ameri-

can culture, which is based on the mutually contradictory ideals of equality and individual self-determination. This contradiction drives disadvantaged members to marginal positions and blames them for their failure (cf. Henry, 1963; Slater, 1970). To understand this, one need not look at such extreme examples as the fate of the Native Americans, the history of institutionalized slavery, or discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities, but only at the treatment that the once-productive aged are receiving (cf. Butler, 1975; Henry, 1963; Kayser-Jones, 1981; Laird, 1979; Mendelson, 1975; Vladeck, 1980).

The task may be no easier for Japan, however. Although the degree of compatibility between the nature of the culture and the demand for a new philosophy appears to be greater in Japan than in the United States, in the process of industrialization, Japan has adopted many core values of American culture. Industrialization has disrupted Japan's traditional culture, and today's aged are caught in the midst of this disruption.

The issue of housing for the elderly not only represents an urgent and critical problem for Japanese society; it also epitomizes dynamic interactions between the growth of the aged population and various other postwar social changes. With this in mind, we undertook this study of a new style of living for the aged, a style stimulated by the changes we are discussing.

Selection of the Study Site

Japan has only two types of congregate housing for the aged: welfare homes and emerging retirement communities (see Chapter 5). There is no public housing for low-income elderly, no Sun City-type large-scale developments or mobile home parks, as in the United States.

The selection of Fuji-no-Sato as the setting of this study was based on six considerations:

1. Type of service and type of payment

2. Attitude toward community creation

3. Size

4. Newness of the community

5. Size and philosophy of the management organization

6. Visibility as a model for other communities

When we began this study, there were only thirty-one retirement communities in all of Japan, but both the number and the variety have since grown rapidly and will continue to do so. Fuji-no-Sato is a life-care retirement community, the most common and, for now, the most promising type. A life-care community is defined here as a facility that provides, through contract, both age-appropriate living accommodations and at least some skilled nursing care as needed for the duration of the resident's life. The other two types of retirement communities in Japan are the "life-guarantee" type (of which there are only a few) and the condominium. The vast majority of elderly live either independently or with children, or they are confined to hospitals if chronically ill. When the study began, there was a great vacuum in housing options between these extremes; now many new age-specific communities are established yearly. We discuss the Japanese retirement housing environment in detail in Chapter 5.

The life-care type and the life-guarantee type offer similar services, but differ in payment method. The residents in the former pay a monthly fee in addition to an entrance fee; those in the latter make a one-time lump sum payment intended to cover expenses until they die. As one would expect, the life-guarantee type is vulnerable to unexpected costs, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare has discouraged them since one went into bankruptcy.

Condominiums are essentially residential facilities for independent elderly and provide only minimal medical and health care services; residents have to leave when they become frail and cannot maintain independent living.

Life care is increasingly important because it seems to address effectively the two main problems that have led to the emergence of retirement communities in the first place: (1) societal changes in the living arrangements of the aged and in consciousness regarding filial expectations and filial responsibilities and (2) the insufficiency of the long-term care system for the dependent aged.

The social dynamics of this type of community are the focus of our study. It is particularly significant that Fuji-no-Sato was the only retirement community in Japan that placed strong emphasis

on community creation by the residents. This was an explicit goal from its planning stage and is expressed in the architectural design of the community (see Chapter 6).

In terms of size, Fuji-no-Sato has an average full-time population of two hundred thirty to two hundred fifty. Thus, it is a face-to-face community and appears to be an appropriate size for the residents to get to know one another.

The timing of the study was also crucial. Fuji-no-Sato opened in May 1979 and had been in operation for three years and four months when Kinoshita began fieldwork. It achieved full occupancy at the end of the first year. The research was well timed to focus on the process of community creation.

We deliberately chose a nonprofit community, feeling that the various financial positions of the variety of for-profit builders would complicate our study. Fuji-no-Sato was built and is managed by the largest nonprofit organization in this industry, having six large-scale life-care retirement communities. In 1982, when the study began, the corporation had four communities, whose combined population accounted for about 20 percent of the total in Japanese retirement communities.

What we did not realize at the outset was that this company has a unique philosophy, which turned out to have major consequences for the social dynamics of its communities. The builders were advocating something called "new welfare for the middle-income elderly."

The word "welfare" has an ambiguous meaning in Japan today that reflects changing and uncertain social attitudes. On the one hand, welfare still retains the idea, held over from the preprosperity era, of public support for the needy—those who cannot take care of themselves. Strong stigma is attached to those "on welfare"—low-income people who receive financial support. On the other hand, welfare also has the newer, more general, and less pejorative meaning of "public well-being"—people's right to receive various social services. The government has been successful in providing many such services.

Against this background, the builders of Fuji-no-Sato advocate "welfare" in the newer sense for the middle-income elderly, a welfare essentially based on contract. (See also Chapter 8.) Their philosophy, however, contains two important innovations: a greater

role for the nonprofit private sector in supplying essential services and the introduction of individual payments for these services. The idea superficially resembles the familiar American practice of buying essential services in an open market; but in the Japanese context, the nature of this contract is quite different.

In planning Fuji-no-Sato, a guideline set the amount of the entrance fee within the range of the lump sum retirement payment the average middle-income worker would receive and the monthly fee within the average monthly retirement pension. Particularly important for this study was the fact that Fuji-no-Sato was intended to house not the affluent, but the middle-income elderly.

Lastly, Fuji-no-Sato is still one of the most successful and best known retirement communities in Japan. It has full occupancy, with sixty to eighty people constantly on the waiting list. Many other retirement communities are suffering from low occupancy rates. The development organization has a highly sophisticated long-term fiscal management scheme and has established itself as a leader in this industry by providing management know-how to new developers. Furthermore, Fuji-no-Sato has been covered extensively in the press and electronic media, including foreign newspapers such as the New York Times .

The Study

Kinoshita, his wife, and children lived at Fuji-no-Sato between September 1982 and October 1983 while he did the research. His main methods were participant observation and semistructured interviews; but a third method—unobtrusive measures—was used to verify and refine the material that emerged from the main methods.

The participant observation technique was originally developed in anthropology to study small communities, usually in preliterate and little-known cultures. It is based on a holistic approach in which, instead of focusing on specific preconceived issues, the researcher moves into a small community and shares the way of living of the people there. He tries to interpret and understand their life in its totality, as an integrated whole, and as an adaptation to a particular environment, with a particular history. As such, anthropological fieldwork is first and foremost an attempt to understand behavior as the subjects themselves understand it—an "emic" ap-

proach—and only secondarily an attempt to test preconceived models or theories—the "etic" approach. Fieldwork often lasts at least a year, as this project did, so the researcher can observe infrequent as well as frequent events. Kinoshita discovered, for example, that the Fuji-no-Sato clinic is extremely busy with serious cases, including some deaths, only during winter months. In a new community like this one, a year is also enough time to see some historical evolution: The role of the residents association changed significantly toward the end of the study.

Until recently (Hochschild, 1973; Johnson, 1971; Kayser-Jones, 1981; Kiefer, 1974; Meyerhoff, 1978; Perkinson, 1980; Ross, 1977), there were few participant observation studies of the aged. We feel this is a deficiency that needs correcting. As Keith (1980b) points out, there are four common problems in gerontology for which participant observation is a good solution: (1) a setting and/or a specific problem that is little known, (2) particularly complex and sensitive issues, (3) informants who are unable or unwilling to report accurately, and (4) collective or emergent realities that must be understood in their own terms. A study of a retirement community in Japan addresses the first and fourth problems and to some extent the second as well.

Kinoshita participated in and observed both daily routine and occasional and unscheduled events in the community. He and his family lived much the same as the residents at Fuji-no-Sato, using the same services and suffering the same inconveniences. During the first three months, he experienced almost every kind of daily activity in order to become familiar with the community and the residents; thereafter, as he became aware of the more significant issues, he focused on those. Kinoshita also participated in seasonal festivities and helped plan events like trips. Participant observer roles even included working at the clinic (day and night shifts) and riding in the community's ambulance. Interactions between the staff and residents and among staff were also observed. Kinoshita attended regular staff meetings and spent quite a bit of time with the staff informally. In August 1983, Kiefer spent ten days at Fuji-no-Sato, talking with staff and getting a feel for the setting.

The other major method, interviewing, was part of the initial plan as well. In order to assure that interviews focused on live issues, Kinoshita spent three months at Fuji-no-Sato before drawing

up the semistructured questionnaire from which statistical norms could be drawn. This allowed him to use the interviews to probe emerging significant issues in some depth. This second function required that the questionnaire be partly open-ended. There is a strong tendency to suppress open dissent in this community, and the open-ended interviews gave residents a rare opportunity to vent private feelings about common issues—feelings that might well have led to conflict had they become public. For example, opinions on issues such as problems at the clinic or management policies were generally suppressed if they disagreed with the public position of the residents association. (See also Chapter 11.) Although they were usually cautious in public, the residents disclosed dissenting views quite freely in the interviews.

The interviews served another function as well: Not all full-time residents joined group activities, and little was known about the "loners" from participant observation.

Interview sessions took an average of two and a half hours each. For some residents, these became emotional or social counseling sessions, and in such cases, it was not unusual for Kinoshita to spend four or five hours with the respondent. He kept tabs on these "problem" residents throughout the research period. In most cases, residents were interviewed during visits to their apartments—a significant departure from the usual pattern of social contact in this community. Interview sampling reflected residential patterns and marital statuses. One hundred forty-three residents were asked for interviews, and all but six agreed.

Unobtrusive measures, or nonreactive measures, as they are sometimes called, were also important in this research. The absence of this useful technique in ethnographic research may reflect the difficulty for researchers to know in advance whether they will have access to unobtrusive data. For instance, Kinoshita discovered that various records kept by the staff revealed a great deal about the life of the residents only after he had become familiar with Fuji-no-Sato.

The Ethnographic Experience

Kinoshita moved to Fuji-no-Sato with his wife (who was seven months pregnant) and sixteen-month-old daughter in August 1982.

They were given a "type B" (small, one-bedroom) unit. (For types of residential units, see Chapter 6.) They later found out that their unit had been tried and rejected by a series of residents because of its inconvenient location and high humidity. Work space was provided in a corner of a large conference room in the administrative building, a room used for the monthly staff meeting and occasionally to host large groups of visitors. Kinoshita had to accommodate these other functions (an average of a couple of times per month) but was allowed to use it as his office, keeping books, field data, and other materials there. This was the room to which he returned to take notes after observations and where he usually worked and spent time when not occupied elsewhere in the community. As it turned out, this was a strategically good location; Kinoshita could not only get news about the community quickly here—who was sick, in the clinic, or transferred to outside hospitals or the identities and arrivals of new residents—but could mingle with the staff and listen informally to their views on their work and on general management issues.

In the first weeks, Kinoshita tried to make his stay as visible as possible. He spent extensive time with his daughter outdoors and at the community center, meeting residents and trying to memorize their names and faces. The Kinoshitas had their meals at the dining hall, took baths in the hot spring bath at the community center, and took the shuttle bus to nearby supermarkets, meanwhile explaining to each new acquaintance their purpose in the community. It was the end of the busy summer season, and many residents at first thought the strangers were someone's guests.

To increase his visibility, Kinoshita put a self-introductory notice on the bulletin board at the community center, a method that turned out to be highly effective. New acquaintances soon began to look on him with recognition, saying that they had seen his greeting message and understood some details about his presence. The method was effective again four months later when he announced the beginning of his interview contacts and explained their purpose. The interviewing went smoothly because people knew what to expect and why.

From the start, Kinoshita was careful to present himself in a slightly ambiguous role in order to keep options for interaction open. Initially, he had been asked by a senior official at the head

office in Tokyo to take the roles of staff-consultant and counselor. But these roles would have defined his relationships with both the staff and the residents in a very limited way. He decided not to take these roles, particularly after he realized that relations between management and residents were often somewhat tense. Instead, he presented himself consistently as a graduate student from the University of California who would be at Fuji-no-Sato to collect data for his Ph.D. dissertation, which was, of course, exactly true. One senior official at the Tokyo office of the management organization was aware of the communication problem and advised Kinoshita not to worry about his ambiguous role, but simply to look at things through the eyes of the residents and offer constructive criticism of the management when it seemed appropriate.

The residents appeared to be ready to accept the student researcher. With few exceptions, their reactions were favorable; and several facts about this community might have made the research role particularly easy. First, because Fuji-no-Sato was well covered in the mass media and professional journalists visited the place occasionally, Kinoshita may have been seen as a similar visitor, though his stay was much longer. Second, the educational and intellectual levels of the residents, both men and women, were very high for their generation. Many men had been business executives, high-ranking government officials, teachers, or professors; many of the women were retired teachers. The residents therefore had a clear image of this student role, and Kinoshita was able to fit his behavior to their expectations. Finally, Japan as a society places a high value on education, so being a student is a distinct social status. This status is basically a positive one, but it also has a flavor of the half-fledged, and therefore not fully responsible, about it. A student is able to remain neutral in potential conflict situations, free to express his mind rather than act as a decision maker.

There was no such ready acceptance among the staff. Their initial reactions were varied, some being impressed by the doctoral student from an American university, some appearing distinctly unimpressed, and still others not knowing how to respond, keeping formal distance. If the residents represented the middle to upper-middle class, the staff, especially the older ones, represented the lower-middle class; and this difference may have been responsible for their reactions. Only after Kinoshita spent considerable time

chatting, drinking, and joining recreational activities with the staff did they begin to trust him.

By the time we selected Fuji-no-Sato as a research site, we thought we knew what kind of community we wanted to study and why. But like anyone trying to understand an unfamiliar community, Kinoshita soon learned that our original assumptions had been far too simple. The portrait of Fuji-no-Sato that emerged during that year yielded far fewer concrete answers than we had hoped. This study gave us a great appreciation for the complexity of the social dimensions of aging. The original questions are still very much alive for us, and we have added a long list of equally urgent new ones in our continuing search for answers.