Through Japanese Eyes: Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America 9781978819597

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Through Japanese Eyes

Global Perspectives on Aging Series editor, Sarah Lamb This series publishes books that will deepen and expand our understanding of age, aging, ageism, and late life in the United States and beyond. The series focuses on anthropology while being open to ethnographically vivid and theoretically rich scholarship in related fields, including sociology, religion, cultural studies, social medicine, medical humanities, gender and sexuality studies, human development, critical and cultural gerontology, and age studies. Books will be aimed at students, scholars, and occasionally the general public. Jason Danely, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan Parin Dossa and Cati Coe, eds., Transnational Aging and Reconfigurations of Kin Work Sarah Lamb, ed., Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People Ellyn Lem, Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life Michele Ruth Gamburd, Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka Yohko Tsuji, Through Japanese Eyes: Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America

Through Japanese Eyes Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America

YOHKO TSUJI

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Tsuji, Yohko, author. Title: Through Japanese eyes : thirty years of studying aging in America / Yohko Tsuji. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2020] | Series: Global perspectives on aging | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020007180 | ISBN 9781978819559 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978819566 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978819573 (epub) | ISBN 9781978819580 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978819597 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Aging—­Social aspects—­United States. | Aging—­Social aspects—­Japan. | Senior centers—­New York (State)—­Case studies. | Older people—­New York (State)—­ Case studies. | Older people—­Social conditions—­Cross-­cultural studies. Classification: LCC HQ1064.U5 T78 2020 | DDC 305.260973—­dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov/​2020007180 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2021 by Yohko Tsuji All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. ♾ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1992. www​.rutgersuniversitypress​.org Manufactured in the United States of America

To the memory of my parents, Yukie and Hisaaki Tsuji, and my husband, A. Thomas Kirsch

Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Japanese Names xiii

Introduction: Anthropology, Cultural Values, and Aging

1

1

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center

26

2

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves

52

3

Networking at Lake District Senior Center

67

4

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements

89

5

Who Supports Older Americans? Families, Self, and Other Sources

108

6

Temporal Complexity in Older Americans’ Lives

127

7

Changes and Continuities over Thirty Years of Research

153



Conclusion: Challenges and Hopes in the New Frontier of Aging

170

Acknowledgments 183 Notes 187 References 209 Index 223

vii

Illustrations Figures 1.

Making Raggedy Ann dolls

2. Exercising

27 28

3.

Gift shop on Nineteenth-­Century Tea Party Day: a volunteer at the cashier’s desk

31

4.

Gift shop on Nineteenth-­Century Tea Party Day: a volunteer in front of the display shelves

32

5.

Stuffed cat made by Eleanor

33

6.

“The Life and Age of Man: Stages of Man’s Life from the Cradle to the Grave”

128

7.

“The Life and Age of Woman: Stages of Woman’s Life from the Cradle to the Grave”

128

8.

Celebrating the sixty-­fifth anniversary of Lake District Senior Center

168

Tables 1.

Center participants’ places of residence in 1987–­1988

91

2.

Center participants’ places of residence in 2009 or at the time of death between 1989 and 2009

91

3.

Center participants’ living arrangements in 1987–­1988

92

ix

x  • Illustrations

4.

Living arrangements of Center participants who were alive in 2009

92

5.

Number of Center participants’ moves before and/or during 1987–­1988 research

95

6.

Number of Center participants’ moves between 1989 and 2009

96

7.

Number of Center participants’ moves in and out of the area before or during 1987–­1988

97

8.

Summary of moves among Center participants

98

Preface “Life, you never know.” I often heard these words at Lake District Senior Center during my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988. The contexts in which they were uttered varied. Participants at the Center used this expression to note the unpredictability of life—­for example, when they heard of the sudden death of a friend or a peer’s marriage late in life. They also said it to those facing difficult times, as a way to encourage them to be optimistic or at least open-­minded about the future. Since I finished my doctorate in 1991, two “life, you never know” incidents occurred that significantly delayed the writing of this book. First, my husband was diagnosed with advanced cancer in 1992. Thus instead of launching my career, I became his full-­time caregiver. He went through multiple operations, radiation treatments, and chemotherapy regimens over the next six and a half years until his death in 1999. Second, after having drafted a few chapters of this book in 2005, I went on the first of a series of long trips to Japan to assist my aging mother. These biannual trips continued for nine years, until 2014. While in Japan, my writing would stop. Though it would resume when I returned home, the frequent loss of momentum greatly slowed the pace of my writing. Consequently, completing this book took more than a decade. Reflecting back on his life afflicted with serious illnesses, the late Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo said, “There is nothing wasteful in life.” I agree. The long delays I encountered in completing this book were not a waste. They had many positive influences that compensated for the time lost. For one thing, they broadened the temporal horizon of my work. The three decades of follow-­up research allowed me to learn what had become of the elders who had participated in my initial fieldwork. This longitudinal study also opened my eyes to the dynamic aspects of senescence, which is characterized by major xi

xii  • Preface

transitions, including changes in residence, serious illness, the death of a spouse, remarriage, and divorce. It is not only my informants’ lives that have changed. Tremendous transformations—­both major and minor—­have swept American society and the world since the late 1980s. When I started my research, no one even dreamed of the ubiquitous presence of digital cameras, cell phones, and personal computers. In the late 1980s, elders at the Senior Center exchanged information about the best deal for film development and used landlines to make phone calls. The Center’s office was equipped with typewriters instead of computers. In addition to technological advancements, the culture of aging has also changed. For instance, facilities and services for older people in American society have expanded remarkably, resulting in concomitant changes in people’s perceptions of extrafamilial eldercare, which was once shameful but is now a socially acceptable option. Furthermore, my experiences as a caregiver for my husband and as his widow, as well as with my mother’s senescence and death, have enhanced my understanding of the inevitable age-­associated hardships of the participants in this study. Because of my own firsthand experience, I could visualize what it was like when they were hospitalized or had surgery, since my knowledge of American hospitals no longer came from ethnographic descriptions alone. My own experience helped me understand how these elders felt when they or their loved ones were diagnosed with cancer or when doctors told them that all treatments had been exhausted and death was imminent. Elders at the Senior Center and I also shared the sorrow of losing a spouse. Only after my husband’s death could I detect the pain a widow was still feeling when she talked about the husband she had lost years earlier, recognizing the grief buried in her matter-­of-­fact tone. Being a caregiver for my mother gave me an opportunity to observe various aspects of Japanese hospitals (e.g., doctor-­patient relationships, nurses’ roles) and Japanese attitudes toward terminal illness and death. I was also exposed to Japan’s single-­payer medical insurance and long-­term care insurance systems for senior citizens. Neither generated the tedious paperwork Americans face after major illnesses—­the large piles of insurance statements and medical bills. However, above all, looking after my mother in Japan did not just inform me of these cultural differences; it also made me realize the similarities in the panhuman experiences of illness, old age, and death. “Some things in life . . . are best done slowly,” notes Marc Freedman. “Efficiency, expediency, and productivity have a way of undermining [people’s] endeavors” and elders’ “slowness” is a “virtue” (1999, 233). He sees this as a positive side of aging. Freedman’s statements are equally applicable to the long delays I experienced during the writing of this book. I sincerely hope that its readers will benefit from the deepening of my knowledge and appreciation of older people’s lives brought on by these delays.

Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Japanese Names Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Japanese to English are mine. In transliterating Japanese terms, diacritical markers are added to indicate long vowels (e.g., Itō). It is vital to differentiate long and short vowels in Japanese because two nonidentical words cannot be distinguished without diacritical markers (e.g., soshiki means “organizations” but sōshiki means “funerals”). Exceptions are words that are widely known in English without diacritical markers (e.g., Tokyo rather than Tōkyō; Shusaku Endo rather than Shūsaku Endō). Japanese names are also written in the Western style (with the given name followed by the family name) instead of according to the Japanese custom (which gives the family name first).

xiii

Through Japanese Eyes

Introduction Anthropology, Cultural Values, and Aging Under the bright sun of California, I arrived in San Diego in August 1976. I had left Japan, my native country, to study at an American college for two years. My main objective was to improve my overall proficiency in English. During two previous trips to America, I had not experienced much difficulty communicating. My score on the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language, required for foreign applicants to American colleges) was high enough to allow me to seek admission to competitive graduate schools. Nonetheless, I was often told that although my writing was grammatically correct, it contained awkward expressions that revealed its writer was a foreigner. I wanted to learn to write like a native speaker. That was why I chose to study in America, where I could immerse myself in the world of English speakers by taking courses in English, history, political science, mathematics, biology, and so on. After finishing my studies, I planned to return to Japan and work as a bilingual executive assistant. But life unfolded a totally different course of events for me. On that bright day in 1976, I had no idea that I would ultimately live in America for more than four decades, much less marry an American man of German Irish descent and become a U.S. citizen. Nor would I have dreamed that I would study anthropology and earn a PhD in it. The door to studying anthropology opened up relatively early during my stay in America. After my arrival in San Diego, a variety of experiences made me keenly aware of the cultural differences between the United States and 1

2  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Japan. Surprises and perplexities were abundant in my early days in San Diego. For instance, when I went to meet the dean, I wore a formal dress, as was customary in Japan. Upon entering the dean’s office, I saw a middle-­aged man with a huge mustache in blue jeans and cowboy boots sitting on the secretary’s desk. When I announced that I was there to see the dean, the secretary pointed to him and said, “He is right in front of you.” I was also bewildered by the fact that the school calendar marked “Admission Day” a few weeks after classes started. Based on Japanese customs, I assumed that there would be a formal entrance ceremony at the beginning of the school year and that must be what was meant by “Admission Day.” To my surprise, it turned out to be a day to commemorate the state of California’s admission to the Union, not the first-­year class’s admittance to the college. However, it did not take me long to get accustomed to this casualness and lack of formality. I wore jeans and T-shirts and walked into my apartment with my shoes on. My diet included hamburgers and tacos. A few months after my arrival, I acquired my driver’s license and regarded my used ’69 Buick as indispensable in my life.1 But these adjustments to American ways of life did not mark the end of my culture shock. I remember how astonished I was when I heard one American mother say that her infant son’s total dependency on her was disconcerting or when another mother of a preschooler asserted that she did not want to be responsible for her daughter twenty-­four hours a day, seven days a week. Japanese mothers—­who believed that a mother be totally devoted to her children, that it was her responsibility to look after them around the clock—­would never utter these words. Wasn’t maternal love supposed to be universal?2 The two American mothers’ seemingly self-­centered words also perplexed me because I had clearly observed their maternal love in their interactions with their children. While my relative fluency in English was a great help in my new life in America, I also learned that it offered only a limited solution to dealing with cultural issues. When my writing assignments repeatedly came back with instructors’ comments like “Don’t beat around the bush,” and “Say it more directly,” I tried hard to write in a more direct fashion. But I could not totally overcome my instincts, which favored indirect narrative because Japanese writing conventions require that the main idea be said after a preamble. In Japan, straightforward expressions are regarded as crude or immature. Furthermore, I kept feeling I was “different” from my American friends, including those with whom I was emotionally close. This was not as clear-cut as feeling like an outsider. It was subtle but unmistakable, and it continued even after I became so accustomed to my American life that I experienced reverse culture shock on my first return trip to Japan. I pondered what was causing this feeling and why it was so persistent. Eventually, I came to realize that

Introduction  •  3

the answer might lie in the cultural differences between America and Japan at a much deeper level than relatively transparent, easy-­to-­adjust elements of lifestyle, such as diet, clothing, and transportation methods. This deeper-­ level aspect of culture was not readily visible, and it was hard to grasp. Yet it had an undeniable impact on me because I was culturally Japanese and living in an American cultural landscape that was foreign to me. All these early experiences adjusting to life in America led me to major in anthropology. To pursue a bachelor’s degree, I decided to stay in America for two more years. The first door in my anthropological studies had been opened.

Choosing to Study Aging in America After graduating from the University of California San Diego in 1980, I enrolled in a PhD program in anthropology at Cornell University, aiming to study Chinese marriage in Taiwan. Like going to a graduate school, doing research on senescence in America was not my original plan but the outcome of a series of unexpected events in my life. In 1984, during my graduate studies at Cornell, I married my late husband. We spent the 1985–­1986 academic year in Thailand while he, a Thai specialist, took sabbatical leave. Our life in a provincial town gave us little access to the comforts and conveniences we had back home (e.g., air conditioning, hot showers, reliable telephone service). But once I made adjustments and learned to speak enough Thai to get around, it gave me a valuable opportunity not only to observe tremendous changes occurring in people’s lives but also to establish long-­lasting, close relationships with two Thai families who had “adopted” my husband in the early 1960s during his research in a remote village (Tsuji 2010). Despite the hot and humid weather, exotic food,3 and unfamiliar environments, I remained healthy. But the tropical weather and a rice-­based diet with little animal protein negatively affected my husband’s health. He lost sixty pounds, which was so alarming that we were worried that he had contracted tropical sprue, something he had suffered during his earlier fieldwork in the country. To our great relief, tropical sprue was ruled out. But my husband came home with other health issues that required surgery. This compelled me to change my research plan to a project that would allow me to do fieldwork close to home. Thus I chose aging in America for practical reasons, as well as for both the ethnographic and theoretical reasons that will become clear. However, the genesis of my interest in senescence in America came from a totally unexpected incidence of culture shock I had experienced shortly after my arrival in San Diego. It occurred when my octogenarian friend, Mr. Billing­ ham, visited me in San Diego from Indiana.4 My roommates treated him nicely but surprised me after his departure by commenting, “I’d rather die

4  •  Through Japanese Eyes

before I become like him,” “He has outlived his usefulness. He’d be happier dead,” and “I would commit suicide before I became old, frail, and ugly.” Their words undoubtedly conveyed a strongly negative view of old age. I could not imagine any of my Japanese friends uttering these words. In addition, my own reaction to my older friend’s visit was the complete opposite to that of my American friends. Knowing many homebound Japanese elders, I admired his desire and ability to travel such a long distance by bus. Eventually, I learned that my roommates’ negative attitudes toward senescence were not uncommon in America. A decade later, when I told my academic advisors of my decision to research aging in America, one of them exclaimed, “What a gloomy topic you have chosen!” Although aging is a panhuman phenomenon, the unexpected culture shock resulting from Mr. Billingham’s visit made me realize how different old age in America was from what I had known in Japan. Later, I also learned that some of the dominant values in these two societies opposed one another. For instance, American culture celebrates independence, while Japanese culture emphasizes interdependence. Such cross-­cultural differences have offered me a comparative perspective that has enabled me to see what American researchers take for granted and to shed new light on this well-­studied topic.5 A cross-­cultural perspective has always been present in my research on aging in America, which started in 1987 with eighteen months of fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center6 in upstate New York and has continued over the next three decades. In this book, I make occasional references to the experiences of older Japanese, not to provide ethnography of aging in Japan, but to highlight the distinctive features of senescence in America that may not be obvious to “natives.” My longitudinal research also informs various changes experienced by older Americans I came to know, as well as the changes in the culture of aging in American society. In short, my book is written from two comparative perspectives: cross-­cultural and historical. To acquaint the readers with my cultural background, the next section will provide a brief description of my experience with elders in Japan.

Older People in My Japanese Life Older people occupied a significant part of my life in Japan. I grew up in a traditional three-­generation household, where my widowed grandmother lived with us until her death in 1988 at age ninety-­one. Most of my contemporaries also had their grandparents living in the same household. Thus the neighborhood was full of old folks. Adults taught children to be respectful and kind to them. Older people in return kept an eye on young children. Except for a few men whose authoritative manner intimidated me, I regarded my elderly

Introduction  •  5

neighbors as people who helped and comforted me when my mother and grandmother were not available. Many Japanese folk tales that I read repeatedly reinforced this image of benign, nurturing elders. The young heroes and heroines in some of these stories were born magically—­out of a bamboo or a peach—­and were raised by a kind older couple. The evil elders depicted in some Western tales, such as the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” were foreign and made an enduring, frightening impression on me. My grandmother played a significant role in my early life because, with both of my parents working, she took care of the household and raised my sister and me. While my friends’ grandmothers enjoyed retirement with their daughters-­in-­law taking charge, my grandmother still had many responsibilities. Yet she did not seem to mind because, with no adult but her at home during the day, our house became a gathering place for her elderly friends, mostly widows like her. It was only many years later, as a grown-­up, that I recognized a more important reason my grandmother was willing to give up her retirement. Like the majority of her contemporaries, she believed that a happy life in old age was one surrounded by children and grandchildren. Indeed, coresiding with the family of one child, normally the eldest son, was a cultural prescription for securing personal care in old age. My grandmother, who was predeceased by her three sons, lived with the family of her daughter instead. I came to acquire the idea of old age as “a period of rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127) through my daily interactions with older people and what adults said about them and did for them. Although, like my grandmother, some of the elders in my neighborhood, women in particular, were indispensable around the house, others were too frail to do anything useful. However, no one looked down upon these noncontributing members of society. I was told that their lifelong hard work had consumed their bodies so they deserved special care in old age and that because parents took care of children in their early lives, children in return should look after their parents in old age. In anthropological terms, I was taught the importance of intergenerational dependency and delayed reciprocity. On (indebtedness) and oyakōkō (filial piety) were the words adults used for this teaching.7 Many years later, I learned that Ruth Benedict used a phrase, the period of “maximum freedom and indulgence” (1946, 254), to describe older Japanese’ entitlement for dependency. My grandmother, who had forgone her retirement for many years, eventually reaped the privilege of old age. When she reached her eighties and began to show signs of decline, my mother retired from her teaching job to take over domestic duties and attend to her needs. My grandmother did not resent this change caused by her advanced age, which I later learned many older Americans would find hard to tolerate. She accepted her “period of rightful

6  •  Through Japanese Eyes

dependency” (Fry 1980, 127) with joy and gratitude. She said, “I don’t work anymore, but three meals appear in front of me. I wonder if life in the Pure Land [equivalent to heaven in the Jōdo Shinshu sect of Buddhism] is like this.” Old customs died hard, however. Even after her mobility became impaired, my grandmother continued to help as best she could. It was a familiar scene at the yearend to see her sitting on the kitchen floor, peeling, shelling, and chopping vegetables for special dishes for the New Year’s celebration. Until close to her death, she continued to crochet and left behind many vests and pillowcases.8 The Japanese custom of celebrating long life also gave me the impression that old age was something to cherish, not to dread. As Americans celebrate silver and golden wedding anniversaries, Japanese honor older people on their special birthdays: kanreki for the sixtieth, koki for the seventieth, kiju for the seventy-­seventh, sanju for the eightieth, beiju for the eighty-­eighth, sotsuju for the ninetieth, and so on (Tsuji 2011). Since I moved to America in 1976, senescence in Japan has gone through colossal transformations, reflecting major changes in demographics as well as in primary institutions, such as families, workplaces, and neighborhood communities, which traditionally served as important sources of mutual assistance. Hence social isolation, poverty, and solitary death have become serious problems. In this book, I discuss some of these issues in relation to the changes in senescence in America. But when I lived in Japan, older people were an integral part of my life, and my image of old age was generally positive.9 Coming to America challenged this perception of senescence.

Exposure to Old Age in America: Ethnographic Questions In addition to strongly negative attitudes toward it, senescence in America intrigued me for another reason: the disappearance of older people from my life. I did not experience any interactions with elders in San Diego. I never saw them except for glimpses of elderly passengers on the bus. The invisibility of older people both surprised and perplexed me because life without them had been unthinkable in my Japanese life. Growing old surely creates problems, such as declining health, diminishing resources, role loss, and loneliness. However, these problems are panhuman, not culture-­specific. My grandmother retained her sight, hearing, and cognition until the end. She was also ambulatory except for a few months before her death. Living with my parents (both were retired by then) and having my sister’s family nearby, she was seldom left alone. Yet she subtly expressed her loneliness by asking my father where my mother was when she was not in sight. Because many problems of old age are shared cross-­culturally, the negative stereotypes and invisible elders in America mystified senescence and intensified

Introduction  •  7

my curiosity. Why are senior citizens “hidden” in American society? Why do Americans regard old age so differently from the Japanese? How do American elders feel about being old? If advanced age is so bad, how do they cope with their plight? What kinds of lives do they lead? Are their lives as depressing as my American friends believed? These are the ethnographic questions I investigated in my thirty years of research. In my attempt to find answers to these questions, I came up with one possible explanation: the differences between families in America and Japan. When Americans marry, they establish their own households and live separately from their parents. This living arrangement creates problems when parents become too old to take care of themselves. Japanese elders, who traditionally live with the family of their eldest son, receive care from their coresiding family members, normally their daughter-­in-­law. The concept of filial piety also means children are obligated to look after their aging parents. No wonder Americans are afraid of growing old, I naively thought. However, as I became more familiar with the American way of life, I came to realize that what is behind the negative view of old age is not the nuclear family. Rather, it is the dominant cultural values that affirm youth, strength, future-­orientedness, productivity, achievement, and independence. The nuclear family simply is the manifestation of one of these values—­that is, independence in the form of intergenerational autonomy, which both parents and children wish to maintain. When I told my American friends—­including elders at Lake District Senior Center—­about the traditional Japanese family, they uniformly deplored the idea of living with their parents or parents-­in-­law after marriage. Since Japanese culture emphasizes the importance of interdependence and of the groups one belongs to, Americans’ quest for independence and individual freedom most powerfully reminded me that I was in a foreign country in my early days in America. Even though my classmates and I went to the same school and my roommates and I lived in the same apartment, I could not help feeling that each individual led his or her own life. The sense of belongingness that would have emerged in the same kind of situation in Japan was absent. Occasionally, we ate or went to a movie together. However, these were not mandated group activities. They occurred randomly out of individual choice.10 Independence was no less important for Mr. Billingham, my octogenarian friend from Indiana, than for my classmates and roommates. A widower, he lived alone in his house and, despite his advanced age, did all the chores by himself. When I told my family in Japan about him, their immediate response was, “Doesn’t he have any children?” Independence is such an important value in American culture that its loss is very demoralizing. However, as one gets older, one increasingly needs to

8  •  Through Japanese Eyes

depend on others to carry on with life. This is the most difficult thing about being old, said Emma, a ninety-­four-­year-­old blind resident at a retirement home. For Mr. Billingham, moving to a nursing home ended his autonomous life. After his move, I visited him in Indiana and gladly found him still alert and ambulatory. I was also relieved that the nursing home he lived in did not fit into the dismal picture imagined by my American friends. It was pleasantly decorated, and the staff was friendly. Even so, the loss of independence dispirited this once lively octogenarian. He died a few years later while what he called “Old Man Winter” gripped the Midwest with subzero temperatures. Having recognized the utmost importance of independence for Americans, I realized that one of my ethnographic foci should be about how older Americans tried to maintain autonomy when their physical, cognitive, and financial declines jeopardized it.

Culture and Old Age: Theoretical Questions It seems that Americans detest old age because it represents the antithesis of the country’s cultural ideals. In other words, culture is the culprit for the plight of American elders. By contrast, Japanese culture seems to offer a neat prescription for the problems of old age: for example, coresidence with children, an emphasis on interdependence, and the Confucian ethics of filial piety. My realization of these differences, together with the puzzlements and misunderstandings I experienced living in a foreign country, made me ponder what culture was, what role culture played in people’s lives, and how people responded to culture. In a theory course for cultural anthropology, I learned the anthropological concept of culture, which my professor succinctly summarized as “consisting of shared understandings.” Though abstract theories were initially hard to articulate, I began to grasp culture as something that helped people understand the world around them and guided their actions and thoughts by providing both the “recipe” and a body of knowledge (e.g., norms, rules, assumptions, information, values) that made the “recipe” comprehensible (Geertz 1973).11 In this view, culture is invisible12 and exists inside each person, though it is shared among members of the same culture.13 This concept of culture explains why I felt “different” from my American friends long after I adapted to the American way of life. To put it another way, no matter how similar my behavior and appearance have become to those of Americans, Japanese cultural values, such as interdependence, remain at the core of who I am more than forty years after I had left Japan. My American friends do not share these values; they embrace different ones, such as independence.14 In addition to this recognition, an incident in my early days in San Diego reminded me that culturally, I was still deeply rooted in Japan. It happened

Introduction  •  9

when one of my American friends heard about a case of boshi shinjū, or mother-­child double suicide, in which a mother kills her child(ren) and commits suicide afterward. He exclaimed, “That is not a double suicide! It’s a murder!” He was right. Boshi shinjū is a murder followed by a suicide or a suicide attempt by the murderer. Unlike a love-­pact suicide, there is no consensus to die together between the mother and the child. But most Japanese, including myself, did not question the inaccuracy of this term. Taken aback by my American friend’s strong reaction, I wondered why the Japanese called this case of murder a suicide and why the Japanese mother would kill her child along with herself. Later, I investigated these questions in my honors thesis. Boshi shinjū has been called a double suicide because the Japanese understand that for various reasons, the distressed mother contemplating suicide could not bear to leave the child behind. Among them are that (1) the bond between the mother and the child is so strong, it is regarded as the prototype of the ideal interdependent relationship; (2) losing one’s mother is seen as hugely traumatic to a child because the mother is regarded as the best caretaker of the child (M. Fujita 1989)—­and is frequently the sole caretaker due to the work-­devoted father’s absence from the home; and (3) since the family is the smallest social unit in Japan, the social stigma of a mother’s suicide is imposed on the child. Paradoxical as it might seem, the mother’s love for her child and devotion to her maternal role compels her to kill her child for the child’s own sake before killing herself.15 Hence the Japanese would criticize a mother who killed herself alone and left her child motherless while sympathizing with the anguish of a mother who succeeded in killing her child but failed in her own suicide attempt.16 The case of boshi shinjū was an eye-­opener. It taught me that not only do we take culture for granted but also similar matters may have profoundly different meanings in different cultures. While the dictionary definition of suicide is killing oneself, each culture seems to give additional meaning to it. In America, it is normally viewed negatively, as a sin or a sign of weakness. In Japan, it is regarded sympathetically, as a sincere apology and a sign of one’s devotion to one’s roles.17 In the past, suicide was even praised as an honor and an indication of patriotism in cases of institutionalized suicide, such as hara-­kiri among samurai warriors and suicide attacks of kamikaze pilots during World War II. Anthropologists consider these meanings “symbolic” because they are arbitrarily agreed upon. Culture—­and people—­bestow symbolic meanings upon many things. We have noted that suicide signifies a sin in America and an honor in Japan; as this example indicates, what a symbol (e.g., suicide) stands for often differs from one culture to another.18 While we are growing up, we acquire the symbolic meanings of our own culture.19 I realized that

10  •  Through Japanese Eyes

like suicide, old age must have symbolic meanings. This would explain why Americans and Japanese have such different attitudes toward the panhuman experience of aging. As my studies continued, I learned that the concepts of culture and the relation­ship between culture and people were major theoretical issues in anthropology, but they first emerged as my own personal questions. Years later, these issues have become a theoretical framework for my research on older Americans, allowing me to explore the role culture plays in their lives and elders’ responses—­both conscious and unconscious—­to their culture. Long before I had cross-­cultural experiences, I sensed the complexity in the interplay between culture20 and people. For one thing, nobody could always attain cultural ideals. Thus even when Japanese tradition prescribed neat solutions for aging problems, not everyone enjoyed “a period of rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127). As Robert J. Smith and Ella Lury Wiswell noted in a rural village in the 1930s, “Without doubt the saddest of all were the elderly women who lived alone, having been abandoned by their children” (1982, 200). Following cultural prescriptions does not always promise a happy old age either, because the very solution may itself be the cause of problems. A notable example is a conflict between the mother-­in-­law and the daughter-­in-­law, who is normally responsible for looking after aging family members. While some older women establish good rapport with their daughters-­in-­law and are well taken care of, others have tense relationships and suffer from neglect or even bullying. This may, at least partly, account for the high suicide rate among older Japanese women (Lebra 1984, 284), but regardless of gender, the suicide rate among older Japanese is high (Traphagan 2004, 316).21 Since family care has remained the primary source of security for elders in Japan even after the national long-­term care insurance system was implemented in 2000, its absence, especially when an elder is living with family, is extremely distressful. The strong correlation between the suicide rate and household size indicates that the stress caused by coresidence may contribute to elder suicide (Traphagan 2004, 317; Thang 2001, 176). As these examples illustrate, even when culture provides guidance, a gap may exist between the ideal and the real because some individuals are unable or do not wish to comply with cultural norms. Viewed as the antithesis of cultural ideals of youthful vitality, old age in America creates much greater cultural dissonance or contradiction. Furthermore, this incongruence is not the outcome of each elder’s idiosyncratic circumstances but is culturally constructed. Therefore, old age in America is a strategic place to observe what role culture plays in people’s lives and how they respond to their culture. Being framed by these theoretical questions, my study demonstrates how older Americans negotiate this serious disparity between the “ought” and the “is” of senescence.

Introduction  •  11

The rest of this chapter will introduce the readers to Lake District Senior Center, the primary site of my fieldwork, as well as my research method and a review of literature on aging in America.

Fieldwork I vividly remember my first visit to Lake District Senior Center in 1987. I had an appointment with the executive director to discuss the possibility of doing research there. The Center was located in a quiet, old residential neighborhood. Because the Center’s two-­story building was originally a family home, it was indistinguishable from other homes in the area except for two small signs saying “Gift Shop” and “Senior Citizens Council Established 1952.”22 Yet stepping into the building brought me to a different world. It was a shock to see such a concentration of older people after they had been hidden from my eyes for many years. The sea of short, curly, gray hair was in striking contrast to the bright colors of their clothing. Being used to Japanese elders who dressed in drab colors, I could not help feeling that I was an outsider in terms of both my age and my cultural background. This feeling quickly vanished once my interactions with them began. When I lingered in the hallway looking for the director’s office, a smiling wrinkled face greeted me and gave me directions. Later, Center participants extended a warm welcome to me when the director introduced me as a graduate student who would soon start her research at the Center. My first impression of Lake District Senior Center as a cordial and pleasant place did not change when I began to attend the art class and the clay workshop as a pilot project for my fieldwork. While I painted pictures and kneaded clay, chatting and laughing with older folks, my age and cultural heritage did not set me apart from the rest of the class. Before long, I became a member of these two groups. When people recognized me as a regular participant in Center activities, other groups and classes invited me to join them. Within a month, I was at the Center every day, not only attending the art class and clay workshop but also knitting, singing, making dolls, doing exercises, and hearing lectures. My fieldwork was in full swing.

Lake District Senior Center When I was growing up in Japan, people in my neighborhood gathered together annually to honor older people. The other schoolchildren and I sang songs and staged a play to entertain our grandparents, and our mothers prepared festive meals. Though these events were discontinued before I left Japan, the municipal government subsequently started a monthly meeting where elders were offered lunch and participated in recreational activities. At these

12  •  Through Japanese Eyes

meetings, older Japanese were shown respect and provided services. In other words, these events were for the elderly, but not by the elderly. By contrast, Lake District Senior Center is an organization for the elderly, by the elderly (Tsuji 1997c). It came into being in 1952 when charter members recognized the necessity for an organization of older people in their community. A senior center was virtually unheard of then. Though the New York City Welfare Department opened the nation’s first senior center in 1943 to alleviate the isolation and loneliness of low-­income seniors, the number of senior centers in the country reached no more than two hundred by the end of the 1950s (Krout 1989, 16). Lake District Senior Center is distinctively different from America’s first senior center. It is a private organization founded by citizens. Its goal is broader than that of the 1943 senior center in New York City, providing not only recreational activities and a place for companionship but also educational and community service opportunities. To realize these objectives, the Center has initiated a variety of innovative programs since opening, such as a preretirement program, a quarterly newsletter to spread information on aging, and the friendly visiting program for seniors who are confined to their homes. To enhance elders’ health, it published a booklet, Senior Citizens Cook Alone—­and Like It, and organized a glaucoma-­screening clinic (Gabriel 1972). Lake District Senior Center also played a leading role in identifying unmet social needs for elders and having the necessary services instituted. For example, both housing and transportation services for elders became a reality in the 1970s after years of advocacy in which Center participants played a leadership role. They started this work long before American society became aware of its older citizens’ needs, and the federal government passed three important aging-­related pieces of legislation in 1965: the Older Americans Act, the Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act, and the Housing and Urban Development Act. In short, Lake District Senior Center is typical of the American voluntary association that Tocqueville (1945) observed in the nineteenth century. However, the Center does not fit the voluntary organization model of senior centers, which generally attract higher-­income seniors who actively participate in community affairs (Taietz 1976).23 Unlike such centers, Lake District Senior Center draws participants from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, from a wealthy business owner to welfare recipients. While the majority are middle-­class and working-­class whites, Center participants include Protestants, Catholics, Jews, whites, Blacks, Asians, and immigrants (primarily from Europe).24 Similarly, their places of residence vary, covering urban, suburban, and rural areas. Diversity also exists in their preretirement occupations; there are former teachers, administrators, civil servants, factory workers, business owners, shop

Introduction  •  13

clerks, secretaries, clerics, and farmers. Their ages range from the late fifties to late nineties.25 During my initial fieldwork, most Center participants were in their seventies and eighties and were born in either the first or the second decade of the twentieth century. About a dozen were born in the last decade of the nineteenth century, constituting a cohort of the oldest members. The rest were relatively recent retirees in their sixties, born in the 1920s, and a fraction were in their late fifties.26 Since the Center’s establishment in 1952, self-­help has been a central motto. At the initial promotional gathering, one of the charter members emphasized, “If Senior Citizens were to have happier, healthier lives, they must solve their problems themselves in their own way” (Gabriel 1972, 18). For the first four years, volunteers alone operated the Center. With the increase in participants and the expansion of programs, it became necessary to hire paid workers and obtain public funds. But these changes did not dampen the spirit of self-­help. The paramount symbol of this was the first home the Center owned. Because it was purchased in 1970, when no federal money was available for constructing senior centers, elders’ self-­help and determination made this happen after nearly two decades of saving, searching, and repeated involuntary moves.27 By the time of my initial research in 1987–­1988, this building, which they called “Home,” was bursting at the seams with activities, and the search for a bigger one had begun. The spirit of self-­help remained strong when I started my initial fieldwork. Through their volunteer work and donations, older people played an important role in operating the Center. They provided clerical help, updated the mailing list, mailed out thousands of newsletters, and maintained the grounds. Center participants also held fundraising sales. Volunteers ran the gift shop and donated its proceeds to the Center. Some elders made decisions on Center-­related issues by serving on committees. Since my research began three decades ago, many changes have occurred at Lake District Senior Center. But the Center has survived some serious financial woes and has kept its doors open as “an organization for the elderly, by the elderly” (Tsuji 1997c).

Research Method My initial research at Lake District Senior Center began in February 1987 and continued for eighteen months. During my daily visits to the Center, I followed a classic anthropological research method called “participant observation.” I gathered most of the information in this book by watching elders, participating in their activities, and talking and listening to them. From time to time, I asked short questions to clarify a point or to obtain some missing information. As I came to know people well, I had many long talks with them on a variety of topics. In general, I did not take notes in the presence of my

14  •  Through Japanese Eyes

informants.28 When I heard something I wanted to quote verbatim, I went to a bathroom and jotted it down.29 Each night at home, I typed up a recapitulation of the day. My research involved no formal, structured interviews either in person or on the phone. Due to these research methods, during the first few months, some elders asked me when I would start my research. They asked this question because Center participants were often the subjects of questionnaires and structured interviews. I explained to them that we anthropologists normally did not rely on questionnaires and interviews as our primary research method because we studied people’s way of life more by learning it as a student than investigating it as a researcher. This research method simultaneously positioned me as an insider (a participant) and an outsider (an observer). The paradox was fruitful because being inside allowed me to learn about these older Americans’ lives from their perspective and being outside let me see the aspects of their lives they took for granted. Although Lake District Senior Center served as my primary field site, I participated in other aging-­related events outside the Center. They included the fundraising drives for the Center; the Center’s annual meetings held at a nearby hotel; a trip to the state fair on Senior Citizens Day; a Gray Panthers’ meeting; seminars on adult day care, housing options, and financial arrangements in case of a catastrophic illness; and so on. I also saw Center participants outside the Center. I visited the homes of many of them, and they in return visited me at my home. In addition, I went on outings with older people to eat, shop, and visit. On these occasions, I met those of their peers who did not come to the Center and thus expanded my networks of interlocutors. I also accompanied some elders to their doctor’s and hairdresser’s appointments. My informants included some younger Americans. Among them were the staff and the nonsenior instructors of Lake District Senior Center, as well as adult children of Center participants. They offered me perspectives on aging that were different from those of the elders. This initial fieldwork was followed by four months of archival research at libraries and a historical society to supplement my data on older Americans and to investigate aspects of aging in the region’s past. Although my daily visits to Lake District Senior Center ceased in 1988, I continued my research over the thirty years that followed. I remained in touch with elders I had met during my initial fieldwork through occasional visits to the Center and participation in various events there and elsewhere. Talking on the phone also helped us sustain ongoing relationships. In addition, I became a volunteer instructor at the Senior Center and offered courses on anthropology, Asian women, Asian food, and the Japanese language. At the request

Introduction  •  15

of one of my interlocutors, I gave lectures on East Asia and aging in America at a retirement community she had moved into, and I occasionally participated in some of their programs, such as chair yoga and jazz concerts. As my informants grew older, I visited them at hospitals, senior housing, and nursing homes. I also attended many funerals and memorial services. Though all but one of my original informants have died, I have continued my contact with the Senior Center and its people. I have visited the Center occasionally, taken courses (e.g., estate planning, contemporary Cuba, and multiple computer classes), and attended events (e.g., a fashion show, an open house, monthly Sunday lunches, and annual meetings). This has provided me with plentiful opportunities to meet more elders, many of whom, including baby boomers, are younger than my original interlocutors. My longitudinal research enabled me to follow the lives of the older Americans I came to know well during my initial fieldwork and to observe many transformations in their lives, including their declines and deaths. It also allowed me to witness the changes and continuities in the culture of aging in American society. Because my research has occupied a substantial part of my adulthood and three quarters of my residence in America, it has encompassed a number of major events in my life, including my academic career and illnesses and deaths in my family, as well as my own aging, as I have since become a senior citizen myself. All these things had significant impacts on my understanding of elders’ experiences, particularly life crises, because I have now personally undergone many of them. The three decades of my research taught me much about senescence in America and gave me a new, reflective perspective through which to view old age in Japan. In the same period, my familiarity with American culture also deepened. My original interlocutors played an especially significant role in expanding my knowledge of American culture in both depth and scope. For one thing, they brought me into the “town” culture of the small city where the Senior Center was located. Like many other college-­dominated communities, “town-­gown” tensions and segregation existed, and until I started my fieldwork in 1987, I had been enclaved in “gown” cultures in both San Diego and upstate New York because my life had been centered on universities. Even after marriage, since I did not have children, my interactions with “town” people had been limited. Knowing elders from a wide range of socioeconomic, educational, and occupational backgrounds with different personal histories exposed me to aspects of American culture I had not known before. Furthermore, by hearing their reminiscences of various past events (e.g., the great flood of 1935) and their own life experiences (e.g., attending a one-­room schoolhouse), rural upstate New York came alive to me in both its history and life at present. These experiences contributed to anchoring me at a comfortable

16  •  Through Japanese Eyes

place in American culture. My life in the United States reached a point where very seldom did I encounter the kinds of culture shock and bewilderment that I had experienced earlier.

Literature on Aging in America During my research of thirty years, many publications on aging in America have become available, including those written by anthropologists. This section briefly reviews some major works and my responses to them.

Dark Pictures of Senescence Some of the literature on aging in America surprised me, particularly those published from the 1960s to the 1980s. For one thing, it presented gruesome pictures of senescence that defied my expectations, as I had thought they would discuss both positive and negative sides of aging. For instance, Sarah Matthews writes that the stereotypical American elder is considered “impoverished, socially isolated, and physically disabled” (1979, 55). She adds, “Old is a stigma” (57). Susan Sontag, a writer-­activist, compared old age in America to “a shipwreck” (1972, 29). Barbara Myerhoff, the anthropologist who introduced us to the lives of the remarkable—­though socially marginal—­participants of a Jewish senior center in 1978, wrote, “Retirements and funerals are crude markers for the stark beginning and end of old age; in between there is a universe of differentiation that remains a cultural wasteland for each to calculate and navigate alone, without the aid of ritual, ceremony, or symbol” (1984, 312). The dark picture of senescence was also evident in the summary of the 1981 White House Conference on Aging. It warned, “Despite ample evidence of the contributions and potentials of older adults, devastating myths and stereotypes endure. As a result, inequities are perpetuated, the elderly are denied full participation in society, and younger persons dread old age” (White House Conference on Aging 1981, 4). Negative attitudes toward the aged are often regarded as the product of a modern, industrialized society (Cowgill and Holmes 1972; Scheper-­Hughes 1983). Yet seniors in America’s past did not seem to enjoy the privileges and respect that those in some preindustrial societies did. Historian Carole Haber reported, “Clearly, there was never a golden age of senescence in which the old were treated with veneration” (1983, 5).30 After World War II, “profoundly important changes in the meanings and experiences of being old” occurred (Achenbaum 1983, 166) that had some potentially positive impacts on senescence in America. In particular, the Older Americans Act and the Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act in 1965 substantially increased senior citizens’ entitlements and society’s awareness of their problems. In addition, the graying of American society and

Introduction  •  17

grassroots activism for retirees’ rights and against ageism (e.g., AARP, Gray Panthers)31 enhanced the visibility of older people as a political force and as a potential market for products and services. Yet ironically, these changes may also have created further discrimination against older Americans. With more public money spent on them, the aged were regarded both as a social burden and as unwelcome competitors vying for a bigger piece of pie. Thus “a generational war” (E. Goodman 1988, 20A) took place and heightened ageism. The stubborn existence of negative views of senescence is reported in more recent literature as well. Lawrence Samuel notes, “Despite laudable attempts by AARP and some ‘pro-­aging’ advocates, the years following the age of fifty or perhaps sixty are commonly considered a kind of existential purgatory between the end of one’s active life and death” (2017, 4). His statement echoes Myerhoff ’s earlier observation, noted above, that retirement and funerals are the “stark beginning and end of old age” and in between lies “a cultural wasteland” (1984, 312). Furthermore, a corpus of both academic and nonacademic publications refers to the rampant denial of aging,32 as well as to the persistence of ageism and negative stereotypes of aging (e.g., Applewhite 2016; Gillick 2006; Gullette 2004, 2011; Jacoby 2011). An aversion to aging among younger Americans—­noted at the White House Conference on Aging in 1981 (White House Conference on Aging 1981, 4)—­also perseveres because they “live in a culture that hates, fears, and makes fun of aging” (Weinberg 2006, xiii). Printed words on the greeting cards for fiftieth birthdays say, “You’re now officially over the hill” and “Welcome to the ‘Over the Hill Gang’” ( Jenkins 2016, 2). It is no wonder that, as Erica Jong confesses, “we are terrified at fifty” (1994, xix).33 Young children are not spared the antipathy to old age either. At the Boston Museum of Science in 2000, Margaret Gullette observed that after viewing a simulation that aged their faces up to sixty-­nine, “children were almost uniformly shaken” (2004, 4). Disgusted by the age-­induced changes on their future faces, they told Gullette, “I don’t want to get old” (3–­4). It is not youngsters alone but elders themselves who are repelled by the visible signs of aging. For instance, Sarah Lamb learned that the residents at a Boston-­area retirement community launched a movement to exclude those with walkers and in wheelchairs from the main dining room (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 13–­14). The notable ways these representations of old age in America differ from those in Japan indicate that “aging is much more a social judgment than a biological eventuality” (Sontag 1972, 32). Margaret Clark and Barbara Anderson, who conducted a pioneering anthropological study in the field of gerontology, maintain, “[The elderly] are rendered helpless, either by personal default or by social definition, to meet cultural ideals and consequently they are devalued” (1967, 18). Nearly twenty years later, another anthropologist, Maria Vesperi,

18  •  Through Japanese Eyes

would argue, “The problem lies not with old age itself but with the way aging is perceived by the wider community” (1985, 13). As I presumed earlier, behind Americans’ negative attitude toward old age is a strong emphasis on independence, which clashes with the unavoidable need to depend on others as one grows older. Advanced age also makes it hard to maintain productivity, another value closely tied to an American individual’s self-­esteem and social worth (Hochschild 1973, 40; Bellah et al. 1985, 66). In addition, diminishing productivity may leave some older people destitute because in American society, it is productivity, not membership in a kin group, that justifies the individual’s access to various resources (Keith 1980, 349), including care in old age. American conceptions of time also create problems (Tsuji 2005). Time conceived as a commodity does not accord high status to older people whose time is no longer salable. A linear view of time leads to the assumption that time is running out for older folks and their most productive years are behind them. Furthermore, the strong orientation to the future and the view of the present as a step to the future (Vogt 1955, 93) belittles older Americans’ past achievements and contributions. To make matters worse, American culture offers little guidance in dealing with aging. Unlike Japanese culture, it lacks any rites of passage to initiate the individual into postretirement life and help make the transition smoother and less traumatic (Savishinsky 2000). Moreover, it provides “no role content, no norms that prescribe ‘old’ behavior” (Matthews 1979, 59). Many problems of old age are rooted in such “normlessness” (Clark and Anderson 1967, 10) or “the ‘roleless role’ or the lack of clear social expectations” to act one’s age (Keith 1980, 350). Thus for older Americans “the question, Who am I? assumes poignant relevance” (Clark and Anderson 1967, 78). Rapid social change and extended life expectancy aggravate the ambiguity of elders’ identity. Jong claims that “in a culture in love with youth . . . midlife self-­annihilation” is real (1994, xix). Vesperi considers American elders’ identity problem in terms of the disparity between elders’ self-­image and their social identity. This gap is so large that being old involves the “terror” of “discard[ing] the identity [elders] have developed over a lifetime” (1985, 21). In the three decades following my initial fieldwork, many volumes of anthropological studies on aging in America have been published (e.g., Buch 2018; Climo 1992; Counts and Counts 1996; Henderson and Vesperi 1995, Loe 2011; Lynch 2012; Savishinsky 1991, 2000; Shenk 1998; Shield 1988; Stafford 2009b).34 Unlike a large number of gerontological studies that rely on quantitative analyses, these works are based on long-­term participant-­ observation research. They depict both the challenges of aging and elders’ innovations and resilience in coping with them. Thus they counter the gloomy

Introduction  •  19

representation of old age in America that I read in my prefieldwork days, though some of the elders in them are still “impoverished, socially isolated, and physically disabled” (Matthews 1979, 55), just as those in the earlier studies. A notable shift in social theories to emphasize the significance of human actors (e.g., Bourdieu 1990; Ortner 2006) may have contributed to the changes in the way older Americans are portrayed in these anthropological studies. This theoretical shift is epitomized in the use of the term agency, which may be defined as “the . . . capacity to act” (Ahearn 2001, 112) that is “inherent in all humans” (Sewell 1992, 20) but is “socioculturally mediated” (Ahearn 2001, 112). Older Americans in more recent literature certainly exercise their agency and are not helpless victims of their culture. Other publications also illustrate senescence in America in a more positive light than the earlier literature. For instance, sociologist Karl Pillemer (2011) wrote a book on the wisdom of American elders.35 He chose this topic to question gerontological research’s approach to aging as a problem and its focus on negative aspects of senescence. Similarly, in Disrupt Aging, Jo Ann Jenkins, the chief executive officer of AARP, asserts, “People today live longer and live better than ever before” (2016, 11), opening the readers’ eyes to the new reality of aging. Other authors also refute the negative stereotypes of aging, which has been receiving more attention with the baby boomers’ entry into senescence (e.g., Applewhite 2016; Gillick 2006; Gullette 2004, 2011; Jacoby 2011; Weinberg 2006). In addition, a positive view of old age as a “second life,” complete with an “encore career” and “new opportunities,” has become widespread even further among Americans (Sokolovsky 2009, xviii). Roy D’Andrade’s (2008) research on three different cultural groups in the United States—Americans, Japanese, and Vietnamese—supports the humanistic reason I cannot accept the view of old age in America as “a cultural wasteland” (Myerhoff 1984, 312) or “existential purgatory” (Samuel 2017, 4). Analyzing the top 10 of 328 value items for each group, D’Andrade found that “individual satisfactions, self-­determination, and affective social relatedness” were important for Americans, while “family and appropriate behavior” were for Vietnamese and, for Japanese, it was “avoiding war and having close friends” (2008, 63). Despite these differences, he also learned that people in these three cultures all esteemed the same things: happiness, health, and love, for instance (personal communication, November 6, 2006). He warns, “The most salient values in a society tends to be unique. The salience of a society’s very top values, reflected again and again in conversation, argument, and sermon, understandably blinds the observer to the fact that if the whole range of human values is taken into account when societies are compared, most societies are very similar” (2008, 64). In the three decades since my initial fieldwork, researchers not only have produced more realistic

20  •  Through Japanese Eyes

representations of senescence in America but also have come to recognize better the significant role people play vis-­à-­vis their culture, as well as the common human traits underlying a wide range of cultural differences. However, these changes have had little impact on the denial of aging and its negative stereotypes that have been stubbornly prevailing in American society. The relevant literature—­both earlier and more recent—­unmistakably reflect these phenomena. From my Japanese perspective, behind these persistently negative attitudes lies the unyielding idea of senescence as the antithesis of American cultural ideals. This view plays a significant role in shaping both the popular vision of and research on senescence in America (Rowe and Kahn 1998; Kownacki 2010). Consequently, despite some scholars’ repeated warnings (e.g., Cosco, Stephan, and Brayne 2013; Graham and Stephenson 2010; Lamb 2014; Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017), the facts of inevitable decline and death are problematically and enduringly excluded from gerontological studies. Instead, the focus on successful aging has remained a “dominant paradigm” since the 1980s (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 1) both in the study of older Americans and in making and enacting policies (Graham and Stephenson 2010). This paradigm emphasizes the importance of activity, health, and independence for individual elders to such an extent that it pursues “permanent personhood” (Lamb 2014, 44), disregarding the way these will inevitably decline in later years. However unrealistic, the dominance of the successful aging ideal continues, as exemplified in its use as “a catchphrase” at the White House Conference on Aging in 2015 (Loe 2017, 226).

Solutions for Aging Problems As much as the dark pictures of senescence I encountered in America, I was surprised at some of the solutions for aging problems proposed by gerontologists and policy makers. Activity theory in the 1960s postulated that the universal key to successful aging was not to sit back and relax but to remain active by finding substitute roles for those lost in retirement (Maddox 1968; Neugarten 1968).36 It was similar to the current successful aging discourse in that neither approach acknowledged the eventual, inescapable decline of one’s later years. Other solutions that placed the aged on the periphery of the society stunned me even more because older people were such an integral part of my life in Japan. For instance, disengagement theory (e.g., Cumming and Henry 1961; Cumming 1963) maintained that gradual social withdrawal would benefit both the aged and the society not only because it released elders from normative control and dominant values that aging made hard to conform to (Cumming and Henry 1961, 95) but also because “it retire[d] an age echelon

Introduction  •  21

from roles which young people [might] then fill” (14).37 Regarding older Americans’ social disengagement, exchange theory offered a different interpretation (Dowd 1975; Matthews 1979). Analyzing aging in terms of accessibility to resources and ability to reciprocate, exchange theory predicted that many elders chose to withdraw from social relationships when their resources became too meager to engage in balanced exchange. So how can American elders stay socially engaged? Modifying their value orientation is one possible answer. Barbara Myerhoff observes, “[The people at the Jewish senior center] provided a model of an alternative lifestyle, built on values in many ways antithetical to those commonly esteemed by contemporary Americans. The usual markers of success were anathema to them—­wealth, power, physical beauty, youth, mobility, security, social status—­all were out of the question. Lacking hope for change, improvement, without a future, they had devised a counterworld, inventing their own version of what made ‘the good life’” (1978, 20).38 Likewise, Margaret Clark and Barbara Anderson argue that older people who kept busy were “enacting certain secondary cultural values, such as an orientation to play and the emphasis on consumption characteristic of the American leisure class generally” (1967, 18). As retirement made it hard for them to pursue primary values, such as work and self-­worth measured through income and achievement, “drop[ping] their pursuits of [these] values” enabled them to “survive best in their later years” (429). Naming this adaptive strategy “deculturation,” Anderson proposed that an elder “unlearn[s]” “the given ways of a society . . . so that eventually he [could] and [did] cease to function culturally in it” (1972, 210; italics added). In short, according to Anderson, adaptation to old age was better made outside the realm of dominant, mainstream American culture because the culture itself was a major cause of aging problems. By contrast, the successful aging paradigm, which has been governing gerontological research in recent decades (Rowe and Kahn 1998), endorses American values by emphasizing individual control and responsibility in dealing with old age and demanding that each elder “[enact] cultural norms of persons as healthy, active, independent, and long-­living subjects” (Lamb 2014, 50). This treatment of aging also reflects the American belief that good health is “the moral duty of all individuals” (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 7). Varied though these solutions for aging woes may be, the common thread underlying them is the view of old age as a problem, a negative attitude toward the declines caused by aging, and a denial of senescence as an integral and normal part of the human life course.

22  •  Through Japanese Eyes

My Responses I am skeptical of the validity of most of these proposed solutions. Coming from another culture, I sense in them an American bias of viewing old age as intrinsically problematic—­as something disagreeable, as a problem to be solved. I agree with activity theorists in that having things to do can boost the individual’s morale and sense of usefulness. My grandmother’s “activities”—­ crocheting and lending a hand in the kitchen—­certainly helped make the last stage of her life purposeful and fulfilling. But it was not her “activities” alone that contributed to her good old age. Furthermore, neither activity theory nor the currently dominant successful aging paradigm is easily applicable to those who are too frail or too sick to stay active. I see in both theories a cultural bias of appealing to Americans’ strong desire for eternal youth. I find the idea of the opposite camp even more difficult to accept: that adaptation to old age is best made outside dominant American values, whether it be through disengagement, deculturation, or segregated living for the aged. Growing old certainly requires a lot of adjustments. It might even involve a change in the basic orientation of one’s life, such as resorting to “secondary values” (Clark and Anderson 1967, 18), creating “a counterworld” (Myerhoff 1978, 20), or becoming “an observer” rather than struggling to prove oneself in the eyes of others or to oneself (Vining 1978, 55). But making or accepting these changes in one’s later years does not necessarily command social withdrawal, much less unlearning one’s own culture. Through my experiences living in four “other” cultures (China, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States), I have realized how difficult it is to unlearn one’s own culture. For one thing, culture is so deeply embedded in us that we take it for granted, like the proverbial “fish in water” that is unaware of the environment it depends on.39 Thus even though I have lived in America for more than four decades and have become so used to its way of life, I still strongly feel that my cultural roots in Japan remain alive and responsive, shaping my basic orientation to the world and deep-­seated emotional reactions to it. This is because “culture is not a sort of house we can enter and leave at will” but “like a chronic disease, we always carry it with us” (Cerroni-­Long 1998, 155). Just as a chronic disease is hard to get rid of, unlearning Japanese culture is next to impossible for me. Behind the idea that adaptation to old age is best made outside the realm of American culture, I see an assumption that the gap between the “ought” and the “is” of old age cannot be bridged. In this assumption, I detect a simple, though erroneous, model of culture as a “recipe.” One cannot make the “dish” (i.e., achieving a cultural ideal) if the “instructions” offered are not good or if one does not have the necessary “ingredients.” Old age in America meets both of these conditions: poor guidance and a paucity of required elements.

Introduction  •  23

Therefore, some researchers maintain that the aged are better off if they do not attempt to achieve a cultural ideal and instead situate themselves outside dominant American values. Culture is not a mere recipe, however. It provides us not only with instructions on how to see the world, how to live, and why but also with a vast range of knowledge that enables people to comprehend it (Geertz 1973). This dual nature of culture makes culture-­people relationships immensely complex because materializing the “recipe” means much more than just following the instructions. It involves individuals’ continuous acquisition of a repertoire of knowledge as well as their—­conscious or unconscious—­application of the appropriate kind(s) in each specific situation. The process of making the “dish” is further complicated by the fact that both the acquisition and application of this knowledge are subject to social, economic, political, psychological, environmental, historical, and demographic variables. Hence “the idea of culture . . . does not imply passive acceptance of received practice and doctrine or that human beings are robots or putty or blank slates” (Shweder 2001, 438). In other words, no matter how despotic culture may appear, it always leaves some leeway for individual negotiation and innovation. Therefore, one of the aims of my research has been to find out what leeway older Americans have to escape the negative stereotypes of old age and make the most out of their later years. The complexity of cultural systems also undermines the hegemony of culture and generates room for individual negotiation. When I was an undergraduate, the highly integrated models of society in classic theories, such as structural functionalism, fascinated me by revealing how social order in simple societies was maintained without codified laws and formal law-­enforcement institutions. I learned the power of anthropological theory again when I read about my own Japanese culture in Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), in which she identified patterns of culture and gained an incredible insight into Japanese culture without conducting fieldwork in Japan.40 But eventually I came to realize the shortcomings of these theories (e.g., Murphy 1971; Giddens 1979; Sahlins 1981) and became more aware of the complexity of human life that was not addressed by them. While classic theorists focus on coherence, I see both coherence and contradiction in the cultural system. I notice that culture is enduring and changing at the same time. Culture shows certain rigidity as well as flexibility. Furthermore, while culture gives guidance, it may also cause problems, as seen in the case of old age in America. Japanese culture contains a similar paradox.41 Although it provides culturally prescribed solutions for aging problems, the very prescription (e.g., coresidence with children) can be a potential source of problems (e.g., conflict

24  •  Through Japanese Eyes

between mother-­in-­law and daughter-­in-­law). This fact enables me to speculate about the possibility that, like Japanese culture, American culture simultaneously creates problems and offers resources to solve them, though American guidance may be less obvious than is the case in Japan. Having learned in my anthropology classes that culture is an essential survival tool for humans, I have difficulty accepting that culture only creates problems without providing some help to solve them. In addition to the theoretical issues concerning culture and people, I have a humanistic reason to believe that older Americans are negotiating the gap between the “ought” and the “is” of senescence, whether they are conscious or not of doing so. Much as D’Andrade’s research has demonstrated, my observations while residing in foreign countries have revealed that despite cultural differences, people do share common human traits. In light of such common denominators among different peoples, I cannot see how anyone maintains sanity if they lead such a dismal life as depicted in some of the existing literature on senescence in America. For one thing, in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-­first century, old age has become a prolonged period of time that, for many, stretches over a quarter of a century or even longer. Moreover, the pursuit of happiness, together with life and liberty, is an inalienable right for everyone, the U.S. Declaration of Independence proclaims. Happiness is such an important measure of life for Americans that their strong preoccupation with it astonished a French anthropologist who studied a small Midwestern town (Varenne 1977). Moreover, according to another foreign observer, Americans exhibit their true talent when they face a seemingly impossible challenge (Esaki 1976, 109). Isn’t old age such a challenge, calling for that determination and ingenuity? I am convinced that there are ways to cope with the predicament of old age in America other than what some previous studies proposed. My task is to find out how older Americans negotiate reality and make the best of their lives within the realm of a dominant culture that is seemingly hostile to aging. Due to a lack of cultural models and strong cultural constraints, I regard old age in America as a “frontier” and older Americans as “pioneers” who venture into this unknown territory without the help of a good map.42 Considering that Americans’ negative attitudes toward old age are characterized by fear, loathing, and denial, I believe it is vital to document the reality of senescence and confront the widespread stereotypes that surround it. This book is one such attempt and is written from the vantage point of an anthropologist who was born and raised in Japan, witnessing a very different culture of senescence, and now has lived in the foreign culture of the United States for more than four decades. A unique position such as this grants a deep insight into old age in America by simultaneously “de-­familiarizing” what is normal and taken for granted and “de-­exoticizing” what is different and puzzling.

Introduction  •  25

In the chapters to follow, I illustrate the lives of the older Americans whom I have come to know over the past thirty years. I explore what kind of problems they face, how these problems may change as they grow even older, and how they respond to them when their self-­sufficiency diminishes. The book also shows how American elders make their lives meaningful in a society where strongly negative views of old age prevail.

1

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center

When I started my aging research, I had lived in America for a decade. Still, senescence in America remained a mystery to me, especially since my husband’s retired colleagues and their spouses were so different from negative stereotypes of elders I had encountered in that time. They were engaged in life and had good knowledge of current issues. When I was talking to them, I forgot they were older than my parents and wondered where the miserable older Americans I had heard and read about were. To familiarize myself with older Americans outside of academia, I became a volunteer of the local Meals on Wheels program1 in 1986 prior to my fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center. Once a week for six months, I worked in their kitchen, washing hundreds of potatoes, chopping mountains of vegetables, and mixing ingredients for cakes in a huge bowl. After finishing my job, I joined the elders who gathered in the same building to have lunch. During these weekly lunches, I met Diane, age eighty-­five, who was single and a retired high school home-­economics teacher. Three decades later, I can still visualize the burgundy dress and sensible shoes Diane always wore at our weekly meetings. She moved slowly with a cane and talked slowly too, though I noticed that she had a keen memory, especially of the past. She recalled Michigan, where she was born in 1902, and her family’s move to Winston County by a horse cart when she was eight years old. I thought, wrongly as I would learn later, that she fit the stereotype of sedentary elders who love to reminisce.

26

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  27

Until our paths crossed again at Lake District Senior Center and she became one of my key informants, I had no idea that Diane graduated from Cornell University when very few women attended college and that, contrary to my initial impression, she was an active participant in multiple programs at the Senior Center and led a busy life. Gerontologists note the significance of activities in old age. Activity theorists advocated them in the 1960s as the universal key to a good old age (Maddox 1968; Neugarten 1968). David Ekerdt argues that keeping busy through activities contributes to justifying retirement because it offers “moral continuity . . . in terms of [people’s] long-­standing beliefs and values,” which he calls the “work ethic” in preretirement and the “busy ethic” in retirement (1986, 239). Activities are closely associated to well-­being in old age and regarded as “an antidote to pessimistic stereotypes of decline and dependency” (Katz 2000, 135). It is no wonder that being active is one of the essential requirements for the successful aging paradigm (e.g., Rowe and Kahn 1998; Lamb 2014, 2017) that currently dominates. To help retirees engage in activities, Lake District Senior Center offers a wide range of recreational, educational, and community service opportunities. During my initial fieldwork, there were classes for handicrafts (e.g., knitting, quilting, doll-­making), art (painting, clay work), music (chorus, music history), exercise (stretching and strengthening, walking), writing (memoir, poetry), and foreign languages, as well as volunteer and travel opportunities. Since then, the programs have expanded to include more exercises, computer learning, and academically oriented classes on varying topics.

FIG. 1.   Making Raggedy Ann dolls (photo by author)

28  •  Through Japanese Eyes

FIG. 2.   Exercising (photo by author)

This chapter examines older Americans’ activities at Lake District Senior Center and considers the values of these activities by exploring their impacts on elders’ lives.

Having Fun Together Many people joined Center activities with a specific purpose, such as to take up a hobby, learn something new, or do volunteer work. But they soon discovered that their participation gave them unexpected fringe benefits, especially the chance to socialize with their peers and have fun together. In general, Center activities were held in a leisurely fashion, though some participants were earnest in their undertaking. When people grew tired of them, they went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, wandered into the gift shop or the Center office for a chat, or visited their friends who were engaged in other activities. Chatting was very common during the programs as well, except in lecture-­style classes and meetings with speakers, and was one of the most enjoyable aspects of going to the Center for many elders. The friendly atmosphere was also heightened by the rarity of open competition and aggressive showing off of one’s superiority.2 As the following two examples demonstrate, it prevailed even in the business and learning activities that were taken more seriously. A gift shop business meeting was held every month. All the shop volunteers (all female) were requested to attend. They discussed various operational

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  29

details, such as the scheduling of the shop attendants’ shifts and policies on consigned goods that did not sell. The monthly meeting was also a chance to straighten out problems with bookkeeping or to plan special events, such as the holiday shop before Christmas. Because the holiday shop was the biggest moneymaking venture, participants actively exchanged ideas about acquiring appealing items and the extra space for displaying them. Though its purpose was business-­oriented, socializing was no less important because, among other things, it was the only occasion when all the volunteers who worked on different shifts met as a group. Lunch at a restaurant afterward was another way they had fun together. The art class provided another example of serious “business” mixed with pleasure. It was one of the longest-­running classes at Lake District Senior Center. At the time of my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, May, the instructor, had been teaching the class for over twenty years. Some of her students had witnessed her children grow from infancy to adulthood. When May died suddenly of a cardiac aneurism in the early 1990s, her death shocked and saddened her students. The class had many dedicated and talented painters, some of whom were well recognized in the local community. Although all were amateurs, some of their pictures had been sold to local business establishments and art lovers, so participants took the critique session at the end of each class seriously. Yet both the instructor and the students expressed their opinions in friendly and supportive manners. The session started with May’s review of students’ pictures, which were pinned on the wall. She gave concrete, straightforward comments, explained in such a way that students could easily adopt them to improve their paintings. She also encouraged students to think about the strengths and the weaknesses of the picture under review and asked the painter to tell the story behind his or her work so that other students could become better acquainted with the artist. Many students actively participated in this session. Although some of their comments might be critical, nobody expressed strong disagreement or responded aggressively. Rather, opinions were given politely or sometimes humorously. In addition, they were always generous in praising the good features in their friends’ pictures. The following is an example of the typical interactions I observed during these critique sessions: I love the boat with a little boy. The ripples around it are wonderful too. The whole thing makes me feel nostalgic for the summer my little brother and I spent at Grandpa’s lake cottage. But I keep looking at the tree on the right, because I feel something unsettling there. I don’t quite understand why. Is it because it is not given the attention it deserves? What is it, May? MAY:  (to the class) What do you think is the center of attention in this picture? JANICE: 

30  •  Through Japanese Eyes

That tree on the right. I think the boat in the middle. MAY:  All right. It is perfectly fine for Camila to think the tree is the center of attention and Cathy the boat. But as Janice mentioned, the picture may look unsettling. So Lynn [the painter], decide what you want people to see first and most in your picture. If you want to show how powerful and beautiful this tree is, you can . . . CAMILA:  CATHY: 

A friendly bag lunch followed this critique session, just as the gift shop volunteers went to a restaurant after their business meeting. During the summer, when there were no regular classes at the Center, the sociable and recreational side of the art class became more prominent. They met at a lake cottage owned by a member, visited a large flower garden of another member, and enjoyed a picnic at a park and a brunch at a restaurant. In addition, the class had an annual luncheon in June and a Christmas party in December. The art class remained popular throughout my longitudinal research. Though generational turnovers occurred as instructors and students grew older and died, having fun together contributed to its continuous popularity.

Activities as “Work” Comparing the senior center participants in America and Japan, Mariko Fujita noticed a major difference between them even though the content of their activities varied very little. According to her, elderly Japanese went to the senior center primarily to enjoy companionship, to have a break, or to kill time, whereas older Americans regarded their senior center activities as “work” (2004, 200–­201). Fujita’s observation was endorsed by many older people at Lake District Senior Center who, by participating in Center activities, acquired a “second career” and successfully dealt with the two major problems of old age: role loss and a sense of uselessness. The case of Eleanor, a former elementary school teacher and a divorcee, provides a good example. Upon her retirement from teaching in the late 1960s, she started leading the doll-­making class and managing the gift shop at the Center. Although many other volunteers were involved in running the shop and making Raggedy Ann dolls, Eleanor’s knowledge and organizational skills, together with her sense of humor, largely contributed to the success of these two groups. At eighty-­four, she foresaw the need to line up her successors and trained two volunteers, Nancy and Beth, who were many years her junior. After Eleanor’s death in 1991, these two women continued to oversee the doll-­making and the gift shop. Though Nancy died several years after Eleanor, Beth kept the gift

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  31

FIG. 3.   Gift shop on Nineteenth-­Century Tea Party Day: a volunteer at the cashier’s desk

(photo by author)

shop open with a group of volunteers until 2016, when it was closed to make room for office space. Eleanor was also an avid reader. Whenever she read something that might interest others, she brought the book or magazine to the Center to share. Thanks to her, I read many magazine articles and books on various topics, including world politics, food, and UFOs. Moreover, she was such a devoted bridge player that she did not miss her biweekly bridge club even when she fell and seriously hurt her knee. Doll-­making, managing the gift shop, reading, and playing bridge were not all that Eleanor’s “second career” entailed. She made many stuffed animals and consigned them for sale at the gift shop; some of them were conventional, like teddy bears and Easter bunnies. But others, like the stuffed cat Eleanor gave me (see figure 5), showed her bold creativity.3 Moreover, she had served on multiple committees for Lake District Senior Center. Amazingly, Eleanor’s second career involved additional activities outside the Center as well. Every Saturday, she drove to a hospital to do volunteer work in the gift shop there. She also reserved some of her time for her family, regularly seeing her daughters, grandchildren, and great-­grandchildren. From all her activities, one might imagine Eleanor as a robust octogenarian blessed with good health. She was far from it. Eleanor not only was petite but also had chronic pain from her degenerating arthritic body. Yet pain did not stop her from pursuing her second career. “I am the happiest when l do things,” she claimed. Her activities also enabled her to savor holidays: “I [routinely] give myself Tuesdays off,” she said.

FIG. 4.   Gift shop on Nineteenth-­Century Tea Party Day: a volunteer in front of the display shelves (photo by author)

FIG. 5.   Stuffed cat made by Eleanor (photo by author)

34  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Beth succeeded in launching her own new “career” in her sixties. She was a former factory worker who grew up in Winston County and returned home from California after retirement.4 When her husband died and she lost her role as his caretaker, she and her mother, Mae, who was also widowed and lived nearby, “sat together like two rocks,” as she described it, day after day in the living room of her mother’s house. However, their lives dramatically changed once they began to go to Lake District Senior Center. They participated in various craft classes, learned new skills, and shared ideas with others. They enjoyed knitting and doing handicrafts and consigned their finished products in the gift shop. Both of them were so skilled that people sometimes commissioned them to make sweaters or Christmas ornaments. Beth and Mae also devoted so many hours to volunteer work with their neighbor, Joan, that the three were known as “the dynamic trio.” Beth literally called all these activities “work.” She would say, “I can’t see you on Wednesday because that’s the day I work.” She went to “work” so frequently that her friends seldom found her at home during the day. When her mother died in 1995 after having been paralyzed by a stroke for several months, Beth again lost her caretaker role. But thanks to her second career, which by then included managing the gift shop, she did not sit like a rock at home. She continued her volunteer work into her nineties. Ellen’s second career involved part-­time employment, which she found through the Older Persons Employment Network (OPEN).5 After retirement, she felt lost because having worked all her life as an executive secretary, she did not know what to do. Her second career rescued her from this predicament. At age seventy-­four, she worked happily as an administrative assistant at a local nonprofit organization. Ellen’s case was not unusual. Since the mid-­1980s, older Americans’ participation in the workforce began to rise. In 2000, 12.8 percent of those sixty-­five and older were working, and in 2016, the number increased to 18.8 percent.6 The reasons for this increase reflected socioeconomic and demographic changes. Older Americans were working (1) to earn extra money due to increased life expectancy and the disappearance of defined-­benefit pension plans, which had previously promised lifelong income; (2) to increase social security benefits, as the full-benefit age for retirement had been raised to over 65; and (3) to keep employer-­sponsored health insurance coverage.7 However, for some older Americans, like Ellen, a job provided more than economic benefits. Caitrin Lynch (2012) discovered that older employees at a needle factory in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties continued to work to be a part of the workplace community and to remain productive members of society. Regardless of monetary rewards, older Americans’ second careers replaced the roles they lost and served as effective remedies for their sense of uselessness

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  35

after retirement. Participating in Center activities certainly helped elders find a purpose and meaning in their lives and made their retirement productive and enjoyable.

Activities as “Therapy” “For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life,” said British prime minister May, who appointed a Minister for Loneliness in 2018.8 Loneliness is a major problem in old age (e.g., Hazan 1980, 24). It has negative impacts on older Americans’ health: one study shows that loneliness shortens life expectancy by several years (Ianzito 2018). The feeling of desolation may be acute among elders because not only does their physical decline trap them in isolation, but also many of them are predeceased by people close to them. One Center participant said, “Loneliness is the worst trouble for senior citizens.” Another asserted, “Loneliness is a disease. So it can be prevented and taken care of.” Engaging in activities at the Senior Center in the pleasant company of other seniors was one antidote.9 Going to the Center was a nice break from their home life as well. For those who lived alone, socializing with their peers alleviated their isolation, while married people enjoyed an occasional “holiday” from their spouse. One of the major postretirement adjustments for couples was getting used to the constant presence of their spouses. The stress of too much togetherness in postretirement life might intensify further if a couple gave up their house and moved to a small home. Grace, who lived in a one-­bedroom senior apartment with her husband, said, “I don’t have any complaint about this place. It is nicely maintained, and the location is ideal. But I wish we had a little more room. My husband drives me crazy!” So her husband went to the Center regularly, leaving the apartment to his wife for a while. Alice and her husband also enjoyed an occasional break from each other. They “cherished” their marriage because she was born in Austria and he in America, and so the odds of their meeting had been stacked against them. As if to confirm their words, they were always seen together, walking around downtown or sitting in coffee shops. But when she appeared in the senior citizens fashion show, her husband did not come. Regarding his absence, Alice said, “He would welcome a chance to be away from me.” An escape from constant togetherness was particularly appreciated when one of a couple was homebound. Susan, a fifty-­seven-­year-­old African American former factory worker, looked forward to her weekly visit to the Center. Her husband suffered from multiple chronic illnesses and could not leave their two-­bedroom apartment. Before going to the Center, she prepared sandwiches for her husband and herself. She said she relished her “holiday” from him and domestic chores.

36  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Susan also could vent her frustrations at the Center. Some of her peers were also taking care of their own sick, homebound husbands or had in the past and listened to her stories with sympathy. Their conversations revealed that one of the primary sources of problems was the husband’s growing dependence on his wife—­something that was not unknown even among women with healthy retiree husbands. Because independence was such a celebrated value in American culture, these women found it hard to adjust to this change. They shared their annoyance with their husband’s “child-­like” behavior as well as their concern about the men’s medical and emotional conditions. For many Japanese couples, including baby boomers, such postretirement adjustments might be even more difficult than they are for American elders because cultural prescriptions impel the husband’s life to center on work and the wife’s life on the family, especially children. Since the husband often worked late as well as on weekends and his job included socializing with his coworkers and business associates after work,10 his absence from home left all the domestic responsibilities to the wife and rendered the household virtually a single-­parent home.11 The husband’s retirement abruptly changed this picture. His entry into the wife’s domain disrupted the long-­established gendered division of labor and forced the couple to reevaluate and reestablish their relationship. This was not an easy task not only because both the husband and the wife lost the thing their lives were focused on (i.e., occupation for the husband and children for the wife) but also because the husband’s long absence from home prevented the couple from developing the “relationships of companionship” (Long 2011, 79). Retirement brings their husbands into the domestic sphere like “strangers in their own home” (Long 2011, 79), and many Japanese women did not welcome it, even if they appreciated the husbands’ years of work and financial support for the family. This is because most Japanese husbands are not trained to take care of themselves and need “around-­the-­body care” (Lebra 1984, 132), which their wives gave them after work before retirement but find hard to perform when husbands are home all the time. Playing on such sentiments, the Japanese media refers to a retired homebound husband as “bulky trash”12 or “a wet fallen leaf.” Because both are difficult to move or remove, these terms aptly express a wife’s annoyance with a husband who sits still and gets in her way. The stress of Japanese housewives after their husbands’ retirement is called shujin zaitaku shōkōgun, or a husband-­at-­home syndrome.13 On the impacts of the husband’s retirement on marriage, Hiroko, a housewife and one of my interlocutors in Japan, said, “The period before and after his retirement creates a major marital crisis.” Fortunately, her marriage survived, but she claimed, “It took us two years and much, much patience to acquire a new equilibrium in our relationship.” Many marriages do fail. On

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  37

the rise is jukunen rikon, or divorce among couples who have been married for more than two decades. Some elderly couples in a troubled marriage do not resort to legal divorce but lead separate lives while living in the same house. This phenomenon is not uncommon and is termed kateinai rikon, or intrahousehold divorce. Although older women in both America and Japan experience problems with their homebound husbands, the primary cause is different. While the loss of the husband’s independence upsets the marital relationship among some American couples, the postretirement merger of the husband’s and wife’s separate domains is what creates a major challenge for Japanese couples. Aside from mitigating postretirement marital tensions, activities at the Senior Center helped elders achieve the ultimate goal of therapy: rediscovering oneself. Many art class students found in painting an unexplored interest and untapped potential that added new meanings to their lives. They declared that painting became so important to them that they could hardly imagine life without it. Vivian, for example, drove eighteen miles each way to attend the art class every week. She loved flowers so much that she began to draw them and found a new focus for her postretirement life. She also learned to make frames for her many paintings. Some of them still decorate the hallways at a retirement home where she lived until her death. Learning to paint involved careful observation and opened elders’ eyes to many things they had not paid much attention to before. As a result, some discovered great pleasure in watching a sunset, while others were fascinated by leaves, birds, flowers, or old buildings. The world, even the shrinking world of those in declining health, was so full of things they could observe—­and re-­ create on canvas—­that their horizons expanded and they felt there were still a lot of tasks to accomplish. Former president George W. Bush, who was “antsy” after retirement (Horne 2017, 70), had the same experience. He took up oil painting in his retirement and published a collection of his paintings of military veterans and their stories entitled Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief ’s Tribute to America’s Warriors (2017). Bush’s painting opened up his eyes to a variety of hues in what he used to regard as one color. He said, “I’m constantly looking at people thinking, I wonder if I could get this or that color right?” (Horne 2017, 71). In short, for both the former president and the art class participants, painting generated a new goal in life as well as infinite possibilities to find joy in daily activities. As Janice put it, painting added “a new perspective” to existence. Many people regarded Center activities as therapeutic for yet another reason. Just like their jobs, these activities gave them something to concentrate on and freed their mind, albeit temporarily, from the unpleasant or worrisome aspects of life. The activities also kept them busy, and staying busy, most older Americans believed, was the key to a happy old age (Tsuji 2005).

38  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Opportunities for Recognition For older Americans, new opportunities for recognition are few, and acknowledgment of their past achievements is rare. Sometimes, their very existence is ignored. This social invisibility leads to desolation (Moore and Conn 1985). Among older Americans at a Jewish senior center, Barbara Myerhoff observed, “The opposite of honor was not shame but invisibility. Being neglected was more unbearable than disgrace” (1978, 144). The widespread view that older people had outlived their usefulness also increased their need for recognition. As Edna, one of the art class regulars, said, “When you get older, you lose opportunities for being useful. You don’t have a job to go to, and you don’t have children to raise. So you need to have someone who pats you on your head and says, ‘You are doing great!’” Lake District Senior Center offered abundant opportunities to meet such a need for recognition. For one thing, people at the Center generously showered praise on their peers, even for a very small achievement. When I was learning to knit during my initial fieldwork, my unfinished muffler received flattering comments simply because it was a few inches longer than a week earlier. The same lavish complements were given to the stuffed animals, doll clothes, hand-­painted china, and other projects that people made elsewhere and brought to the Center. In summer, many art class participants cut flowers from their garden to paint in the class. Both the paintings and flowers were commended. Elders’ treasured collections—­such as antique dolls, quilts, and Christmas ornaments—­were displayed in a glass showcase in the activity room.14 Their owners were not only congratulated but also treated as celebrities or connoisseurs. Diane once entertained the Founders group15 by showing a portion of her large doll collection and telling the story behind each doll. Her “dynamic” presentation was met with applause, and her contribution was formally acknowledged in a thank-­you note from the group. Frequent travelers found opportunities to show slides from their trips (in recent years, via PowerPoint). Some participants in Center programs were interviewed on a weekly local radio program for seniors as well. People at the Center were equally generous in acknowledging minor achievements. A good example of this occurred once when Fred came to the art class. Fred, eighty-­three, lived with his wife at a senior apartment adjacent to the Center. He had been a participant in the art class, and although he stopped painting due to his poor eyesight and back pain, he still occasionally visited the class to chat with his old friends. One cold winter day, Fred came by. As he was walking into the activity room, Judith saw him from the other end of the room, waved to him, and said to the class, “Fred came to see us in this miserable weather! He deserves a round of applause!” Following Judith,

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  39

the whole class applauded to welcome Fred. His entry into the room could be compared to an actor’s appearance on stage, except that the audience at the Senior Center did not expect a performance. As Mae put it, Center people were ready to “give credit to anyone who simply trie[d].” Volunteering can offer another opportunity for recognition. The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP),16 which was replaced by Volunteers Connected in 2017, helped elders find volunteer work at schools, libraries, and hospitals, as well as at the Senior Center. Volunteering allowed retirees to use their time, skills, and knowledge meaningfully for contributing to the local community. In 2010, 436 older volunteers contributed 67,909 hours in community service, equivalent to $492,341 at minimum wage and $1,936,766 at the Independent Sector determinate.17 Some seniors boosted their social worth by playing an important role in the Center programs. For example, a good number of Center classes were run by them. Diane taught the knitting class, and Evelyn led the exercise class for many years. As noted earlier, Eleanor’s contributions were pivotal in the running of the gift shop and the doll-­making class. Those who did not have much time and energy made themselves useful by offering a little help, and their tasks, too, were acknowledged. The Founders group gave Merissa, who prepared beverages for lunch every week, the title of “Kitchen Queen.” Dedicated volunteers received formal recognition. At annual meetings of Lake District Senior Center, several elders were presented with plaques for their outstanding volunteer work. Each year, at the RSVP recognition dinner, some devoted volunteers received special acknowledgment. In 2014, Beth, the Center’s gift shop manager, was honored for her thirty years of volunteer work with a total of 11,433 work hours. The County Office for Aging (COFA) also accorded two awards to older volunteers at its annual meeting. In 2002, Helen, an African American regular at the Center, became the Senior Citizen of the Year for her longtime work of helping youths with substance abuse in her neighborhood. Doreen received the Outstanding Community Service award for making countless scarves for chemotherapy patients. A reporter interviewed both of them, and the event was televised. Gallery shows offered a stage for formal recognition for art class students. A fair number of their paintings were chosen for display, quite a few won prizes, and some were sold. Frances, a longtime regular of the class, proudly said, “I have my paintings hung in more than ten public buildings in the city.” The senior fashion show also put dozens of elders in the spotlight. At the time of my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, a shopping mall sponsored this annual event. The participating seniors modeled in outfits they chose at mall stores. Some even had their hair done at beauty parlors in the mall that donated their time and skills. Before the show, these volunteers had a brief session where they were given final touches to their appearances and practiced

40  •  Through Japanese Eyes

walking like models. In the 1988 show, a professional emcee was hired, and a good-­sized audience gathered in the mall. The local newspaper and television station both covered the event. Though it was later discontinued for some time, in 2004, the fashion show returned. It differed from previous shows in that it was held at the Senior Center and all the clothes for the volunteer models were provided by a used clothing store run by a charity organization. Nonetheless, the show still put a score of seniors in the limelight. They appeared on stage, were introduced by a well-­known radio personality, and walked a flower-­flanked pathway while a popular local musician played live piano music.

Sharing Lake District Senior Center was a social arena for sharing. People brought in homemade cookies and cakes to share. Their recipes were also shared. In the summer, someone with a bountiful harvest left a large pile of fresh vegetables on the kitchen counter with a note saying, “Help yourself.” Those who loved to read exchanged books. Once in a while, the Center received a donation of fabric and yarn remnants that were ideal for quilts and granny squares. These materials were placed on the tables, and everyone was invited to pick up anything they could find a use for. In addition to food and goods, Center participants shared their experiences. What happened at the doctor’s office or the hospital frequently came up. Hobbies were also a popular topic. People talked about where they bought materials or tools and where they obtained items that were not locally available. After computer use became common, elders exchanged their technological knowledge, such as how to attach a file and send photographs electronically. Stories and pictures of children and grandchildren were passed around. Sharing problems and frustrations added another important dimension to all the Center activities (see chapter 2). This exchange of food, goods, information, and experiences is not limited to older people; it is an intrinsic part of social life. Elders also shared with younger people as well, not just their fellow senior citizens. Be that as it may, sharing among Center participants was distinctively different from the kind observed elsewhere. A good example of this is sharing the past. Reminiscence was very popular at Lake District Senior Center, though it unintentionally endorsed negative stereotypes of older people as living in the past. Episodes in their youth came up frequently in their conversations. When the stock market fell in October 1987, the Great Depression of nearly six decades earlier became a focus of their talk. Many people remembered seeing long lines at soup kitchens. Alex talked

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  41

about his father, who had lost his job and, being unable to pay his mortgage, had to sell his house at a loss. Ava described an experience on Wall Street, where she passed a big crowd right after a stockbroker had jumped out the window of his office. They shared the fear that the tragedies they had witnessed earlier might be repeated. Another popular topic was life during World War II. Center participants reminisced about victory gardens, where households raised vegetables for their own consumption, and box socials, gatherings where donated boxed dinners were auctioned off to raise money for war efforts. I was born after World War II, but in my childhood, I often heard about Japanese experiences during the war and witnessed its aftermath, such as destroyed buildings and disabled former soldiers. However, I knew little about ordinary Americans’ lives during the war. Hence when I first heard the term victory garden, I thought Center people were talking about a television program on gardening with the same name, which I happened to be watching weekly. I wondered how many Americans of my generation knew about victory gardens and box socials. But for my interlocutors, neither World War II nor the Great Depression belonged to the history books. Similarly, the Model T Ford was not an object in a museum, but the car they had driven in their youth. Their early driving experience was entirely different from that of today’s youth and mine in the 1970s. Elizabeth Vining described what it was like to drive the Model T Ford in the early 1920s: “It rattled and squeaked in every joint as it struggled to a top speed of thirty-­five miles an hour and threatened to leave the road altogether on the curves. . . . The gas tank was under the seat, and there was no gauge. . . . There was no accelerator; you increased the gas with a hand-­throttle. . . . When the brake linings wore out, as they frequently did, you braked by stepping hard on reverse” (1970, 70–­71). People at the Senior Center not only reminisced together but also played games that intentionally induced past memories. They brought old pictures and guessed who the young men and women in these pictures were. Those who showed pictures were asked to tell stories of their lives in the distant past. Another game consisted of a series of questions that went, “How many of you remember . . . ?” Recollecting the first pair of nylon stockings, Maria, a former music teacher and longtime leader of the Founders group, shared a bittersweet moment in her youth when her husband brought home six pairs of them for her, even though they had barely enough money to buy coal for the following week.18 Whether these things came up spontaneously or as the result of a game, collective reminiscence tremendously invigorated Center participants. They relived together happy, difficult, or awkward moments in their lives and burst into laughter from time to time. Singing old songs together generated the

42  •  Through Japanese Eyes

same effects, which I also observed at occasional classic jazz concerts held at a lifecare retirement community. Even residents in wheelchairs moved their heads and hands along with the familiar tunes and rhythms of their youth. The popularity of writing a memoir also reflected older Americans’ love of reminiscence and its significance for them; Lake District Senior Center offered a fair number of classes on the subject. Memoir-­writing is also popular among Japanese elders. They write jibunshi (history of self ) to commemorate milestones—­such as retirement, the birth of a grandchild, or auspicious birthdays in later years (see introduction)—­and give these to relatives, former coworkers, and friends. It is important to note that Center people’s love of reminiscence does not originate in their desire to escape the problem-­laden present and the death-­ shadowed future. Rather, reminiscence plays an essential role in their adaptation to old age, as I discuss in chapter 6. The past also manifested itself in elders’ attitudes, values, and lifestyles; hence the old and the young, who do not share the past, might have different orientations to life. Such disparities are often thought to derive from older people’s inability to catch up with rapid social change and to contribute to their social marginality (Anderson 1972; Cowgill 1972; Hochschild 1973). On the “cultural lag” experienced by older Americans, Barbara Anderson argues, “[Their] lives are lived outside and apart from the viable body of tradition that constitutes the daily pattern of younger Americans” (1972, 211; italics in original). In other words, older Americans live in a “prefigurative” culture in which adults learn from children (who possess vital knowledge) rather than in “postfigurative” culture in which the roles are reversed (Mead 1970). Despite the questionable validity of Anderson’s argument, Center people held views that were not shared or even frowned upon by younger Americans. They were well aware of this generation gap and the risk of experiencing a cultural lag in intergenerational interactions. At the same time, they knew that as an age-­homogeneous community, the Senior Center sheltered them from that lag, which could be detrimental to their self-­perception. Thus at the Center, they did not hesitate to express their ambivalence toward contemporary lifestyles and criticism for them. For instance, elders often lamented the way children were being brought up, especially parents’ willingness to lavish material rewards upon children. They were appalled by the gifts their grandchildren or great-­grandchildren received for birthdays and holidays. When Terry told the knitting class her daughter had bought a makeup kit for her granddaughter’s eleventh birthday, the whole class agreed that an eleven-­year-­old girl was too young to wear makeup and parents should not spoil children. Since their reactions were based on the comparisons to their own childhoods, the conversation inevitably drifted to

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  43

reminiscences. They talked about the modest but much appreciated gifts they received, and many fondly recollected what a treat it was to find an orange in their Christmas stockings.19 Critical though Center people might be of contemporary child-­rearing practices, they also agreed that maintaining intergenerational autonomy was imperative and dared not interfere with their children’s parenting. Some tried to be understanding of their children, considering various challenges in the world today—­juggling duties both at work and at home, for instance. Others took some responsibility for the prevailing materialism and self-­ centeredness they saw because they had raised the generation of Americans who made up the core of society. Several aging mothers made comments to the effect of “We did our best to raise good citizens. Where did we go wrong?” Behind older Americans’ criticism of their children’s parenting was their frugality. Though consumption-­oriented younger Americans might not be keen on it, frugality was a virtue among elders in my initial fieldwork, which was endorsed by their behavior. For instance, they carefully handled any project that incurred an expense, no matter how small the cost might be. When the Founders group planned a special lunch or dessert, the plan went ahead only after members agreed to pay for it: a dollar for a strawberry shortcake dessert to welcome spring or two dollars for a hot dog lunch to celebrate Independence Day. Concerns about costs and efforts to minimize them were not limited to the Founders group. When I needed a circular needle to work on the neck of a vest, Diane, the instructor, insisted that I should look at the stock of knitting needles that had been donated by past members: “No need for you to spend money on something we have here.” I finished the vest with the borrowed needle. Older Americans’ thriftiness was also shown in the rational and economical way many programs were run at the Senior Center. When a special lunch was served, the Founders group members were asked to bring their own plates and flatware, although the Center had a fully equipped kitchen, including a dishwasher. Such a request was made to reduce the workload of some of their members as well as the overall operating cost of the Center. Leftovers never went to waste either. When a substantial amount of food was left, it was auctioned off. After the Founders group’s Independence Day lunch, a small piece of watermelon was auctioned at twenty-­five cents, a large half-­full bottle of mustard at fifty cents, and an unopened package of hot dogs at one dollar. The money from the sale went to the group’s coffers. Members who bought leftovers not only obtained good deals but also made a little contribution to their group. When the amount left over was too small to warrant an auction, people found some other useful ways to dispose of it. A piece of

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strawberry shortcake was taken to a member in the hospital to cheer him up. Sometimes, leftovers were placed on the kitchen counter with a “help yourself ” sign. Elder’s thriftiness might be partly explained by their past experiences. Living through the Great Depression, they witnessed human tragedies as well as the ephemerality of prosperity, which may have imprinted on them the importance of frugality. Most Center participants also lived a good portion of their lives with few material comforts. Some cold winter days triggered their childhood memories of living in a house without central heating. They talked about the difficulty of getting out of bed and the comfort of the stove in the kitchen, the only source of heat in the house. When Elizabeth, the executive director of the Senior Citizens Council,20 asked how the participants compared their old age with that of their parents at one of the Center meetings, the majority answered that theirs was much better. They attributed it to two things they had that their parents did not: steady income from their pensions and social security benefits, and conveniences and comforts such as central heating and hot running water. In the world in which older Americans grew up, today’s material abundance was unknown, and economizing was an important survival strategy. Edna remembered, “My mother never wasted a thing. When she did the dishes, she kept the used water in a bucket and watered her garden with it. She didn’t throw away soapy water either and used it to wipe the infected surfaces of the plants in her garden.” Frugality might also be older Americans’ strategy for coping with their postretirement financial situation. Living on a fixed income in ongoing inflation was a challenge, especially for those who had been retired for a long time.21 Occasionally, current prices of various items came up in their conversations. One day at the knitting class, Sadie exclaimed after she read the price label on the case of my new knitting needles, “Oh, knitting needles are no longer cheap! Look at the price! Two dollars and seventy-­five cents!” Immediately, Helen followed with, “I used to buy a dress pattern at ten cents!” Conversations like this not only allowed Center participants to share concerns about their shrinking buying power but also disclosed that their measurement was based on the past price index rather than the current one. This did not mean that older Americans made no adjustments to the changing world. On the contrary, because old age is a very dynamic period in life, as later chapters demonstrate, adapting to many changes is imperative for a good old age. One such adjustment relevant here is throwing away what is no longer of use. Saving things, which was a virtue in elders’ earlier life, could become problematic because material abundance may mean things accumulate faster than one can find uses for them. Declining physical strength might also deter them from minimizing waste. Edna, who described earlier how her

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  45

mother conserved water from her kitchen, lamented, “When I was raising my family, I did exactly the same as my mother. Where are those days gone? How decadent we all have become!” It is tempting to attribute older Americans’ thriftiness to their need to watch every penny, because old age is often associated with poverty and most senior citizens live on a fixed income. However, “the financial status of the average older American is relatively favorable and the extent of poverty is less than among the rest of the population” (Hillier and Barrow 1999, 186, citing U.S. Census Bureau data from 1996; italics in original). Moreover, since the 1950s, the poverty rate among Americans aged sixty-­five and older has decreased “dramatically,” according to Patrick Purcell, largely due to increases in social security benefits. It was 35  percent in 1959, dropped to about 15  percent by 1975, and has stayed steady around 10  percent since the mid-­1990s (2009, 24). Though the rate among older Americans remains smaller than among Americans under sixty-­five, poverty still prevailed among some segments of the elderly population, such as ethnic minorities and women (Hillier and Barrow 1999, 186–­188). It is also noteworthy that the family incomes of more than 3.6 million older Americans were below the federal poverty level in 2008 (Purcell 2009). A close examination of my data also reveals that the financial factor alone does not explain older Americans’ thriftiness. Note, for instance, that the amounts gained by auctioning leftovers at the Founders meetings were no more than a couple of dollars. Although members’ approval was obtained to pay for the special food, the amount involved was so small that no such plan had been voted down during my fieldwork. While some Center participants lived on a tight budget, others were relatively well off and could afford trips abroad. In addition, many Center participants were generous in giving financial support to good causes (see chapter 3). Their considerateness toward other people might be one important factor. As noted above, Center participants brought their own tableware to reduce the workload of their peers and the operating cost of the Center. They were also aware of the financial strain experienced by some of their friends and did not want the cost to deter their participation.22 Sharing the belief that frugality was a virtue had a leveling effect on the widely varied socioeconomic backgrounds of Center participants and enabled them to avoid making distinctions among themselves. Thus Rita, a wealthy business owner, and Lucy, a former school cafeteria worker, sat side by side, painting and chatting in the art class. Regular participants of the Founders group included two welfare recipients and a well-­off widow who made an annual trip abroad. One of these welfare recipients became the group’s president after my initial fieldwork. As we see later, egalitarianism was an important guiding principle in Center people’s lives.

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Sharing past experiences and seemingly outdated values, such as thriftiness, changed the meaning of old age. At the Center’s relatively age-­homogeneous community,23 advanced age ceased to be a stigma. Instead, it served as insulation from the external status system (Keith 1980, 344) and became a source of pride. Russel Ward explains this transformation: “A stigma attached to the general status of ‘old person’ will have little effect if older people are not attending to age as a relevant personal characteristic. . . . Old age may be demoralizing when it is made salient to the individual” (1984, 228). Hence at the Center, where their advanced age lost its saliency, people did not hesitate to engage in activities that revealed their oldness and to express views that were incompatible with those of younger Americans. They proudly volunteered their age. Generally, the older they were, the prouder they appeared in disclosing their age. Elders also accorded a special status to their peers of highly advanced age. The case of Florence, age ninety-­seven, provides a good example. Every time she dropped in at the Center, her appearance commanded the attention of the entire audience and brightened the atmosphere. People were happy to see her. Remarkable though Florence was, it was her nonagenarian age that made her special, because she had many qualities that her peers admired or hoped to have if they lived long enough to reach her age: she was healthy enough to join a full-­ day bus excursion and occasional luncheon meetings at restaurants, she still led an independent life in a senior apartment, and she pressed flowers and made beautiful cards with them to donate to the gift shop. Her age was an asset for her as well as for her friends. This strikingly contrasts with the negative view of old age that prevails in American society. It is no wonder that many seniors found a haven at the Center and called it a “home away from home.” I hasten to add two remarks regarding Lake District Senior Center as a shelter for its participants and the positive meanings of their advanced age within it. First, the Senior Center as a shelter did not preclude its position as part of the broader society. Both the subculture of the Center and mainstream American culture shaped elders’ actions and thoughts. Sometimes, these two cultures might contradict each other, and certain things might have different meanings among the old and the young. Nonetheless, dominant American values—­such as independence, egalitarianism, and freedom of choice—­remained the most important guiding principles in the Senior Center. Whatever difference might exist between them, the subculture was neither hostile to nor isolated from the main culture. Rather, both provided seniors with a means of coping with aging problems. Second, while advanced age might be a source of pride for Center people, they also showed strong resistance to being labeled senior citizens. This was evident when, in 2004, the name “Lake District Senior Center” was changed to the age-­neutral “Lifelong.” This ambivalence toward the term senior citizens

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  47

was not a new phenomenon either; in previous decades, many motions had been made to change the name, but they were tabled. The multiple meanings of old age also include the view of senescence as “the golden age.” The term conveys the image of a happy old age when people reap the fruit of their lifelong labor and actively enjoy a leisurely life. Older women in The Golden Girls,24 a popular television situation comedy of several decades ago, acted out this ideal. Advertisements of American retirement communities also highlight this view that the best is yet to be25 by promising an enjoyable life filled with activities.26 They are strikingly different from those of Japanese retirement communities, whose selling point is usually care and security in one’s declining years.27 The meaning of old age is also complex in Japan, where growing old may be associated with maturity, respect, and prestige. Despite these positive meanings, many elderly Japanese reject the label of the aged just as their American counterparts do (e.g., Traphagan 2000, 95–­102). They avoid sitting on the “silver seats” reserved for elders on public transportation and are surprised or even offended when someone surrenders a seat for them on a crowded train or bus. This ambivalence may result from the fact that older people in Japan are viewed both as the weak/vulnerable and the wise/powerful. Underlying the first view is the belief that everybody will eventually grow old and need care, so a protective approach of supporting the aged is best (Hashimoto 1996). By contrast, the second view values the experience, knowledge, and wisdom that older people have accumulated in their lifetimes and accords them respect, distinction, and power. Thus in a village in northern Japan, men in their seventies and eighties play a leadership role in most local business (Traphagan 2000). These examples from America and Japan indicate that the meanings of old age are the outcome of complex social, cultural, and psychological factors. Therefore, regardless of culture, old age has multiple meanings that are not fixed but shifting and often contradictory.

Elders’ Activities in the Twenty-­First Century Two things I observed at Lake District Senior Center during my initial fieldwork are rare or obsolete today. One was a telephone placed at the corner of the activity room. Occasionally, people called home or their friends and dropped coins in the box next to the phone. The other was film development. Elders often talked about where they could get the best deal for developing the pictures they took. Cell phones and digital cameras have since replaced landline telephones and film cameras. Such technological changes had notable impacts on older Americans’ activities at the Senior Center. For example, a few years after moving to a new

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location in 1997, the Center started computer classes, especially for beginners, to facilitate elders’ entry into the digital world. In those early days, students sat in front of desktop computers to learn the bare basic, such as how to use the keyboard, mouse, and Windows operating system. Frequently, they got lost, and the instructor gave them hands-­on directions by moving from one student to the next. The pace of these classes was very slow. Before long, many older Americans improved their computer skills and became “technogenarian[s], technology savvy elder[s]” (Loe 2017, 223). Consequently, during the decade after the turn of the century, enrollment in computer classes, especially those for beginners, dropped sharply. Center people contacted families and friends via email, exchanged photographs electronically, paid bills online, and kept in touch with others through social media. In recent years, when elders have taken computer classes to enhance their digital skills, they brought their own iPads or laptop computers. When I took a ukulele class at the Center in 2018, the instructor emailed some sheet music and additional information, such as what to bring to the first class and how to tune the instrument. In 2010, as computer use spread among older Americans, the Center started a weekly online newsletter. Its recipients numbered 1,380 in 2017. The Center also set up its own website with a variety of information. Another addition to Center programs was Senior Circuit, which was inaugurated in 1999 to offer a wide range of academically oriented classes.28 Unlike other existing Center programs, it required a small fee. But because the cost was nominal compared to the fees charged for nonregistering adults at three local institutions of higher education, Senior Circuit was successful from its onset.29 Welcoming this affordable opportunity for continuing education, some Center people called it the “fourth college” in town. Though Senior Circuit greatly expanded elder’s learning opportunities, socializing has remained an important part of their activities, including in the lecture-­style classes. In addition, various social groups were organized to meet regularly to pursue a shared interest, such as reading, knitting, playing chess or mah-­jongg, and eating vegan food. Another noteworthy trend in elders’ activities was an increasing focus on exercise. Since its establishment in 1952, Lake District Senior Center had always offered health-­and-­wellness programs.30 During my initial fieldwork, the Center had three exercise classes: therapeutic workouts for stretching and strengthening, aerobics, and chair yoga. All three met weekly and were well-­attended. In recent years, the Center added many more exercise classes, such as “Strength Training,” “Enhance Your Fitness,” “Zumba,” “Tai Chi,” and “Stay Active and Independent for Life (SAIL).” SAIL met three times a week and monitored the participants’ progress; other exercise classes were held weekly. Among eleven activities scheduled on one Monday in 2017, seven were

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  49

exercise classes. Exercise classes were so popular that when they met, the Center’s parking lot filled up completely, forcing some participants to park elsewhere. The Center offered additional exercise classes at other locations (e.g., senior apartments) and organized walks at parks, botanical gardens, and other scenic areas. With this notable increase in the number of classes and their participants, exercise became one of the core programs at Lake District Senior Center. Among the regulars of the strengthening class were Grace and Ruth, two widowed octogenarians with high blood pressure and diabetes, respectively. Because they had never been athletic, even in their youth, they found it hard at the beginning to do all the routines. But they came to enjoy their exercise because they felt good afterward. In addition, they claimed, stronger muscles eliminated some of their aches and pains.

Participation in Lake District Senior Center: Comparison with Old People’s Clubs in Japan In contemporary Japan, many elders face the same problems of aging (e.g., role loss, social isolation, loneliness) as their American counterparts due to diminishing three-­generation families, declining communal ties, and increasing single-­person or couple-­only households. To deal with this phenomenon, many more rōjin kurabu, or old people’s clubs, have appeared. In 2004, there were 132,000 old people’s clubs throughout Japan with a total membership of 8.7 million (Asahi Shimbun 2004). Japanese affiliation with senior citizens groups frequently derived from existing social ties, especially those in the neighborhood community. In some cases, joining the group might be mandatory, in strong contrast to the voluntary nature of older Americans’ participation in Center activities. Theodore Bestor (1989) and John Traphagan (2000) observe—­in a Tokyo neighborhood and a northern village, respectively—­that old people’s clubs were part of jichikai, or the neighborhood association,31 just like other age-­grade organizations, such as the children’s club, the young men’s club, and the women’s club. As people went through different life stages, they progressed from one community group to the next, from the children’s club to the young men’s club or from the women’s club to the old people’s club, for example. As part of the local administrative structure, the old people’s club might assume some of the community responsibilities that were distributed among age-­graded subgroups. In Bestor’s Tokyo neighborhood, men in the old people’s club took charge of the semiannual festivals for a small shrine, whereas younger adult men were responsible for the more demanding task of running the annual festival (1989, 167).32 In Traphagan’s field site in northern Japan, the old

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people’s club was spared assigned communal tasks (2000, 181), but some male members exercised strong political influence, occupying all high-­level offices in the neighborhood association (94–­95). In my family’s neighborhood in an Osaka suburb, I witnessed a similar pattern in older people’s participation in senior citizens groups and the tasks these groups carried out. My grandmother, for example, belonged to two organizations for older women in the community, the Buddhist Women’s Association and the Widows’ Association. The former was responsible for preparing food and beverages for major religious events at a temple, and the latter was primarily for mutual help and companionship. After retirement, my father joined the local old people’s club. One of its tasks was to collect old newspapers and recyclable bottles to raise money for the children’s club. My mother joined the women’s club after her retirement. She did not join the Buddhist Women’s Association until after my grandmother’s death because it was considered inappropriate for two members of the same family in different generations to belong to the same age-­grade group. In other words, each of them participated in these neighborhood groups as a representative of her family. This practice was common in Japan (Lebra 1984, 269) and remarkably different from the case of Mae and Beth, the mother-­daughter pair who had sat like two rocks at home until they began to go to Lake District Senior Center together. They shared many activities at the Center and participated in them as two separate individuals who happened to be related as mother and daughter. The difference between the United States and Japan was also apparent in my mother’s participation in a retired teachers’ group. Unlike the aforementioned Japanese senior citizens groups, membership in this group was based not on communal ties but on occupational ones. In this regard, it was similar to the retired teachers group at Lake District Senior Center. Nevertheless, they had one major difference. The group my mother belonged to consisted of a small number of former teachers who had worked together for many years. It was formed on long-­lasting social ties. By contrast, the membership of its American counterpart was open to every retired teacher and included those who had never met before joining the group. These differences may suggest that (1) elderly Japanese were better integrated into society than their American counterparts and (2) old age in Japan allowed continuity in people’s lives, whereas old age in America involved a break from earlier life or the start of a new life. These implications might give the impression that Japanese customs and values better accommodated seniors’ needs and that older Americans were disadvantaged in coping with aging problems. The picture is not that simple, however. For instance, even if discontinuity might make older Americans’ adaptations more challenging, they were not all negative and some of them were initiated by older Americans themselves (see

Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center  •  51

chapter 4). The equation of discontinuity with hardship was also undermined by another cultural difference: where people found continuity. Older Japanese sought continuity among their existing social networks—­in particular, in the family and the neighborhood—­while, as Ward maintains (1984), the major source of continuity for older Americans lies in their individual actions to “keep busy” (see chapter 6). Furthermore, the Senior Center’s open membership, as exemplified by the retired teachers group, provided older Americans with a wide range of activities to do so. Such opportunities were more limited for older Japanese because existing social ties often played an important role in determining the membership of old people’s clubs. In addition, changes in the core institutions that kept them socially integrated—­the dispersal of the family and the decline of the neighborhood community—­present a new challenge for Japanese elders. * * * Older Americans’ activities at Lake District Senior Center contributed to mitigating aging problems and making their lives meaningful. Staying active was a value that Center participants believed in. Their activities were also guided by American cultural values, such as freedom of choice, which was behind the voluntary nature of their participation. Egalitarianism, which manifested in how they did not make distinctions among participants of varied socioeconomic backgrounds, was another guiding principle. These cultural values shaped other areas of Center people’s experience as well. The next chapter examines mutual support among them and the impacts of American values on it.

2

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves

One of many books I read to prepare for my research is The Unexpected Community (Hochschild 1973). It is a case study of Merrill Court, a small housing project for elderly welfare recipients in California. Contrary to the author’s expectations, instead of a bleak picture of senescence, she found an active social community among the residents. My research at Lake District Senior Center brought a similar discovery, though the Center is not a housing facility like Merrill Court.1 When many elders went to the Senior Center for the first time, they joined a group of strangers to engage in activities of their choice, such as painting, exercising, and memoir writing. Nonetheless, they soon found themselves becoming members of an “unexpected community” where they developed supportive relationships with their peers. This chapter explores what kind of support they received, how they supported each other, and why both mutual support and self-­help were crucial for maintaining autonomy.

Initiation of Newcomers Support started on elders’ first visits to the Center through their initiation into a group. Class instructors and group leaders introduced newcomers, and group members introduced themselves to get acquainted. Despite the warm welcome, some people felt uncomfortable meeting a group of strangers, apprehensive about doing something unfamiliar (e.g., knitting for the first time or painting again after a long interval, perhaps since grade school), or uncertain 52

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  53

about their ability to undertake a new pursuit. If they hinted at their unease, some established members volunteered stories of their own clumsy or embarrassing experiences when they first joined and encouraged newcomers to stay on. Others told how participating in Center activities brightened their lives. Encouraging comments on newcomers’ performances also contributed to their successful initiation into Center activities. Slow learners in particular received generous support. “Show me what you have done so far,” Joyce, a regular in the knitting group, said to Samantha, a newcomer. Looking at the unfinished product of the beginner’s endeavor, Joyce commented, “That’s beautiful! You are doing very well. You have knitted more than two inches. At this pace, you will finish it before you know it. Your daughter will love the scarf her mom knits for her!” With plenty of support and encouragement, most newcomers were successfully initiated into Center activities. During the eighteen months of my initial fieldwork, I observed only one case in which these efforts to initiate newcomers failed. The case involved Jenny, who came to the art class. She was a widowed octogenarian but walked swiftly and had eyesight good enough to drive. But her hearing impairment made communication with others difficult. Nonetheless, her fellow painters were patient. Some even wrote messages on paper. Jenny appreciated their kind accommodations. At the end of the class, many encouraged her to come again. When Jenny returned the following week, people said how happy they were to see her. Yet due to her poor hearing, she could not chat with others or follow the instructions. As time passed, she became more uncomfortable and embarrassed. Finally, she thanked people and left. While some newcomers did not return because they thought the activity was boring, time-­ consuming, or too advanced, Jenny enjoyed painting. If she had had a friend in the class, this person could have helped Jenny get acquainted with others. If Jenny had been familiar with the subject taught, it would also have helped because she would not have needed to hear all the instructions. Some Center participants were as hearing-­impaired as Jenny or even worse. But through their Center activities, most found ways to minimize their hearing problems: by seeing an audiologist or joining a class to learn lip-­ reading or sign language. They gleaned useful information from their peers as well. When Kathryn, a ninety-­three-­year-­old widow, complained about her hearing aid, Diane recommended a new type that had greatly enhanced her own hearing. Kathryn was delighted to find that it also worked for her. Since Jenny lived by herself in a big house, her hearing difficulty might not have surfaced before, and she might have postponed getting help. As many Center people agreed, the hardest thing to do is to admit that one has a problem.

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Help in Practical Matters and Moral and Emotional Support As people grew older and experienced declining health and resources, assistance from others became necessary. Going to the Senior Center helped them deal with these issues because peer support was abundant among Center participants. For instance, they gave rides to those who had given up driving and did errands for the physically impaired, such as buying groceries, picking up prescription drugs, and mailing packages. Lending tools and instruments was also a common practice. If a beginner was clumsily counting stitches in the knitting class, someone offered a stitch marker. Similarly, tape measures, pairs of scissors, and sewing needles were lent to classmates, as well as novels, instruction books, and travel guides. Lending among elders reduced the costs of their activities. Sending cards to those who were ill or had lost a loved one was another way Center participants supported each other. Circulating a card for signatures seemed a routine activity because there was always someone who was ill or bereaved. While signing a get-­well card, Emily, a former secretary and a participant in several classes, said, “Gee, almost every week we sign a card for our sick friend!” Get-­well cards were sent not only to the seriously ill but also to those who were temporarily under the weather. When the flu prevented me from attending a Founders group’s meeting, I too received a card with warm words and many signatures. Cards for wishing a swift recovery and expressing condolences were sent so diligently to so many that sometimes people did not know recipients personally, though they knew of them. Thus one of the Founders members suggested discontinuing this practice. She immediately had to withdraw her proposal because a great many people said how glad they were to see their friends’ names and messages on the card when they were hospitalized or grieving a death in the family. I truly understood how much these cards comforted elders when my husband had cancer and especially after he died. On many sleepless nights after his death, I took out a basketful of sympathy cards and read them one by one. The kind words of condolence and senders’ memories of my husband made me cry but also warmed my heart and calmed me down. In addition to helping in practical matters and sending cards, Center people offered ample moral and emotional support. The tediousness of dealing with Medicare red tape was a subject that came up frequently and drew sympathetic attention. Those with problems with their cars or appliances always found compassionate listeners. In addition, people routinely expressed concern about each other’s health because many had chronic medical conditions. The cases of Jane’s skin cancer and Emily’s furnace problem illustrate the care Center people showed to each other.

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  55

One day, Jane, a retired civil servant, came to the knitting class late with a Band-­Aid on her nose. She told the class she just had skin cancer surgery. All in the group shifted their eyes to Jane’s face. Their expressions showed obvious concern, but none verbalized it. Instead, they positively responded to this news. Diane, the instructor, told Jane she had had skin cancer removed from her face years ago and had not had any problems since then. Quite a few mentioned that Jane looked great considering she had just had an operation and talked about how lucky they were to have modern medicine. One even teased Jane, “You look like a naughty girl who fell off a tree and cut her nose.” They also admired Jane’s decision to carry on with her life as normally as possible despite her cancer. The class went on as usual, with people knitting and chatting. Only after Jane left did others begin to express their concern; they refrained from doing so in her presence. Each week afterward, Jane’s classmates inquired after her condition, until one day she shared her doctor’s assurance that everything was all right. Center people extended similar compassion toward Emily when her furnace broke down one weekend in the middle of winter. She waited until Monday to call a plumber and survived without heat by putting on extra sweaters, leaving faucets a little open to prevent the plumbing from freezing, and using the oven for cooking as much as possible to generate heat. Her friends not only listened attentively but also showed their concern by asking various questions. “Is your furnace fixed?” asked one of them. When Emily replied that the first thing Monday morning, she had called a plumber and it was repaired in no time, someone else inquired, “Are you warm enough now?” Still another joined in, “Make sure that you get a senior citizens discount when the bill comes.” Though Emily’s friends asked questions to ensure everything was in order, nobody asked her why she had waited until Monday to call a repair person. They knew how expensive it is to hire a plumber, and service on weekends costs even more. By not questioning Emily’s decision to live without heat for a few days, they endorsed her actions. The following conversation on shopping ventures between two retired teachers—­Diane (single) and Mary (divorced)—­also demonstrates mutual support among Center participants. Mary told Diane how guilty she felt about the food processor she had bought, because it was not cheap, and cooking for just one person, she was not sure how much benefit she could get out of it. Diane immediately replied, “Don’t feel that way. You deserve it.” She then told Mary her own shopping “indulgence.” Diane’s old television set had some problems that would cost seventy or eighty dollars to repair. In the meantime, she saw an advertisement for a color television sale at a local appliance store. Like Mary, Diane was hesitant about buying a new set because at age eighty-­ five, she was not sure how long she would be able to enjoy it. However, because

56  •  Through Japanese Eyes

repairing the old set would cost a substantial amount of money, she decided to buy the new television set on sale. But her story did not end happily. The bill she received was much larger than she had expected, since it included the charge for picking up the old set. Although Diane got a fifty-­dollar credit by trading in her old set, the price of the new television on the bill was about sixty dollars higher than the sale price in the newspaper advertisement. As a single older woman, Diane knew how vulnerable she was in this kind of transaction. She told Mary that she was distressed by the bill, though she liked her new television set. Being single and elderly herself, Mary was not of much help on practical aspects of the matter. Instead, she supported Diane’s decision to purchase the new television and tried to comfort her. “Your new TV may be a different model from the one they advertised in the paper, maybe a better one,” she said. “If you don’t like your new TV or you are not happy with the deal, you can return it during the grace period and get your money back.” Then she added, “If you enjoy your new TV and get pleasure out of it, that is the most important thing, don’t you think?” Major surgery or the death of a loved one occurred more frequently as people grew older. When those who suffered illnesses or losses showed up at the Senior Center after a long absence, their peers expressed their pleasure at seeing them again. To those who had recovered from a serious illness, they gave reassuring words, such as “You look well” and “I had the same surgery five years ago. Look, I am fine now.” To the bereaved, they extended warm sympathy, which might be simply saying with a hug “So sorry for the loss of your husband” or letting the widow reminisce about her late husband if they sensed that this would comfort her. However, because illness and death, like senescence, are viewed negatively in America (Sontag 1978; Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 7), such responses are not widespread. A fair number of my interlocutors said with distress that some of their friends dropped out of their lives when they became seriously ill or particularly after they lost a loved one.2 Widows often wrote to advice columns about their shrinking social circles after their husbands’ death. I had a similar experience after my husband died. But as if compensating for the loss of some friends who stopped contacting me, many others, including those whom I had never met (e.g., my husband’s army buddies and former students), sent me sympathy cards. Center participants were accommodating and patient with their peers. This was most evident when they dealt with their friends’ physical limitations. For instance, when someone with a hearing impairment did not respond, Center people tried to communicate by raising their voices or touching the person on the arm or shoulder to draw attention. Likewise, when elders with trembling

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  57

hands or bad eyesight were slowly preparing their drinks at the beverage cart, others waited patiently without rushing them. A dish-­to-­pass (or potluck) lunch held by the clay workshop provides another example. People who no longer cooked or who had dietary restrictions were encouraged to come. Those in the former group brought store-­bought foods, such as cheese, apples, and ice cream. Judy, who was diabetic, brought her own sugar-­free lunch. Robert, an octogenarian bachelor and a retired high school art teacher, could not eat because he had to fast for a whole day due to the medicine he had taken in the morning, but he still joined to enjoy the company. Furthermore, although this luncheon was held at the house of one of its members, some participants brought their own tableware and a serving spoon to minimize the hostess’s work. Remarkably, such patience and accommodation were extended even to troublemakers. Although the majority of Center participants were nice and considerate of each other, a few self-­centered people strained the congenial atmosphere. Lee was one of these few. She did not have a sewing machine at home and came to the Center to sew, though she did not belong to the sewing group. When she came, she brought only the fabric and the pattern. For the rest (e.g., needles, thread, scissors), she used the Center’s resources. After using them, she did not put them back where they belonged. She often broke the sewing machine but failed to notify the Center staff. Naturally, this inconvenienced the sewing group because their necessities were either missing or nonfunctioning. The group asked Lee to put things back or let the Center staff know about any trouble with the sewing machine, but Lee met their request with aggressive complaints. Lee was also an avid buyer at the rummage sales some Center groups held for fundraising, but her checks bounced more than once. When cashiers at these sales asked her to pay in cash, Lee made a scene. Center people’s general reaction to Lee was polite, passive avoidance. They did not enthusiastically welcome her, but they did not ignore her when she came. Some of them expressed their sympathy for her: “I feel sorry for Lee because she can’t help being how she is.” However, such tolerance toward a troublemaker was not widespread. Some local business establishments and service agencies no longer allowed Lee on their premises. Likewise, Center people’s accommodation of the physically limited is not a common phenomenon in American society either (Murphy 1987). Younger Americans are impatient with or ignorant of the fact that it takes older people much longer to do things. Sometimes, even trained health-­care professionals do not exhibit as much accommodation as Center people did. In 2003, I took Margaret, a ninety-­three-­year-­old widow, to the hospital for an abdominal MRI. Upon our arrival, a young male technician told her to drink two large glasses of liquid in twenty minutes for better contrast in

58  •  Through Japanese Eyes

screening pictures. She politely requested more time because when she had a similar test before, hurriedly drinking the same liquid after fasting from the previous night made her sick. Although he consented to her request, he and a middle-­aged female worker frequently returned to check Margaret’s progress. In the meantime, Margaret drank the liquid slowly, pointing to her esophagus to say it was still sitting there and patting her upper chest to facilitate its downward movement. When I patted her back gently and asked her if it helped, she said yes, and we both laughed when she mentioned that the same action helps babies burp. Although her shoulders were hunched, she was ambulatory, was nicely dressed, and had a keen mind. She also maintained an independent life in her apartment at a retirement community and had driven until a few years before this incident. Yet in the eyes of two medical attendants, an old lady crouching on a chair and sipping the liquid little by little was not a full adult but a dependent who needed help. They were polite but patronizing, calling her honey. The truth was far from their perception, however. Despite her inability to drink the liquid as fast as she was told, Margaret was in control of her situation. She knew her physical limitations. She knew that swallowing slowly was her best strategy to prevent her from having problems and inconveniencing others. So she made the intelligent decision to ask for more time. She made this request in a polite, matter-­of-­fact fashion without showing self-­pity or soliciting sympathy from others. To expedite swallowing, Margaret adopted a trick she had learned from her previous experience: tapping her upper chest. She was even good-­humored while performing the unpleasant task of drinking the artificially sweetened liquid. This example demonstrates that physical manifestations of aging have a strong negative impact on Americans’ perceptions of older people. This may be attributed to American culture, which generally commends the young, the healthy, and the strong. It does not embrace the traditional Japanese values I was brought up with: that the aged body is the outcome of a long life of hard work and thereby a license to receive care in old age. However, in the last few decades, senescence in Japan has changed, and the number of older Japanese living without this privilege has increased. A major shift in aging experiences and attitudes toward elders is reflected in the appearance of negative terms such as monsutā rōjin (“monster elders” who are detested because they treat service workers with arrogance and make unreasonable demands), kenrō shakai (a society of hating elders; Itsuki 2015), karyū rōjin (low-­class seniors; T. Fujita 2015), and rōgo hasan (bankruptcy in old age; NHK Special Report Team 2015). Nevertheless, a longitudinal study of more than five hundred college students in the early twenty-­first century showed surprisingly positive attitudes toward the aged among youth. Responses included “The elderly made Japan today,” “They contributed to what we have

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  59

now,” “It’s our turn to repay them,” and “They rest now because they worked hard for society” ( Jun Katata, personal communication, May 24, 2004). These comments indicate that reciprocity and mutual dependence are still at the core of intergenerational relationships in Japan, in contrast to Americans’ emphasis on intergenerational autonomy (see chapter 5). This American quest for intergenerational autonomy might be the reason for the myth of ill-­treated elders in America that has prevailed in other countries. Invalid though this myth might be, the way American elders are treated draws the attention of people with foreign backgrounds. Josephine, a part-­time worker at Lake District Senior Center from the Philippines, said that when she started her job, she was struck by two things: older Americans’ independent-­mindedness and younger Americans’ impatience with them. Growing up in a hierarchical society where age and seniority were positively correlated and people showed deference to older people, Josephine could not understand why younger Americans were so unaccommodating toward frail elders. She felt they were rude and nasty. The way Center participants treated their peers was remarkably different from Josephine’s observations of younger Americans’ treatment of them and my own experience with Margaret at the MRI clinic. Why, as a rule, were Center people so uniformly nice to each other and willing to help others? Some of them cited a shared fate. Regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds, they were traveling in the same boat, christened Aged. Thus they looked at the age-­related problems of other seniors as their own or something that might befall them in the not-­so-­distant future. They thought younger people did not fully comprehend these problems. Diane recollected her own ignorance of old age when she was taking care of her mother: “I spent a lot of time with Mother from my early retirement in my late fifties to her death. But it never occurred to me then that being old means living with many physical disabilities, such as aches and pains, useless ears, and lame legs. At eighty-­five, I understand perfectly well how Mother felt. She must have been awfully frustrated when she became bedridden after falling at church one Sunday morning.” Older Americans’ shared fate also included their own vulnerability. They were well aware of the fact that senior citizens made an easy target for crime and exploitation. Living in a small town in a rural area did not lessen this. I mentioned earlier Diane’s problems with the billing of her new television set, and some Center participants became the victims of violent crimes. Eleanor had her car tires slashed. Jerry, the eighty-­four-­year-­old widow of a business executive, was mugged. Neither of these octogenarians did anything reckless that endangered them: Eleanor’s car was parked in the parking lot of the senior apartment complex where she lived, and a group of teenagers snatched Jerry’s purse in broad daylight outside a downtown store.

60  •  Through Japanese Eyes

When people at the Senior Center heard about these incidents, the news circulated very quickly (see chapter 3). For one thing, it sent out a warning to their fellow senior citizens. Hearing the news, people also talked to the victims, expressed their sympathy, and listened to their anger, despair, and frustration. Center people listened attentively because they knew it could just as easily happened to them. When a number of elderly residents were raped in a respectable downtown apartment building, everybody was shocked. The hideous nature of the crime generated fear, especially among older women living alone. To protect the victims’ privacy, their names were withheld, so the normal support mechanism was not activated. Center people were concerned about their friends who lived in the same apartment building and prayed they were not among the rape victims. Yet there was no follow-­up talk about this incident. I speculate it was because some of their friends turned out to be the rape victims. By not reporting this discovery, Center participants protected the victims’ privacy and avoided their pain of exposure. In addition to a shared fate, some people attributed caring, supportive relation­ships among Center participants to the way they were raised and spent their early adulthood. Elizabeth, the executive director of the Senior Citizens Council, explained, “These folks are caring because they belong to the generation in which people lived closely, helping each other.” Another staff member held a similar view. Elsie predicted, “Wait until the ‘me’ generation becomes senior citizens. They will be a lot more self-­centered and demanding than these folks who come to the Center now.” Although sharing a similar fate and belonging to the “us” generation might play a significant role in Center participants’ willingness to help each other, there was another—­more important—­reason for it. That is, mutual help was essential in order to prolong elders’ autonomy in the face of their diminishing ability to be self-­sufficient. The next chapter addresses this issue further.

The Significance of Self-­Help In addition to mutual help, self-­help is imperative for older Americans’ independence. Paradoxical as it might seem, self-­reliance becomes even more important as one’s need for assistance increases (Buch 2015, 2017, 2018). Let us see how the twin principles of self-­help and mutual help guided the actions and interactions of Center participants. When assistance was offered at the Center, people accepted it with gratitude. Sometimes a person who needed help requested it and someone nearby complied. However, it was also common for Center people to decline an offer of assistance politely but firmly. They tended to do so if they could perform the act by themselves, albeit less efficiently through a different means. For

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  61

instance, some people fetched their own coffee even though it took longer than asking for help. Many preferred taking the bus or using a transportation service for the elderly over getting a ride from family members and friends. Mr.  Kelly’s case illustrated how avoiding assistance helped him maintain control and choice in his life after disability threatened his autonomy. The Kellys, both in their eighties, were immigrants from Austria and longtime members of the Founders group. Although the days of their active leadership had ended years ago, they continued to attend the group’s weekly meetings. One day, when Mrs.  Kelly showed up alone, I asked her if her husband was not coming. She replied, “He will come sooner or later. He has to walk very slowly. I guess he is walking somewhere between here and our car. He doesn’t want me to drive him here, drop him off, and park the car.3 He doesn’t want me to help him.” When I complimented her husband’s determination, Mrs. Kelly continued, “My husband is very stubborn. When his balance became precarious, it worried me a lot for him to walk without support. But he refused to use a cane. It took me and his doctor so much time and energy to convince him that he should use a cane. He now walks with a cane, but it certainly wasn’t easy for him to give in!” Although Mr. Kelly did give in in that regard, he still tried to control his life by choosing to walk to the Center from their car rather than having his wife chauffeur him. Mr. Kelly’s case revealed that self-­reliance was so important for older Americans that they endeavored to achieve it at all cost. Therefore, if they wished to maintain mutually satisfactory relationships, they must balance readiness to assist others in need and respect for their autonomy. Overextending assistance might be offensive because it jeopardized elders’ quest for independence. Being aware of this delicate balance, Center people tried not to overstep boundaries and risk infringing on responsibilities held by other people. When someone asked a classmate a question related to the subject of the class (e.g., knitting, painting, photography), the latter often referred it to the instructor, especially when the instructor was an elderly volunteer, as in many Center classes. Another example came from my own experience at a Founders meeting. During a bag lunch, I noticed that the hot water flowed intermittently from the urn, indicating it was running out. I informed the secretary and asked if I should add more hot water. She told me instead to speak to Merissa, the “Kitchen Queen,” who was in charge of preparing the beverage cart. In this manner, the secretary prevented me from inadvertently usurping Merissa’s “privilege to be a helper” (Hazan 1980, 127). Minimizing one’s dependency was as important for good social relationships as honoring a peer’s desire to be self-­reliant. The principle of self-­help was also at work even when participants shared their problems. As noted earlier, Center people listened to their friends’ hardships and frustrating

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experiences with close attention and sympathy. Yet those who shared did not seem to expect assistance or solutions. Many seniors presented their problems, even serious ones, with a positive or sometimes humorous tone. Here are two examples of older women who coped with difficulties in their lives with such attitudes. One day, Kathryn came to the Center after a long absence due to shingles. She told her friends the awful pain, isolation, and frustration she suffered during her illness. After people expressed their sympathy and pleasure at seeing her again, Kathryn described how some people reacted to a nonagenarian who had just recovered from a long illness: “People say, ‘Look at her! She wants to go to the Senior Center even though she cannot walk well’ [Kathryn walked well for her age with a cane]. They are not nice. But such is life. I have a lot to be grateful for. I will keep hopping around.” Her determination and positive attitude might be because of her experiences as an immigrant from Norway. After marriage, she and her husband moved to the United States, where she worked as a domestic helper for a wealthy family. After her husband’s death, she became a resident of the old ladies home, which provided housing for older women who were poor or did not have any living relations. When the home was closed in the 1970s, she moved to a new senior citizens apartment built by the same organization that had operated the old ladies home and stayed there until close to her death. I found a similar attitude toward adversity in Adrian, who ran her own business before retirement. At the time of my initial fieldwork, she was in her midseventies and lived with her husband, a retired certified public accountant. One day, the normally vibrant Adrian looked so exhausted that some of her friends asked if she was all right. Adrian answered, “I am fine. But my life is full of disasters now.” She told her peers of her husband’s physical and mental deterioration due to Parkinson’s disease, her eldest son’s cancer operation, a flood at her grandson’s house due to a plumbing failure, and his baby girl’s impending hip operation. Adrian continued, “Just one disaster after another. I feel saturated. But life is like this. All we can do is to take things as they come, one at a time.” Frequently, solutions to their problems came unsolicited. Doris’s successful eye surgery was one such case. Doris moved from England to New York City when her husband started working for the New York Times. An avid gardener living in a downtown apartment, she took care of the flower garden at Lake District Senior Center. But her eyesight became so poor that she could no longer do it. Her past cataract operation had left her right eye almost blind, and a thickening cataract in her left eye further weakened her vision. Though she definitely needed another eye surgery, the trauma of her past experience made her hesitant. One day, while Doris and Frieda were talking at the Center, the solution to her eye problem presented itself. Learning that Doris’s poor

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  63

sight was interfering with her gardening, Frieda shared a story of her friend who had laser surgery to remove a cataract4 in the hospital fifty miles away and had fully recovered his eyesight. Doris later had the same operation by the same ophthalmologist. Its success enabled her to see well enough to read, knit, and garden, and it restored her autonomy. Because self-­reliance was so crucial for Center people, how would they react to someone who showed excessive dependency? Gladys’s case provides the answer. Gladys, in her midsixties, had lost two husbands to cancer and had three children from her first marriage. Since her first husband had drinking problems, this marriage had not been a happy one. Her second marriage was successful, except that her second husband’s daughter strongly opposed the union. Then her second husband was diagnosed with cancer. While he was hospitalized, Gladys had a serious car accident and stayed in a coma for a long time. Miraculously, she recovered, but with a lot of physical and psychological damage. She was legally handicapped and walked with crutches. While she was in the hospital, her husband died, and her stepdaughter completely excluded Gladys from her father’s funeral. Gladys was not even informed where her late husband was buried. Her husband’s death was a calamity in the true sense of the term. At the suggestion of her social worker, Gladys joined some Center classes. Since a number of Center participants belonged to the same church as Gladys and had known her and her family—­including her first husband—­for a long time, they were familiar with her tragedy. They sympathized with her and extended their help. Gladys got a lot of encouraging remarks from her classmates for her performance in the class. People were also good at mentioning something positive about her: her clothes, her jewelry, or how happy they were to see her. Sometimes, Gladys’s hands were noticeably shaky, which she attributed to the side effects of her medication. After she mentioned this, every week when Gladys came to the knitting class, Joyce held her hands and said, “You are fine. Look! Your hands are not shaky today.” She was very much aware that Gladys needed reassurance. Gladys’s reaction to their support was quite different from that of Kathryn or Adrian mentioned previously. Although she was grateful for her friends’ support, she also clung to them like a drowning man clutching a straw. She called them at home in the evening and poured out her story for hours. The receivers of these calls were annoyed and made excuses to hang up. Yet they were also sympathetic and tried to help her find something, such as reading and painting, that would fill her time and occupy her mind. Gladys listened passively to such suggestions or, at times, reacted negatively to them. Understanding and patient as Center people might be, they began to realize that there was little they could do for Gladys. They did not know how to deal with her excessive dependency and her passivity because these two traits

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were rarely observed among other Center participants. A comment by one of Gladys’s classmates summarized their feelings: “She feels sorry for herself because of all the problems she has. I sympathize with her. But who doesn’t have problems? We all have problems, some quite serious. Look at poor Shirley. Her only child died in his thirties and left three small children behind. But we try to live with our problems. Gladys is only in her sixties, one of the youngest among us, but she has already given up.” Gladys gradually withdrew from Center activities. The last news Center people heard about her was that she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for severe depression.

Ambivalence about Receiving Help: Comparison with Japan Although Senior Center participants found support from their peers important, most of them tried to minimize it as much as possible. When self-­help did not deliver what they needed, they preferred to rely on institutional help—­public transportation services, for instance. Older Japanese also feel ambivalent about getting help despite the traditional view of senescence as a period of “rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127). It is not unusual for them to decline assistance, such as a seat offered on a crowded train. Others accept assistance with a mixture of gratitude and reluctance, as a case from the Tokyo suburbs (M. Fujita 2004) illustrates. Middle-­aged housewives organized a gathering to chat (oshaberi no kai) once a month where they offered lunch to elderly residents in their community. These volunteers treated seniors as their surrogate parents and, just as daughters-­in-­law in the traditional Japanese family were expected to do, prepared homemade foods and waited on them. Elderly residents enjoyed eating and chatting with their peers, but they had mixed feelings about receiving goodwill from the younger women. One of the participants said, after watching a video on a meal program at an American senior center, “I envy those older Americans. They have tasks to do. The younger people here are really nice, and I am very grateful for their kind care for us. But we feel bad for them because we make no contributions to this event” (M. Fujita 2004, 220–­221). For “feel bad,” she used the Japanese term ki o tuskau—­literally, “to use ki.” Ki means “courteous sensitivities” involving “alertness and caring attention to other’s needs or feelings” (Lebra 2004, 44).5 The proper use of ki is crucial for Japanese social interactions. Thus although this woman accepted and appreciated the volunteer women’s goodwill toward their elderly neighbors, her awareness of the amount of work involved to prepare this event aroused her “courteous sensitivities” and made her use ki (44). This case reveals a complex interplay between two important Japanese norms: older people’s entitlement for care and the proper use of ki. These

Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves  •  65

two norms appeared to be in conflict because the older woman’s use of ki resulted in her reluctance to claim her rightful dependency. However, the two norms might also work in agreement: because she used her ki, she accepted the role of a dependent senior so as not to neglect the younger women’s kindness. Though elders both in America and in Japan feel ambivalent about receiving help, their conflicted feelings have different cultural roots. For older Americans, self-­reliance indicates their conformity to the dominant American value of independence. As long as they rely not on others but on themselves, they maintain control and choice, the two important ingredients of a good old age in America. Dependence, on the other hand, is the antithesis of cultural ideals and a damper on self-­esteem. By contrast, Japanese elders are not always hesitant to receive help, though they try to minimize meiwaku, or burdens on others. Generally, they expect and rely on help from children in old age. In addition, “[their] claim to dependence has significant social validity” (Hashimoto 1996, 155). Hence rather than the autonomy older Americans quest, in Japan, the certainty of obligation, especially that of children toward parents, is essential for happiness in old age (Hashimoto 1996). This delayed reciprocity between parents and children is endorsed by the dominant Japanese value of interdependence. In other words, the family remains the primary unit of self-­sufficiency for eldercare in Japan. This is notably different from the United States, where the conceptualized unit of self-­sufficiency is the individual.6 Despite these differences, exercising has become increasingly popular among elders in both countries in order to enhance physical nimbleness and prolong autonomy. As mentioned in chapter 1, I noticed a rise in the popularity of exercise classes at Lake District Senior Center in the twenty-­first century. The significance of physical fitness in Japan is endorsed by the fact that the country’s national long-­term care insurance covers the cost of geriatric exercise. It has also generated a popular term, kintore, or muscle training.7 For many Japanese elders, walking is a regular form of exercise. “Ten thousand steps a day” is a popular mantra. In my mother’s neighborhood, its faithful followers awakened residential communities by starting their daily walks in the hours before commuters hurried to the train station (Tsuji 2014b). My mother started her regular morning walk after my grandmother’s death, when her schedule became more flexible, and it continued until a few years before she died. My grandmother was earnest in her hand exercises because she believed that the continuous and intricate use of hands stimulated the brain and prevented a stroke. Thus not to become paralyzed and bedridden, she kept crocheting until close to her death. Elders in both America and Japan value physical fitness as a way to avoid depending on others, though the underlying cultural values for that avoidance may differ.

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* * * This chapter highlighted the mutual support among elders in the “unexpected community” of Lake District Senior Center. While they found such support indispensable, they were also ambivalent about relying on others and tried to maximize their ability to help themselves. The next chapter focuses on networking among Center people and demonstrates how they reconciled their dependence on others with their wish for autonomy.

3

Networking at Lake District Senior Center

Several months after I started my research, I heard that ninety-­three-­year-­old Kathryn was homebound and feeling bored. So I cut flowers from my garden and delivered them to her. In her studio apartment at a senior housing facility, we chatted for a while. I was in the nascent stage of my fieldwork, so I had no idea how fast the news of my visit would spread among Center participants until I called Diane that same evening and heard her say, “Kathryn told me how much she had enjoyed your visit and your flowers.” My research subsequently revealed that three types of networks— ­information, support, and exchange—­crisscrossed among Center participants, connecting elders across the community. This chapter explores how these frequently overlapping networks operated among Center participants and how being a part of them helped seniors not only remain socially engaged but also obtain necessary assistance to prolong their autonomy.

Circulating Information Information networks at the Senior Center were intricate and extensive. They circulated a variety of useful information, such as where to get a good hearing aid and who was a good doctor for cataract surgery. They also spread news: who had fallen and been hospitalized, whose husband had died, who had caught a bad flu, whose children were visiting, and so on. News often traveled widely with amazing speed, as in the case of my visit to Kathryn. When 67

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vandals slashed Eleanor’s car tires, her friend came to the Center to inform her. Within a few hours, the Center staff and participants had heard and were expressing their sympathy and anger. For a week after this incident, the circle of people who knew about it grew bigger and bigger. When someone who was not a Center regular told Eleanor how sorry she was about it, Eleanor asked, “How did you know about it?” These information networks also spread updates about elders who were absent from Center activities. One day, Daphne, a single woman who lived in public housing for low-­income seniors, did not show up for the knitting class. Because she was a longtime regular, her absence worried other knitters, leading them to exchange what they knew about how Daphne had been recently. One said that her friend had visited Daphne the day before but had not noticed anything unusual. Someone else said that she had seen Daphne at church on the previous Sunday. Still another joined to say Daphne had been at a downtown bank that very morning. Information networks also included those who had long been absent from Center activities. The cases of Alesia and Judy provide good examples. Alesia, a widowed former factory worker and a devoted singer in the Center’s senior chorus, went on a cross-­country motorcycle trip with some of her friends and so had not come to the Center for six months. While traveling, she occasionally sent postcards to her childhood friend and fellow chorus singer Joy, a retired bank teller. When Joy heard from Alesia in Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona, and so forth, she brought her postcards to the Center and shared them with the rest of the group. The second case involved Judy, a retired teacher. Shortly before I began my fieldwork in 1987, she broke her hip. As her health began declining rapidly, she moved to a nursing home. Before then, she had been a prominent volunteer leader at Lake District Senior Center for more than a decade. Among the number of activities she had initiated, she was most active in the sewing group and the gift shop. While Judy’s condition continued to deteriorate, her old friends from the Center visited her at the nursing home and told others what they learned about her. The most regular visitor was Eleanor, who had taken over leadership of the sewing class and the gift shop. More than a year after Judy had withdrawn from Center activities, people remained well informed of her condition: when she had another hip operation, a get-­well card was sent to her immediately. Intricate and extensive though the information networks might be, news did not always travel swiftly or accurately. Consequently, Center participants were not always informed of the current conditions of some of their peers. At the Founders meeting, the secretary regularly made a report on members who were sick and those who had died or experienced a death in the family. But her role in this routine was reversed from time to time: having no information to

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  69

report, she asked instead, “Does anyone know about the recent condition of Jacob?” or “Is Evelyn still in the hospital?” Even regarding news as serious as a death, information was sometimes absent or ambiguous. The cases of five deaths exemplify this. When the son-­in-­ law of Martha,1 an octogenarian, died a few months after his wife succumbed to cancer, the news of his death traveled slowly. Though his obituary had appeared in the newspaper, not knowing his surname, I was not sure if it was his. In addition, nobody at the Center talked about his death, though people had often mentioned how deeply grief-­stricken he was. So I described the obituary to Kay, Martha’s old friend, who confirmed that it was for Martha’s son-­in-­law. Kay said she must have missed it in the newspaper. It took another few weeks before many Center people learned of it.2 Eventually, a farewell card was circulated for Martha, who was moving to California to live near her surviving children. Some previous studies have reported that the news of death is kept from residents of some senior housing and nursing homes (e.g., Keith 1977; Shield 1988). But Center people normally did not hesitate to talk about death. Hence this did not explain why word of Martha’s son-­in-­law’s death traveled slowly. Furthermore, on other occasions, Center participants learned about the death of a friend or a friend’s relative with speed and accuracy. When Audrey, a former administrator, died one weekend in a car accident, the shocking news was announced on Monday morning by Lily, an instructor for one of the exercise classes. Since Audrey had been active in various Center activities for more than a decade, many people knew her and signed the sympathy card, which was sent to her daughter within a week of her death. Sometimes, news of death came quickly but with ambiguities. When Mrs. Jones died of a heart attack one morning, the news of her serious condition immediately reached the Center, but it took a full day before her death was confirmed. Mrs. Jones and her husband, an octogenarian couple, lived in a senior apartment next to the Center. Laura, another resident, came to the Center one morning and told her peers that Mrs. Jones was carried into an ambulance. Laura saw how pale Mrs. Jones was and knew something serious had occurred. But she was not sure if Mrs. Jones had died. It was not until the following morning that Mrs. Jones’s death was confirmed. In the fourth case, I witnessed a stunning information gap at a Founders meeting. At the first gathering of each month, the group had a birthday celebration by calling the names of members who were born in that month and singing a birthday song. When Heidi’s name was called at one of these celebrations, a member exclaimed, “Heidi died six months ago!” An error in record keeping alone did not sufficiently account for this incidence because the Founders group generally kept close track of their members and did not normally overlook major news among them. Moreover, each year in January,

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the group held a memorial service for the members who had passed away in the preceding year. But somehow Heidi’s death slipped through the gaps. The fifth case concerned the death of Marge’s neighbor. News of this death was not circulated at the Center because her neighbor did not participate in Center activities. But Marge shared the awkward way she learned about it with other elders at the Center. On one fall day, Marge was raking leaves in her backyard and spotted a neighbor in her yard. She walked to the picket fence dividing their properties and called to her, “What a beautiful day! How are you, Beatrix? How’s George doing? I haven’t seen him for a long time.” When Beatrix replied, “My husband passed away in July,” Marge was so taken aback that it took her a while to find words of condolence. What caused these inconsistencies in the way information was circulated? I suggest three interrelated factors: (1) varying degrees of participation in Center activities, (2) the fuzziness of group boundaries, and (3) reliance on individual initiative rather than a protocol in spreading the information. Let us reconsider the unknown status of Jacob and Evelyn and the unnoticed death of Heidi that came to light at the Founders group meetings. The Founders met weekly. A slate of elected volunteer officers managed the smooth operation of their activities. Those who belonged to the group paid membership dues. Thus there was a distinction between members and nonmembers. But this boundary was not as clear as it appeared because attendance was voluntary. Therefore, elders who continued to pay membership dues but came to the meetings only sporadically might turn into peripheral members. Normally, the group did not follow these members as closely as those in regular attendance and sometimes missed major news about them. The case of Heidi’s death also showed that the Founders group had no established system for notifying the group of major news about their fellow members. As a result, those who knew of Heidi’s death did not report it to the group. This is in striking contrast to the Japanese case discussed below. The extent of elders’ involvement in Center activities affected the way information networks circulated their news. In general, the more involved people were, the more effort their peers made to keep their information up to date. The case of Daphne’s absence from the knitting class illustrates how her classmates tried to keep track of her. Alesia’s case shows that the postcards she sent regularly during her long travels informed the chorus group of her activities and whereabouts and accorded her “long-­distance participation” in the group. Center people also knew that Alesia would come home and sing with them again. However, degree of participation and availability of information were not always correlated, as demonstrated by the case of Judy, a former Center leader and a nursing home resident. Her case seemed unusual in that she had

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  71

remained in the information network despite her long disappearance from the Center scene. Although she had made notable contributions to the Center, many current participants knew little about her past achievements. Moreover, unlike Alesia, she would never come to the Center again. Why did Center people closely follow Judy’s condition? The answer might lie in the continuity of her social networks. The two Center groups Judy had established remained active, and some of her old friends were still involved in them. Thus Eleanor or other friends of Judy’s visited her regularly and informed the sewing class members and gift shop volunteers of her current condition. It was as if Judy had continued to participate in these groups. The flexible group boundary also contributed to making Judy maintain an insider status despite her long absence. In Judy’s case and other cases noted above, individual choice—­either conscious or unconscious—­and/or chance played an important role in determining whether information was passed, to whom, and how. The following review of the five previously mentioned deaths illustrates this. In Audrey’s case, the news of her sudden death became known swiftly because of her daughter’s decision to inform Lily, a Center class instructor, and Lily’s subsequent decision to make an announcement. In Mrs. Jones’s case, Center people knew about her collapse right after the ambulance carried her away, even though her death was not confirmed until the following day. This almost instantaneous knowledge of the incident was credited to Laura, who had witnessed it by chance and immediately notified Center people. By contrast, the news of the three other deaths did not travel quickly. The death of Martha’s son-­in-­law might have been known to some Center people, but they did not share it with their peers, probably because he was not a Center participant. However, if Kay, Martha’s old friend, had known of his death, the news would have quickly entered the Center’s information network. This did not occur, however, because Kay overlooked his obituary. In America where death notices and obituaries in the newspaper serve as the major sources of discovering the passing of friends, colleagues, and neighbors, Kay’s experience was not unusual. Marge’s ignorance of her next-­door neighbor’s death was another such case.3 During my biannual trip to Japan to see my mother, I, too, missed the obituary of an old friend’s husband, who had terminal cancer. It was awkward to learn of his death a few weeks later, when I called her to inquire about his condition. Notification of death in America is complicated even further because some people choose not to announce the death in an obituary in the newspaper and some obituaries appear months after the death occurs.4 Furthermore, a lack of well-­established rules not only delays the news of death but also unintentionally blocks it. This happened after the death of Heidi, the Founders group member, when another member who knew about it did not tell the rest of the group.

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The widespread use of the internet in recent decades enabled Lake District Senior Center to reach a far greater number of elders, including those who did not visit the Center, much more frequently and swiftly than before. The weekly online newsletter provided a potpourri of information: class schedules, various local events for senior citizens, tips for healthy living, information for volunteering, and so on. The message from the executive director often had the kind of information that Center people had circulated among themselves in the days before the internet, such as announcing a new summer intern (a high school student who helped the Center operation) and the director’s sixtieth birthday.5 Nonetheless, information gaps could still occur as before. Lacking protocol, whether to pass on information of what kind to whom and how was still based on individual choice. What to include in the online newsletter was also up to the discretion of the Center staff. Individual choice, which affected the way information circulated, was also evident when Center people talked about themselves. For example, many seniors withheld information about their health problems, although health-­ related issues were one of the most frequently discussed topics at the Center and some even showed me scars from a series of operations. Among those who held back such information were the sufferers of chronic pain caused by arthritis, back problems, and other complaints. These people did not talk about their ailments because, as some of them said, complaining did not improve the condition. These elders’ decisions might also be explained by the general American view of illness as a sign of weakness or social marginality and hence something that must be kept private (Sontag 1978). The late Jun Etō, a Japanese literary critic, wrote about what his wife’s illness had revealed to him upon their arrival in America in 1962: “Sick people are the unfit in American society, and being unfit is wrong. Those who are wrong are inevitably defeated by the fit who are right” (1972, 25). Etō’s observation more than half a century ago remains valid in twenty-­first-­century America, where “good health is regarded as the moral duty of all individuals” (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 7).6 Growing up in Japan and living there until my late twenties, I knew that such attitudes toward illness among Americans differed considerably from those among Japanese. Simply put, being sick in Japan entitled people, both children and adults, to be taken care of by others. Even in my adulthood, when I had a cold and rested in bed, my grandmother always brought me food, such as hot noodle soup, rice porridge, or homemade sushi. When my colleague who lived alone missed work for two consecutive days, our boss asked me to stop by her apartment to see how she was. He also gave me money to buy some food to bring to her. Living in America, I discovered that such treatment for the sick was not universal. While I was assisting my American friend for several days after her

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  73

back surgery, including bringing food to her in bed three times a day, I was surprised to hear her say, “I’ve never been taken care of this way since I was a toddler!” Naturally, these cultural differences meant I had a hard time when I became sick in America until I had my husband to care for me. Though I experienced no serious illness, when I was under the weather and did not feel like cooking or driving to a store to buy groceries, I missed my grandmother’s homemade food. American attitudes toward illness brought me more surprises after I started my research at Lake District Senior Center. For instance, when Etsy was hospitalized for major surgery, none of her friends went to see her in the hospital despite the fact that she had been very active at the Center and was well liked. Eleanor, her close friend, said she did not visit her at the hospital because Etsy did not want her friends to see her in such a helpless condition. To show Etsy their concern and affection, her friends sent a collective get-­well card filled with personal messages. Requests for such privacy were also honored among next of kin. When Thelma’s brother was dying of cancer, she went to California to see him. Both Thelma and her brother were former elementary school teachers. They grew up in a small town in upstate New York, which was close to a factory where their father worked. Though the brother and the sister had spent most of their lives a continent apart, they had remained close. But Thelma’s brother refused to see her because he did not want her to see his cancer-­consumed body and his total dependence on the hospital staff. A nurse told Thelma her brother’s wish that she remember him as the healthy, independent man of his precancer days. His decision deeply saddened Thelma. Tears welled up in her eyes when she told me this story a few decades later. But she understood his anguish at losing autonomy and respected his wishes. The cases of Etsy and Thelma’s brother demonstrate the deep pain of losing independence and the supreme importance of privacy for Americans. They also indicate that contrary to the fuzzy group boundary, Americans clearly demarcate the border between self and others. Some Americans claim privacy is crucial on their deathbeds. A writer to an advice column declared, “I totally adore my family, but I do not want them taking care of me when I am dying. . . . I want to die with dignity. This means that I do not want my family anywhere near me in my last weeks” (Lane 2017b). Though I have heard many Center people—­and many Japanese—­say that a death surrounded by their loved ones is a good death (see chapter 7), the foregoing declaration did not startle me because of what I had learned during my husband’s final days. A few weeks before his death, a hospice nurse told me her experience of observing many deaths. She witnessed a good number of cases in which the whole family gathered to be with their loved one at the time of his or her death but the dying person stole a moment of solitude to die. The nurse said, “Some

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people need privacy to die.” Her story tremendously eased the uneasiness I felt whenever I was away from my husband’s bedside, even though it was not very long because I slept at the hospice for the last ten days of his life. Fortunately, I was by my husband’s side when he died. It seemed that he “chose” to die during a few minutes when two of us were alone, a rare occurrence at the hospice, where there were a lot of comings and goings of nursing staff. The idea of death as a private matter may partly explain why Americans do not hear of the deaths of their neighbors and friends’ relatives and why some Americans do not announce them in obituaries. By contrast, death in Japan may be viewed as the symbolic and behavioral representation of social relation­ ships (Tsuji 2006a), and the news of death quickly travels among people. To offer a comparative perspective, I will briefly summarize how this happens and why it is considered so important to spread it promptly. In Japan, when someone is dying or dies, relatives normally receive the notice first. Tradition clearly specifies who should be notified and who is obligated to attend the funeral. Therefore, under normal circumstances, it is very unlikely that Japanese will not hear of the deaths of their first cousins or their spouses, for instance.7 Beyond the circle of kin, the neighborhood community and workplace serve as two major channels to spread the news of death and related information. In one Tokyo neighborhood, the neighborhood association posted black-­edged death notices on seven bulletin boards that carried the name and age of the deceased and the time and the place of the wake and the funeral (Bestor 1989, 147). In my family’s neighborhood in an Osaka suburb, such information is brought from door to door by a tsuki-­tōban, a resident who assumes the task of distributing the community-­related information for a month before the role is passed on.8 The news of a death also spreads swiftly beyond the local community. Many Japanese workplaces have a well-­established system of informing workers and retirees of the deaths of other employees and their next of kin. The school district where my mother taught has a telephone tree. Each person is responsible for forwarding the death notice to three other workers or retirees, and the receivers of the information do the same. In this manner, the number of people who know increases exponentially in a very short time. Today, the internet expedites this process. When my grandmother died in 1988, both of my parents had been retired for nearly a decade. But their former bosses and colleagues, many of whom had never met my grandmother, came to her funeral. The same happened again when my father died in 1992. By the time my mother died in 2013, most of her superiors and former colleagues were deceased. But many former coworkers of my sister and her husband, both of whom were retired, attended my mother’s funeral.

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  75

Informal, less systematic telephone trees also spread the news. Through them, some former neighbors who had moved away in the 1960s learned about the deaths of my next of kin. They attended the funerals of my grandmother and father. Being too elderly and too frail to come to my mother’s funeral in 2013, they sent a customary cash gift for the Japanese funeral called kōden, or incense money. If former neighbors were already deceased, their heir sent kōden. Knowing of the death of someone in their social network is crucial for the Japanese because attending the funeral is the unavoidable duty of those who have social ties with the deceased or members of the bereaved family. Therefore, it is imperative that the news spreads swiftly and accurately. People who are required to attend a funeral include not only relatives but also neighbors, colleagues, and business associates. This is because membership in kin, communal, and occupational groups generates various obligations that include funeral attendance and the accompanying cash gift of kōden, even when the deceased is someone whom the mourner has never met, such as a superior’s parent or the spouse of a business associate. The tradition also requires that this be reciprocated for a future death. As a result, death in Japan binds people in a cycle of obligations, incorporating them into long-­term interdependent relationships (Tsuji 2006a).9 This explains why many people attended the funerals of my grandmother and my parents after a lapse of several decades and why receiving the news of death is vital for the Japanese.10 In other words, death in Japan is not strictly a private matter. Powerful pressure to conform to the mortuary tradition is closely linked to the dominant Japanese value of interdependence. The significance of group affiliation for Japanese identity also accounts for, at least partly, people’s conformity to this pressure, because being unaffiliated means social anonymity.

Forming Support Networks Chapter 2 described how my interlocutors supported each other. This section considers major characteristics of their support networks. Coming from Japan, where belonging to kin, communal, and occupational groups binds people in mutual dependence and obligation, I was struck by the individual initiation, the ad hoc basis of forming support networks, and the resulting diversity in these relationships. Among Center participants, there were many different ways and reasons for forming support relationships. Geographical proximity, for example, had a different impact on such relation­ ships in the two societies. In Japan, it is an important criterion for incorporating people into support networks. Neighborhood associations, whose membership is often mandatory, play a significant role not only in circulating information and taking care of various community affairs but also in helping

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people during a life crisis, such as the death of a loved one. A Japanese proverb says, “Good neighbors are more important than relatives living afar.” Among elders at Lake District Senior Center, living nearby had mixed effects on the formation of support networks. Some Center participants avoided partnering with neighbors for support. This was more identifiable among the residents of senior housing. They lived in such a close proximity that, to protect their privacy, they followed American suburbia culture and were friendly to their neighbors but kept them at a distance (Perin 1988). This attitude might explain, at least partly, why it took Marge months to learn of her next-­door neighbor’s death. Distant though some older Americans might be from their neighbors, they realized the merit of having good ones. Many Center participants regretted that younger Americans today were too busy to be neighborly. However, some of them enjoyed comfortable relationships with their young neighbors. Mildred, a widowed octogenarian, was one of them. Although she lived alone, she decided to stay in her house because in an emergency, she could rely on her two immediate neighbors on both sides of her house. Mildred and her neighbors did not see each other often because she was busy with her volunteer work and her neighbors with their jobs and childcare. Yet Mildred’s neighbors kept an eye on her. When they noticed her car had not been moved for several days, they called to check on her. Neighborly support was more common among older Americans. A good example was Diane and Helen’s partnership. Both were retired teachers and lived alone in their own houses. They belonged to the same church and participated in some activities at the Senior Center together. They did not have many relatives to call upon for help because neither of them had married and all their close relatives were deceased. In addition to living on the same block, these shared experiences contributed to the formation of their partnership. Diane and Helen complemented each other’s missing capacities to enhance their self-­sufficiency. Diane still drove at age eighty-­five while Helen, a few years younger, did not. Diane, however, was lame and almost deaf, but Helen could walk and hear normally. Frequently, the two elderly women ran errands together. While Diane drove, Helen sat next to her and warned her about important sounds she might not hear, like the siren from a police car or a fire engine, and when the turn signal did not stop automatically after changing lanes, Helen told Diane to turn it off. On rare occasions when they went to an unfamiliar place, Helen navigated. Since Diane drove Helen many places that would otherwise be inaccessible to her, Helen in return walked to banks and stores to deposit checks or pick up prescription drugs for Diane, who waited in the parked car. Diane and Helen also called each other every day at a designated time, and each had a key to the other’s house. These precautions proved to be a godsend

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one morning when Diane fell in the bathtub and could not move. Helen, alarmed when Diane did not respond to her call, entered Diane’s house, found her lying naked in the bathtub, and called for help. Later, sharing this episode with her peers at the Center, Diane said, “I was not worried because I knew Helen would call me at noon and she would come to help when I didn’t answer.” She continued, “Helen also brought a bath towel to cover me before help came.”11 Some elders found support partners among their former colleagues. Robert’s case provides such an example. After retirement, this eighty-­year-­old former art teacher and son of Scottish immigrants painted a mural of Christian saints under the dome of his church. Though he had gone through a series of major operations for cancer and eye and heart problems, he still remained active in pursuing his interests. In the clay workshop at the Senior Center, he made objects that looked like they came from an art book of Greek sculptures. He also sang in the senior chorus and worked as a volunteer in the library. A bachelor, he lived alone in a huge house that was well maintained by paid helpers, but the families of his deceased siblings lived thousands of miles away. Feeling vulnerable in case of an emergency, he established his own telecare system with Betty, a single woman who taught at the same high school Robert had and lived alone several miles from his house. Like Diane and Helen, they set up a time for daily phone calls and agreed to contact the other for emergency assistance. Just in case Robert became incapacitated where a telephone was not available, he also wore a small device around his neck, a personal emergency response system. In addition to living nearby or working together before retirement, shared interests and experience led people to form support networks. Some of them had a long history. For example, Angie’s study group was formed shortly after World War II, some years before Lake District Senior Center came into existence in 1952. A group of housewives whose children attended the same school decided to meet once a week to keep up their knowledge of the postwar world. Though many changes had occurred in their lives since then, the group had survived. They still met regularly, not to study anymore but to enjoy each other’s company or help each other if need arose. Sharing the experiences of more than half of their lifetimes, group members found the ties among them strong and indispensable. Although this group was formed outside the Senior Center, it was instrumental in getting all the members involved in Center activities. Though these three examples of support relationships—­Diane and Helen’s, Robert and Betty’s, and Angie’s study group—­differed in whom was chosen as support partner(s) and what they did for each other, all of them involved mutually agreed arrangements, such as daily phone calls and weekly meetings. But such arrangements were not a prerequisite for getting assistance. As noted

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in chapter 2, whenever Center participants saw a need, they willingly extended help to their peers. They did errands, called sick friends, and listened to those with problems. Moreover, while the three examples mentioned above involved long-­lasting relationships, support networks were also formed among strangers who met at the Senior Center. Varied though support networks among Center people might be, each shared some common features: they (1) were used in tandem with other networks, (2) minimized dependence, (3) were chosen by individuals, (4) were egalitarian in nature, and (5) lacked cultural models. People at Lake District Senior Center simultaneously participated in more than one support network, which helped expand the available sources of assistance. This strategy is not only used by older Americans. Japanese elders have multiple sources of support despite the fact that the family normally shoulders the most responsibility. Nonetheless, there are some distinctive differences. Most notably, Japanese tend to establish “all-­encompassing” relationships (Kiefer 1976, 281), whereas Americans try to avoid them. In Japanese social relationships, people generally know one another in more than one context. Thus support partners such as neighbors, coworkers, and friends know much about each other’s family, education, and occupation as well as major life events. By contrast, Americans prefer to compartmentalize their relationships and tend to make their social ties “single stranded” (Gmelch 2000, 48). Consequently, it was not unusual that Center participants who had known each other for a long time lacked some fundamental knowledge about their peers, as the following two cases illustrate. One day, after Louise made a brief visit to the knitting class, Emily asked me if she had any children. Her question surprised me because as volunteer teachers at the Center, they had seen each other regularly for many years. In addition, Diane, the knitting class teacher, was a close friend of both Louise and Emily. On another occasion, revelation of the unknown past of one of the Center participants caused a sensation. This happened when the local newspaper reported Alice’s youth as a freedom fighter in Nazi-­occupied Europe. Although Alice was a longtime Center participant, none of her peers knew about this segment of her past. Among Japanese who prefer “all encompassing” relationships (Kiefer 1976, 281), this kind of revelation is unlikely to occur.12 Older Americans’ preference for compartmentalized relationships held true for those who claimed they had a few indispensable friends. For example, although Robert said a daily phone call from his former colleague, Betty, was essential for security and emotional support, his life was not centered only on this relationship. He belonged to other groups, such as the art class, the senior chorus (both at the Center), his church, the library club, and so on. With

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  79

people he interacted through these activities, he formed additional networks that served to meet his other needs. In fact, he spent most of his time outside of his home with people of these groups. By contrast, he seldom saw Betty despite their daily phone conversation. A similar pattern prevailed in the complementary relationship between Diane and Helen (Tsuji 1997b). Living nearby and frequently sharing a ride, they spent a lot of time together, so people at the Center regarded them as a pair. When one of them was in sight and the other was not, people thought the missing one must be nearby because the other “half ” was there. They had been such good friends for so many years that when Helen died in 2001 her obituary mentioned their long-­lasting friendship and listed Diane as one of her survivors.13 Despite their close relationship, Diane and Helen maintained other important support relationships. Diane said she had three friends she could not do without. Obviously, one was Helen. The second was Louise, who invited Diane to her house for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. They also lent books to each other, for both were avid readers. Marcia, Diane’s third indispensable friend, was the daughter of her deceased cousin. With the rest of her family long gone, Marcia was one of the few left with whom Diane could share memories of her family. Marcia and her husband also helped Diane with chores that she could no longer perform, such as moving furniture and replacing the bulb in the ceiling light. Marcia downsized Diane’s possessions when she moved to a nursing home in 1996.14 Helen had friends of similar importance. Each year, she spent holidays with some of them. She also had friends who invited her to dinner at their homes. When Helen hosted a dinner party to reciprocate, Diane drove to the store for the grocery shopping. But Diane was invited only on those occasions when she and other guests belonged to the same social circle. Support networks at Lake District Senior Center were remarkably different from the traditional Japanese way of dealing with old age. While the former involved piecemeal participation in multiple relationships, including with children (see chapter 5), the latter was centered on the long-­term, extensive relationship between parents and children, in which parents raised children and in return were cared for in their declining years. A similar difference was observed in the lengths some single Chinese women went to in procuring eldercare and postmortem worship for their spirits. Because Chinese culture shares the traditional Japanese view of having children as “social security,” some single women who could not rely on this found an alternative solution through a sworn sisterhood. They took vows of friendship with a small number of—­usually unrelated—­single women of varying ages. These women lived together. When their jobs required that they

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live away from home, their income was shared with the rest of the sisters. It was not uncommon for sworn sisters to invest money together to buy their own residence or rental housing for extra income. The return of this long-­term commitment was the assurance that their needs in old age and after death would be taken care of. For single Chinese women, a sworn sisterhood was a surrogate family (Sankar 1981). Both the traditional Japanese family and the Chinese sworn sisterhood functioned as corporate groups that took care of their aging members. By contrast, support relationships among older Americans in my study did not involve economic commitment. They were limited to emotional support and the exchange of favors. Thus no matter how close Diane and Helen were and no matter how much time they spent together, each of their lives had a separate, independent foundation, which included their own house. In addition, to avoid total dependence on each other, both of them maintained other support networks for their different kinds of needs. Furthermore, unlike Japanese and Chinese elders, who received care from their real or surrogate families, Senior Center participants were free to discontinue their support relationships with their peers. Except for married couples, I did not observe or hear of any extensive, exclusive support relationships among my informants since I started my research in 1987. However, their reluctance to form “all-­encompassing” relationships (Kiefer 1976, 281) did not indicate they neglected friends’ need of help. On the contrary, they were willing to help because they knew helping each other was essential for their own survival. On circumventing a cultural taboo of dependence, May Sarton writes, “One difficulty is the balance of accepting dependence and at the same time not giving in, doing everything possible for oneself ” (1996, 27). Many Center people did just that. They accepted help to prolong their autonomy but also tried hard to minimize it by maximizing self-­help. Thus while Helen accepted a ride from Diane, she walked seven blocks to the Center when Diane did not go. She also took a bus or used a transportation service for the elderly. When Helen had an appointment with her hairdresser shortly after recovering from a severe case of the flu, it took Diane some effort to persuade Helen to accept her offer of a ride. Similarly, Diane endeavored to minimize her dependence. Instead of asking for Helen’s help, she often did her own errands, walking slowly with a cane. Maximizing self-­help, together with maintaining multiple sources of support, was essential for older Americans’ autonomy. Individual choice was the third characteristic of Center people’s support networks. Not only did they initiate the formation of these networks, but they also decided how often to see each other, what to do together, and what favors to exchange. They were also free to sustain or terminate their

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relation­ships. These features of support networks reflect traditional American individualism that assumes “social bonds can be firm only if they rest on the free, self-­interested choices of individuals” (Bellah et al. 1985, 109). Based on the participants’ voluntary input, support networks among Center people left ample room for individual choice and variation. Such choices and variations are much more limited in support systems in Japan that are bound by conventions and obligations. When there are many options, making a choice may be stressful (Reed, Mikels, and Simon 2014). One of the adjustments I had to make when I moved to America in 1976 was to make so many choices at a restaurant: Smoking or nonsmoking section? What kind of salad dressing? Coffee or tea? Cream and sugar? When I told my interlocutors about a set dinner called omakase, or “leave-­it-­to-­the-­chef meal” at Japanese restaurants, some of them loved the idea.15 Egalitarianism played another key role in shaping support networks at Lake District Senior Center. In all the support relationships described above, participants maintained equal partnership. Thus receiving help did not transform any of them into a supplicant. Even where one partner depended on another for a certain kind of need, the recipient of such a favor always reciprocated by doing something else, as the case of Diane and Helen’s complementary relation­ship illustrates. Maintaining a balanced exchange was crucial not only for older Americans’ perception of themselves as autonomous, worthy beings but also for their continuous social engagement. Comparing this to cases in Japan and China underscores the lack of cultural models for older Americans’ support networks. As discussed, Japanese culture prescribes children as the primary source of support in senescence, and the Chinese sworn sisterhood was modeled after the jia, the Chinese family system. Relying on fictive kinship was common among other childless Chinese, such as nuns, priests, and prostitutes (Tsung 1978; Sankar 1981). Thus marginal as their unmarried status might be, Chinese sworn sisters’ solutions “were not random, ad hoc arrangements, but tended to follow standard, regular—­albeit deviant—­patterns” (Sankar 1981, 80). The sisterhood also had a historical model in the Marriage Resistance Movement (Sankar 1981; Topley 1975). The lack of cultural models, together with the emphasis on individual choice, allowed American elders to decide with whom and for what reason they formed support relationships. In most cases, this decision might not be a conscious or deliberate one. People exchanged favors or shared activities together, and over a period of time, a pattern emerged, and they were intertwined in a support relationship. Many support networks seemed to be born in this spontaneous manner. They offered older Americans not only necessary help to maintain their autonomy but also a means of conciliating a cultural

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ideal of independence and a cultural taboo of dependence. Paradoxically, American elders tried to maximize their autonomy by simultaneously relying on others and not relying on others.

Social Exchange and Older Americans’ Strategies Social exchange is an integral part of human life (Mauss 1967; Lévi-­Strauss 1969; Yan 1996). Throughout the world, not only do people give and receive, but they are also bound by “the obligation to make a return” (Mauss 1967, 37). Yet many older Americans withdraw from such exchange relations. Previous studies postulated various reasons for this. For example, Cumming and Henry (1961) argued that due to their diminished capacities, elders’ disengagement from social interactions is not only inevitable but also mutually beneficial for themselves and society. But older Americans’ social withdrawal cannot be explained by their declines alone. Over the period of my research, I witnessed how declining health had varying impacts on elders’ participation in Center activities. On the one hand, physical frailty and ill health stopped the attendance of some people. On the other hand, others refused to accept their poor health as an obstacle in continuing activities at the Center. Some scholars have found a major cause of older Americans’ social withdrawal is their loss of resources for maintaining balanced exchange (Dowd 1975; Matthews 1979). On the resource-­poor elderly, Dowd says, “The aged have very little to exchange which is of any instrumental value. What skills they once had are often outmoded; the skills which remain can often be provided more efficiently and with less cost by others” (1975, 590). With the incessant technological changes, this may happen much more frequently in the twenty-­ first century. Moreover, retirement, the loss of “status-­identifying occupation” (Cowgill 1972, 250), also diminished the value of older Americans’ resources. The situation might be aggravated further by the financial outcome of retirement and the physical and cognitive effects of aging. The perceived paucity of older Americans’ resources could put them in a double bind. If they engage with others, it reduces their meager resources. If they disengage, they become marginal members of society. By contrast, the “rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127) accorded to older Japanese allows asymmetrical exchange between the giver and the receiver. Many, including my grandmother, enjoyed this privilege.16 But the older Americans I came to know loathed such exchange and endeavored to maintain balance. For one thing, such asymmetry defies American egalitarianism. In addition, because those with limited resources must reciprocate with compliance and respect (Matthews 1979, 128), Americans tend to link dependency to the potential power of those on whom they depend and thus regard dependency as submission and power as oppression.17 In this view, being a debtor means the antithesis

Networking at Lake District Senior Center  •  83

of independence. Robert Murphy, a wheelchair-­bound quadriplegic anthropologist, said, “Lack of autonomy and unreciprocated dependence on others bring debasement of status in American culture” (1987, 201). How did Center people achieve the “hallmark of maturity” of being a giver and a receiver (Murphy 1987, 201) with their diminished “power resources” (Dowd 1975, 590)? We have noted earlier that they employed a variety of strategies, such as complementing each other to make up for missing resources and having multiple support partners. In addition, reducing the cost of exchange helped them make a return on their shrinking reserves. Harumi Befu says, “Just about anything under the sun from smile and expression of respect to giving of advice and material rewards can all serve as resources for exchange” (1977, 270).18 Many things Center people exchanged cost them no monetary or material resources. They exchanged small tokens that made other people feel good: offering kind words, making gestures for affection, and calling to keep in touch. Center people also exchanged a variety of beneficial information that might not be useful for younger Americans with more resources. One day, Eleanor shared such information with her peers at the Center. Because she loved to see the world, she had once taken a year off from her job to teach in Australia for the Fulbright Program. After retirement, she traveled around Europe for several months with her two daughters with the proceeds from selling her house. But due to her declining health, she could no longer travel, so she found an alternative: going to the main bus stop in downtown, getting on the next bus that came by, and enjoying a one-­hour tour (each route made an entire round in an hour). This cost her only twenty-­five cents with a senior citizens discount in 1987–­1988. It had the unknown element a longer journey offered in that she did not know her destination until the bus came, and the bus would take her to a part of town she was not familiar with. In any event, it was a departure from her daily routine. When she shared this tip with other Center participants, they welcomed it because out-­of-­town trips were beyond the reach of many of them due to their physical and financial limitations. Health-­related information, another affordable kind of “currency,” was exchanged frequently. Many Center participants had dietary restrictions. One day, casual conversation disclosed useful information for three older ladies who had to watch their cholesterol intake: two egg lovers learned about an egg-­yolk substitute, and one bacon lover heard about a kind of bacon made without pork. Center people also welcomed ideas for minimizing expenses and recipes that accommodated dietary restrictions. For nursing home residents, regular visitors, who came to know the personnel and the routines in the home, were “highly visible resources” that might influence the staff ’s treatment of the residents (Gubrium 1975, 98). Another

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resource available to nursing home residents was the respect, admiration, and affection they earned from the staff despite the former’s total dependence on the latter for their basic needs (see chapter 5). Group-­based exchange also reduced costs. For example, Center people often sent collective greeting cards. When a friend became ill or lost a loved one, they circulated a single get-­well or sympathy card to collect multiple signatures and messages and sent it from the group rather than multiple cards from each one of them. Similarly, a dish-­to-­pass meal had the advantage of the group-­based exchange, because giving and receiving took place simultaneously so people were free from the obligation to return the favor. The resources and manners of exchange among Center people might be different from those among younger Americans. But these exchange networks at Lake District Senior Center enabled their participants to engage in balanced exchange despite their diminishing resources. They did not have to reciprocate with personally demeaning resources, such as compliance, nor did they need to withdraw from social exchange due to limited resources.

Communitywide Exchange Participation in Center activities also linked elders to communitywide exchange, which they might not perceive. Let us consider how the senior discount program and elders’ donations to Lake District Senior Center or groups within made them a part of communitywide exchange. During my initial fieldwork, Lake District Senior Center sold a discount card for people over age sixty-­two at a price of ten dollars a year. Because this program helped older Americans stretch their dollars, Americans, including some older people, regarded it as a kind of financial aid. Due to this view, the proposal for the discount program had been turned down multiple times until it was finally instituted in 1970. In my opinion, the senior discount did not transform Center people into the recipients of financial aid but instead entered them into a mutually beneficial relationship with discount providers. For store owners and other business establishments, the major advantage of this relationship was a sizable pool of potential customers. Though the social security benefits received by each elder might not be substantial, the sum of the social security checks sent to all the entitled seniors in Winston County amounted to $4  million per month in 1988.19 Additionally, many retirees received monthly pension payments. Local merchants and business establishments did not overlook this fact and so offered discounts to older people to encourage them to shop at their stores. One important feature of the senior discount program was freedom of choice. Both business owners and customers were free to join or withdraw.

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Consequently, the list of merchants who offered the senior discount was always in flux. Discount providers’ decisions were contingent on how much more business elders brought, the benefits of the positive image the store could project by offering the discount, and so forth. Similarly, older people expected to get some benefits from a discount card they bought. If the reward was unsatisfactory or the stores they frequented did not participate, they might not renew their discount card. They might also stop patronizing merchants who did not offer the senior discount and pressure them to join the program. In addition, it was seniors themselves who compiled a list of discount providers by contacting and negotiating with local business establishments. Thus older Americans not only were equal partners in the senior discount program but also had some leverage on business owners. Furthermore, the program was not a public assistance for the poor but an entitlement for everyone over sixty-­two regardless of income. Thus many Center people enjoyed its benefits instead of shunning it as unsolicited, demeaning social welfare. Several years after my initial fieldwork, Lake District Senior Center discontinued the sale of a discount card because senior discounts had become a well-­ established custom in American society. Older people in Winston County no longer needed to consult the booklet to find which stores offered the discount, nor did they have to show the card as proof of their entitlement. However, these changes did not alter the fact that the senior discount involved a mutually beneficial exchange between merchants and older customers. The proliferation of senior discounts proved that. Like the senior discounts program, elders’ donations also placed them in communitywide exchange. Opportunities for donations were abundant at Lake District Senior Center because, to maximize self-­support, fundraising events were held regularly. The Seniors Giving campaign, the Memorial Fund, and the Endowment Fund always welcomed contributions. People made donations to the Center, as well as to the groups to which they belonged. These groups—­such as the Founders, retired teachers, and machinists, as well as locality-­based groups—­were financially self-­supporting. Therefore, fundraising was essential to sustain their activities. People made donations in various ways. For monetary donations, they sent checks, paid membership dues, and purchased senior discount cards. For fundraising sales, they donated home-­baked goods, handicraft items, and furniture and miscellaneous items they no longer needed. Those who brought nothing to sell made their contribution by purchasing goods. Some on a tight budget volunteered their services. Varied though their donations might be in method and monetary value, Center people avoided making distinctions and allowed everyone to contribute according to his or her means. Although each

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elder’s contribution was generally modest,20 they amounted to a substantial sum; they were one of the three major sources of Center’s revenue, along with program fees paid by the participants and grants from outside sources.21 Modest donations from individual elders to various groups within the Center also amounted to notable contributions to the community. For example, in 1979, the Founders group donated $5,000 to the Center, $125 to United Way, and $120 to a transportation service for the elderly. In the same year, Lamont, one of the locality-­based groups, gave $150 to a program for elders, two scholarships for high school graduates, books for the school library, and the final payment on a furnace for the community hall, which the group had donated earlier. Lamont also made monetary contributions to a 4-­H club, an ambulance fund, the Red Cross, a nursing home, and various churches. The paramount example of Center people’s donations to the community was their first “Home,” which was purchased in 1970 after nearly twenty years of hard work and savings. Undoubtedly, the community recognized and appreciated these tangible outcomes of contributions by senior citizens. The tradition of contributing to the community through donations to Lake District Senior Center continues. In 1988, during my initial research, the gift shop donated $5,000 to the Center. Because the year was Raggedly Ann’s seventieth birthday, the shop sold 135 of the dolls, earning more than $2,000. This was the fruit of the time, labor, and skill of the female volunteers who both handmade many dolls and operated the gift shop. In 2007, older Americans’ donations to Lake District Senior Center surpassed $47,000. Though the Founders group and the gift shop no longer existed, Lamont continued to offer programs for elders and community services, as exemplified in a fundraising barbecue in 2018. Volunteer work was another way older Americans donated their time, skill, and knowledge to the community. RSVP helped anyone over fifty-­five find volunteer work and in 2017 was replaced by the Center’s own program, Volunteers Connected! Older volunteers provided a variety of services to the community, including free income tax consultation for seniors and safe driving courses. These contributions by older volunteers were considerable, as becomes clear when they are converted to show their monetary value, as noted in chapter 1. In the communitywide exchange, Lake District Senior Center and its groups were simultaneously donation givers and donation takers. They received a variety of outside funding from governments and private agencies, which made up about one third of the revenue. Some of the Center’s groups (East Lake and Northwestern Seniors, for example) started with seed money from New York State. Americans generally feel ambivalent about accepting public funds, as it contradicts the independence they cherish. However, public funds received

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by the Center were not generally regarded as demeaning for two reasons. First, they were given not to an individual but to an organization, and their aims were not to assist the poor but to institute and support services for older citizens. Second, the receiver reciprocated. In return for the resources received, the Center served the community through their work for older citizens. In addition, individual seniors, who were the indirect receivers of public funds, made direct contributions to their community as volunteers, donors, and taxpayers. Lake District Senior Center was not an isolated, self-­contained refuge for the aged but an organization that maintained balanced exchange with the larger community. Center people participated in this exchange through their donations and services.

Networking at Lake District Senior Center and American Cultural Values Information, support, and exchange networks at Lake District Senior Center displayed a wide range of variations and what might appear to be ad hoc arrangements by participating elders. But close examination reveals some dominant American values behind their formations. For instance, Center people’s quest for independence, coupled with egalitarianism, had strong impacts on their peer relationships. They adamantly avoided unreciprocated dependence on others and maintained equal partnerships. In other words, the primary motivational force of elders’ efforts for balanced exchange was to remain an autonomous, worthy person though they might not be aware of it.22 Piecemeal participation in multiple networks and compartmentalization of involvement in each one of them also enhanced their efforts to achieve this goal, which, together with freedom of choice, allowed elders to voluntarily join—­and withdraw from—­the networks. In this manner, Center participants ingeniously reconciled their need for assistance with the cultural demand for autonomy. They did so within the realm of American culture, guided by its dominant values, such as independence, egalitarianism, and freedom of choice. The randomness of networking among Center participants uniformly reflected their endeavor to achieve American cultural ideals. This has not only confirmed that there is more than one way to conform to such ideals but also underscored that cultural knowledge is not “unvarying rules” but “flexibly adaptive understanding” (Strauss and Quinn 1997, 45). My examination has also disclosed that the apotheosis of independence in American culture does not preclude its accommodation of dependence for two reasons. First, the very culture that detests dependency offers guidance on how to be dependent.23 Second, “the reality of all life is interdependence,” so “the choice is not between dependence and independence” (Bateson 2011, 7).

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Independence and dependence, which many Americans view in opposition, are not mutually exclusive but “interpenetrate within the same culture” (Lamb 2000, 40).24 In short, “we are caught in a false antithesis” (Bateson 2011, 7). Be that as it may, the instructions for dependence are neither specific nor explicit in American culture, unlike the case of obligation-­laden support networks in Japan. Nonetheless, core cultural values serve as “flexibly adaptive understanding” (Strauss and Quinn 1997, 45), molding the way Center people obtain assistance to maintain their autonomy.

4

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements

In her life of ninety-­one years, my grandmother moved only once, when she married my grandfather. Following the Japanese tradition, she moved from her parents’ home where she was born to her husband’s home where she died. After marriage, she lived not only with her husband but also with his parents until they passed away and his sister until she married out to her husband’s family. However, my mother never moved—­not even at the time of her marriage—­because without a male heir in her family, she had an uxorilocal marriage, in which the groom marries into his bride’s family. As mukoyōshi, or an adopted son-­in-­law, my father changed his residence and surname to those of my mother’s family.1 My father’s mother-­in-­law (i.e., my widowed maternal grandmother) coresided with the newlyweds, and my sister and I grew up living with her. Marriage generated my father’s sole change of residence in his life except for the temporary moves he had made in the period of his compulsory military service during World War II. All three of my next of kin continued to live together in the same house into their old age —­until her death for my grandmother and until their last hospitalizations for my parents. Neither my grandmother nor my father had ever lived alone in their entire lives. My mother’s solitary life after my father’s death ended quickly when my sister’s family moved in. My family’s experiences were the norm among the Japanese born before World War II. If they moved at all in their old age, it was to hospitals for medical or geriatric care, as in the cases of my parents.

89

90  •  Through Japanese Eyes

My research at Lake District Senior Center revealed a very different picture of housing and living arrangements among older Americans by comparison, as well as of the role American families play in eldercare. The dissimilarity to Japan is particularly evident in the types of housing, the prevalence of single-­ person and conjugal households,2 and the high rate of postretirement changes of residence among American elders.

Where Do Older Americans Live and with Whom? I found my interlocuters living in single-­family homes, mobile homes, mixed-­ age apartments, senior apartments, assisted living facilities, their children’s homes, nursing homes, and hospices.3 Table 1 shows the places of residence of eighty participants of Lake District Senior Center in 1987–­1988.4 Table 2 lists the residences of eleven survivors in 2009 as well as the residences of the deceased at the time of their deaths between 1989 and 2009. Varied though their housing may be, a comparison of table 1 and table 2 reveals a certain trend. As Center people grew older, the majority of them lived in lower maintenance and better assisted types of housing. During these two decades, home ownership drastically declined from thirty-­three instances (41%) to nine (14%), and the number of nursing home residents rose from two (2.5%) to twenty-­one (32%). Additionally, there was a notable increase in the number of people living in senior housing. In the 1987–­1988 data, out of eighty people, a total number of those living in age-­homogeneous housing was thirty-­one (39%) with twenty-­four in senior apartments, five in assisted living facilities, and two in nursing homes, whereas a total of forty-­nine (61%) lived in age-­heterogeneous communities, such as single-­family homes (thirty-­three), trailer homes (two), and age-­mixed apartments (fourteen). In the follow-­up data, residents of senior housing represented the majority (see table 2). Forty-­ three (70%) out of sixty-­one lived, or resided at the time of their death, in age-­ homogenous housing—­senior apartments (twenty), assisted living facilities (two), and nursing homes (twenty-­one)—­whereas eighteen (30%) occupied age-­heterogeneous housing: nine in their own houses, one in a trailer home, and eight regular apartments.5 Although their housing types varied and changed over time, the most common living arrangements among Center participants were either living alone or with a spouse.6 This differed from the experiences of many older Japanese of my grandmother’s and my parents’ generations who lived in three-­generation families. In my 1987–­1988 data on older Americans, out of eighty people, forty-­nine (61%) lived in a single-­person household and twenty-­eight (35%) in a conjugal household (see table 3). In my follow-­up research, single-­person households remained the majority. Among the eleven seniors who were still alive in 2009, eight lived alone, two with a spouse, and one at a nursing home

Table 1

Center participants’ places of residence in 1987–­1988 Own house

33

Living alone

18*

Living with spouse

14

Living with father

1

Trailer home

Living with spouse

2

2

Age-­mixed apartment

14

Living alone

9

Living with spouse

5

Senior apartment

Living alone Living with spouse

24

17 7

Assisted living facility

Living alone

5

5

Nursing home

2

Total

80**

* One of these 18 people is a woman who moved out of the area. While she lived in her own house before the move, the type of housing she had at the new location is unknown. ** This number includes five people whose housing history before my 1987–­1988 fieldwork was unknown.

Table 2

Center participants’ places of residence in 2009 or at the time of death between 1989 and 2009 Number of people Type of housing

Living

Own house

4

Deceased

Total

5

9

Children’s home

3

3

Trailer home

1

1

Age-­mixed apartment

8

8

15

20

Senior apartment

5

Assisted living

1

1

2

Nursing home

1

20

21

1

1

54

65

Hospice Total

11

92  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Table 3

Center participants’ living arrangements in 1987–­1988 Living alone

49

Living with spouse

28

Living with father

1

Living at nursing home

2

Total

80

(see table 4). Living arrangements among those who had died had also followed this residential pattern. Even those who had given up independent living—­the three who lived with their adult children, the twenty-­one nursing home residents,7 and the one hospice resident—­had lived alone before moving to their final place of residence (see table 2). In short, a single-­person household was the most common among Senior Center participants. It far outnumbered the second most common, a conjugal household. This discovery does not correspond to the census records, which indicate that the majority of older Americans live with their spouses. According to A Profile of Older Americans: 2010,8 in 2009, 54.8% of noninstitutionalized older adults lived with a spouse, whereas 30.1% of them lived alone. As women generally live longer than men and are more likely to be widowed, the records also revealed clear gender differences in living arrangements. While 72.0% of older men lived with a spouse, this number diminished to 40.7% for older women. Among those living alone, the proportion of each gender was reversed; 38.8% of older women lived alone and 18.7% of older men did. As people grew older, more elders lived alone. Among women older than seventy-­ five, nearly half (49%) lived in a single-­person household. Several factors may explain the difference between the census records and my data. First, my sample is much smaller, covering less than one hundred participants of Lake District Senior Center. Second, when I started my research in the late 1980s, the majority of my interlocutors were already in their seventies or eighties. This means that my data represents a population that is older Table 4

Living arrangements of Center participants who were alive in 2009 Living alone

8

Living with spouse

2

Living at nursing home

1

Total

11

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements  •  93

than that of the 2010 census, which counted Americans sixty-­five and older; in fact, my informants belonged to the parental generation of the seniors in the 2020 census. Third, the fact that many Americans are living longer and healthier lives ( Jenkins 2016, 11–­12) may delay widowhood and increase the years one lives with a spouse. Be that as it may, Eric Klinenberg asserts that “living alone is now rampant among the elderly” in America (2012, 161), where 11 million elders live in a single-­person household (160). According to Klinenberg, even the most isolated elders who wish for companionship prefer living alone (175). He lists socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic reasons for the prevalence of solitary living among older Americans: financial resources available for retirement, such as pensions and social security benefits, make independent living possible; elders’ loathing of coresidence with children and the strong wish for independence encourage “going solo” (Klinenberg 2012); ever-­ lengthening longevity heightens the likelihood of losing a spouse, leaving the surviving spouse to live alone.9 Given their declines in hearing, sight, mobility, and memory, how do American elders manage to live alone safely? Senior housing offers one common solution. Hiring helpers is another (Buch 2018). For instance, the weekly visit of a domestic helper enabled Robert to continue to live in his big house. Mr.  Billingham, my octogenarian friend from Indiana, also hired a helper when he was discharged from a hospital so that he could live at home by himself. Homecare helpers also deter the institutionalization of frail elders in assisted living facilities and nursing homes (e.g., Buch 2015, 2018). However, while living at home signifies being an autonomous person, receiving home­ care services may make the recipients feel like they are “only being partly independent” (Buch 2015, 43) because they can live at home only with significant assistance from others.10 Living close to the family also helps. Joe, a widower, had a daughter-­in-­law who lived a five-­minute drive away and visited him regularly to take care of his needs. Marilyn, a widow, had her widowed daughter living in an upstairs apartment within her house. In addition, it is a blessing to have good neighbors who keep an eye on their elderly neighbors from a comfortable distance. Center people also adopted other strategies to make solitary living possible in the face of declining self-­sufficiency. The privately arranged telecare and personal emergency response systems assure timely assistance in case of emergency. Another common strategy to cope with diminished physical ability is to make a space at home where most of an elder’s needs can be met (Loe 2017). Before moving to a nursing home, Diane lived in the large two-­story house where she had grown up. Spacious though her house was, she spent most of her time in one corner of her living room. This small space had a comfortable La-­Z-­Boy reclining chair, a floor lamp for reading, a table with a telephone,

94  •  Through Japanese Eyes

a remote control for television, and other small items, such as a tissue box, a pen, and a memo pad. Like a cockpit, everything she needed was within arm’s reach. She left this corner to go to the bathroom and the kitchen. Sometimes, she took a nap in a divan placed nearby, though she slept in her bedroom at night. Diane said that she had not been to the upstairs of her home for many years. The innovative living arrangements made by some Senior Center participants also mitigated the problems of a solitary life in later years. For example, Esther, a widow in her early seventies, resorted to home sharing. Having been partly crippled after a hip operation, she could no longer do some domestic tasks. Because she still worked part time from her home office, she remained at her house and lived with a young couple who helped her with household chores and grocery shopping in exchange for free rent.11 The second case involved seventy-­year-­old Bonnie and her friend who was two decades older. Both were widows and longtime members of the same church. Unlike the case of Esther, they maintained separate households, with Bonnie living in a senior apartment and her friend living in a big old house she owned. But Bonnie spent every single night at her friend’s house to be present in case of emergency. Although most older Americans in my study lived alone or with a spouse, a few of them resided with their adult children. Table 1 for the 1987–­1988 data reports only one such case, while my follow-­up data in table 2 include three. In the former, a sexagenarian widower, who was a retired high school science teacher, took in his widowed nonagenarian father. In all three of the latter cases, parents of advanced age and frailty moved into their children’s homes. These cases of intergenerational coresidence indicate that since the beginning of my research in 1987, my informants, as they grew even older, transformed from caregivers to care receivers. They also confirm that children are an important source of assistance for older Americans, as discussed in the next chapter.

High Rate of Postretirement Mobility and a Wide Range of Reasons During my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, I was surprised to learn that out of seventy-­five people whose postretirement housing history I obtained, forty-­ seven (63%) had moved before and/or during my research, and only twenty-­ eight (37%) had stayed at the same residence (see table 5).12 My subsequent research disclosed an even higher rate of postretirement mobility. Out of sixty-­ five people whose housing I tracked in the next two decades, only seven (11%)13 did not move at all in their retirement years because eighteen (two still alive in 2009 and sixteen already deceased) out of the twenty-­five nonmovers in table 6 had moved before and/or during my 1987–­1988 fieldwork (see table 6).14

Table 5

Number of Center participants’ moves before and/or during 1987–­1988 research Never moved after retirement

28

(all living in his or her own house) Moved once

30

Moved into the area

11

to house

1

to regular apartment

6

to senior apartment

4

Moved within the area

19

to smaller house

2

to trailer home

6

to age-­mixed apartment

1

to senior apartment

2

to assisted living facility

8

Moved twice

13

Moved out of the area

1

(moving into the area before moving to California, housing type in California unknown) Moved into the area and moved again within the area

2

house in California—­trailer home—­small house

1

house elsewhere in New York—­age-­mixed apartment—­senior apartment

1

Moved within the area

to less burdensome housing

10

6

house—­age-­mixed apartment—­senior apartment

4

house—­condominium—­senior apartment

1

house—­age-­mixed apartment—­nursing home 1 for other reasons

4

(e.g., temporary job relocation in a foreign country, closure of the former poor house) Moved three times

4

Moved into the area

1

house on Long Island, NY—St. Louis—Houston—senior apartment in Winston County [housing types in St. Louis and Houston unknown] Moved within the area

3

house—­age-­mixed apartment—­senior apartment—­nursing home

2

house—­senior apartment—­age-­mixed apartment—­senior apartment

1

Total

75

Table 6

Number of Center participants’ moves between 1989 and 2009 Never moved during this period

25

Still living

4 (2 made postretirement move or moves before and/or during my initial research of 1987–­1988)

Deceased

21 (16 made postretirement move or moves before and/or during my initial research of 1987–­1988)

Moved once

35

Still living

6

to house

1

to senior apartment

3

to assisted living facility

1

to nursing home

1

Deceased

29

to age-­mixed apartment

3

to senior apartment

5

to nursing home

17

to children’s home

3

to hospice

1

Moved twice

4

Still living

1

home—­age-­mixed apartment—­senior apartment

1

Deceased

3

senior apartment—­assisted living—­nursing home

1

home—­senior apartment—­nursing home

1

home—­mobile home—­nursing home

1

Moved three times

1

Deceased

1

home—­senior apartment—­assisted living—­nursing home

1

Housing history after initial research unknown (including one who moved out of the area during 1987–­1988)

10 (all deceased)

Total

75

Still living

11

Deceased

64

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements  •  97

Some of these seniors’ changes of residence involved moving from one geographical area to another, often crossing state borders or even the North American continent. According to table 7, fifteen out of seventy-­five people made this kind of move during or before 1987–­1988. One moved away from Winston County, and fourteen moved in from other parts of the United States. My subsequent research revealed that a long-­distance move was not unusual even after older Americans reached their eighties and nineties. Many retirees also moved more than once. Table 5 illustrates that out of seventy-­five people, thirty (40%) had moved once, thirteen (17%) twice, and four (5%) three times before and/or during my 1987–­1988 fieldwork. Table 6 shows their changes in residence in the next two decades (from 1989 to 2009). Out of sixty-­five, thirty-­five (54%) are one-­time movers, four (6%) are two-­ timer movers, and one (2%) was a three-­time mover. Although twenty-­five people (38%) had not changed their residence during those two decades, the majority of them (eighteen) had moved before and/or during my initial research of 1987–­1988. Therefore, as noted above, the actual number of nonmovers was only seven (11%) as of 2009. Table 8 summarizes the number of postretirement moves made by sixty-­five older Americans until 2009. The fourth column shows that thirty (46%) had moved once, sixteen (25%) twice, ten (15%) three times, and two (3%) as many as four times. A comparison between this column and the second column, which shows the 1987–­1988 data, suggests that the mobility of older Americans increased as they grew older. With the passage of time, the percentage of nonmovers shrank from 37% to 11%. By contrast, the percentage of those who changed residence rose from 40% to 46% for one-­time movers, from 17% to

Table 7

Number of Center participants’ moves in and out of the area before or during 1987–­1988 Moved out of the area

1

Moved into the area

14

from New York City

7

from other parts of the United States

4

returnees (coming home after retirement)

3

Remained in the area

60

moved within the area

32

did not move

28

Total

75

98  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Table 8

Summary of moves among Center participants (including those who were still alive and already deceased as of 2009) Number of moves

Number of people Entire research period (1987–­2009)

1987–­1988

1989–­2009

0

28 (37%)

25 (38%)

1

30 (40%)

35 (54%)

30 (46%)

2

13 (17%)

4 (6%)

16 (25%)

3

4 (5%)

1 (2%)

10 (15%)

4

0

0

Subtotal

75

Housing history unknown Grand total

75

7 (11%)*

2 (3%)**

65

65

10

10

75

75

* Out of 25 seniors who did not move during the 1989–­2009 period, 18 of them had made the postretirement move before or during my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988. Therefore, only 7 out of 75 made no postretirement change of residence. ** This number resulted from the fact that 2 of the 5 three-­time movers moved again.

25% for two-­time movers, and from 5% to 15% for three-­time movers. These increases became larger as older Americans’ moves multiplied. There was a 6% increase in one-­time movers, 8% in two-­time movers, and 10% in three-­ time movers. Four-­time movers appear only in the fourth column that summarizes the entire period of housing research up to 2009. A notable increase in the number of multiple movers over the passage of time supports the positive correlation between moving and growing older in America. Why did the majority of elders at Lake District Senior Center change residence after retirement—­some more than once—­despite various hardships involved in moving? It must be difficult to give up the home in which one has spent so many years that it has become “an extension of the body” (Stafford 2009a, 449) or “an extension of the self ” (Carsten and Hugh-­Jones 1995, 3). Being removed from it may be compared to “amputation” (Stafford 2009a, 449) or an annihilation of self. Furthermore, moving out of town means not only the loss of established networks of friends and support systems but also the need to create new ones. Mary Catherine Bateson compares elders who make out-­of-­town moves to the brides in patriarchal societies who marry into their husbands’ family and become “probationary newcomers” among their in-­laws (2011, 39). Moving also requires a lot of physically demanding tasks. Though most people hire professional movers, downsizing possessions is a hard task for elders.

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements  •  99

An eighty-­one-­year-­old senior “in fine enough health” wrote to an advice column, “I wake up at night and worry about what to do with all the stuff in my large house” (Lane 2017c).15 Center people who moved to senior housing said how enormous a job it was to dispose of the lifetime accumulation of their possessions. Some of them engaged a professional service to help. Moreover, regardless of whether they are moving locally or out of town, they have to face various adjustments. For example, the most common thing senior apartment dwellers wish for is more space, because the new residence is normally much smaller than the old one. Close proximity to neighbors in apartment living is another adjustment for those used to living in their own houses. Frieda, who lived in a senior apartment, said of her nosy neighbors, “When I pick up mail, they want to know what I receive. So you can’t be too friendly to people around you. Otherwise, you would sink.” Moving to any kind of senior housing also entails acknowledging one’s position as a senior citizen, a social label many older Americans are reluctant to accept.16 On postretirement changes of residence, Bateson writes, “Moving is both liberating and debilitating. Undertaken too late, it is a very stressful process, one that sometimes seems to catapult people into frail old age, and undertaken too soon, it may preempt other possibilities” (2011, 38). Nevertheless, a majority of Senior Center participants moved after retirement. What motivated them to move? Why did a small minority of them choose not to move? I was struck by the wide range of reasons older Americans changed residence. Some wished to escape the hectic life of a big city in favor of country living, while others returned “home” where they grew up (see table 7). Winston County offered various types of senior housing, good medical facilities, and eldercare services, as well as numerous cultural, recreational, and educational programs, all of which attracted retirees to the area. In addition, a number of Center participants claimed that they had moved upon retirement due to “restlessness.” Wanda described such a feeling: “When retirement ended one stage of my life, I had a strong need for a new life and felt restless. A change of scene took care of this problem.” To be near their children was another reason. Martha, the only “emigrant” out of Winston County in my data, moved twice primarily for this reason. When she was widowed more than a decade before I started my fieldwork, she moved to Winston County to live near her daughter’s family. In 1988, her daughter died of cancer, and shortly thereafter, her son-­in-­law passed away. The loss of her family in the area compelled Martha to move to California, where her two sons lived. Similarly, Diana, a widow who was born in England and came to the United States with her American husband, relocated three times in her retirement to be near her children. Following her daughter’s family, she moved first from Long Island, New York, to St. Louis, Missouri, and second from St. Louis

100  •  Through Japanese Eyes

to Houston, Texas. Her third move, which had happened before my research, was from Houston to Winston County in upstate New York to live near her son, since her daughter’s family was moving abroad. When I met her in 1987, she was living in a senior apartment. She had not moved for more than a decade because her son’s family had remained in Winston County. The desire to be close to children did not necessarily mean living in the same city or locale. Sophia, one of the city escapees who taught at a public elementary school in New York City, built a house in the countryside of Winston County with her husband. They chose the location because it was halfway between their two children, who lived in Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada. Although proximity to children or other family members may contribute to older Americans’ decisions to move, it does not always play a major role. Like Sophia, four other people moved to Winston County though their children did not live there. One of them, Beth, was returning “home” from California, where she had raised her family and where her children continued to live. Furthermore, a fair number of Center people preferred to keep some distance from their children in order to maintain good intergenerational relation­ships. Some refused to move near their children despite the latter’s pleas for them to do so. Be that as it may, my follow-­up research indicated that the importance of proximity to children generally increased as people grew older and their need for assistance intensified. Subsequent to my initial research, at least seven people moved out of the area in order to have easier access to their children and eventually died at the place of their relocation.17 Three of them moved within New York State. Four moved out of the state: two to California and one each to Texas and New Hampshire. At the new location, one in-­state mover in her late seventies lived in a mixed-­ age apartment with her husband. An octogenarian widow initially moved to a trailer home in California but, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, became a nursing home resident. The remaining five were in poor health and were no longer ambulatory at the time of their last move in life. Two of them moved to a nursing home near their children’s residence and three to the home of one of their children to live with his or her family. These cases illustrate that health conditions also have an important impact on older Americans’ decisions to move. It is widely believed that retirees often move for a better climate. Although I did not know Center people who relocated permanently to warmer places, a number of them were snowbirds “who move[d] seasonally, following good weather, to spend months at a time in one spot” (Counts and Counts 1996, 250). Yet in spite of the long inhospitable winter, many Center people preferred to remain in the area rather than moving to live in a better climate. Out of seventy-­five people whose postretirement housing history I obtained

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements  •  101

in 1987–­1988, the majority (60 or 80%) remained in the area (see table 7). Similarly, in the next two decades (1989–­2009), except for the seven who moved out of the area, the rest remained and died in the area although, as table 6 shows, many moved locally, often more than once. Furthermore, the correlation between warmer climate and postretirement moving was not supported by the fact that, without counting “snowbirds,” those who moved into this northern U.S. region with its long cold winters far outnumbered those who moved out. My 1987–­1988 data recorded fourteen inflows and one outflow. Though seven more people moved out in the subsequent years,18 the total of eight outflows was smaller than the fourteen inflows in the 1987–­1988 data alone. Moreover, the number of inflows tremendously increased over the last few decades, as more housing facilities and services for seniors became available in Winston County. Obviously, a better climate was only one of the reasons retirees relocated. Center people also moved locally whether they had remained in the area or moved into the area after retirement. Although individual circumstances leading to a move might vary, the majority chose a type of housing that required less maintenance and offered more access to assistance. For example, some homeowners gave up their houses to live in trailer homes or apartments. Likewise, age-­mixed apartment dwellers moved to senior apartments and residents of senior apartments to assisted living facilities. Not everyone followed this pattern. A good example was the case of Gertrude, a retired factory worker who was one of the three-­time movers in my 1987–­1988 data (see table 5). When her husband died, she sold her house to live in a senior apartment. After her second marriage, because she and her new husband could now assist each other, the couple moved to an age-­ heterogeneous apartment. When this marriage ended in divorce, she moved back to a senior apartment. Although this series of moves might seem to deviate from the common pattern, her choice of housing was closely tied to her ability to maintain it and her need for assistance. By moving to housing that was easier to maintain and where it was easier to get the help, older Americans were able to prolong their autonomy in the face of declining abilities. This explains why some older Americans moved more than once and why the number of multiple movers increased as they grew older (see table 8). It also indicates that behind elders’ frequent changes in residence was their strong wish for an autonomous life. Thus Eleanor, who suffered from debilitating arthritic pain, felt “tremendous relief ” when she moved to a senior apartment with meal service. But does this quest for independence explain elders who move to a nursing home? For many Americans, including senior citizens, the nursing-­home move signifies a loss of autonomy and a state of idleness, as though one is waiting for death. In addition, the idea of nursing homes as “sites of neglect,

102  •  Through Japanese Eyes

abandonment, and social death” (Buch 2015, 41) is widespread. However, there are occasions when nursing homes serve as a springboard for an independent life by rehabilitating those who have suffered strokes or undergone major operations. Harriet’s case provides a good example. Although a series of hip replacement surgeries compelled her to live in and out of a nursing home and a hospital for a few years, once she regained her mobility, she moved back to a senior apartment. Some nursing home residents maintain social and psychological rather than physical autonomy. They acknowledge their lack of bodily ability to cope with basic daily needs (such as eating, bathing, and toileting) and choose to accept assistance in order to sustain themselves as autonomous social beings with unique personalities and histories. Therefore, despite their infirmity, nursing homes are not a waiting room for death for them. Diane, who moved from her house to a nursing home in 1996 after breaking her femur, aptly said, “Many people came here to die. But I came here to live.” True to her words, despite her inability to walk, hearing impairment, and diminishing eyesight, she participated in various programs at the nursing home just as she did at Lake District Senior Center and lived in the home for nine years until her death at the age of 101. In a good number of cases, the decision to move to a nursing home may not be made by the older Americans themselves but by others, such as family members or medical providers. However, Diane moved to a nursing home based on her own will. Dorothy also played an active role in the decision. She was another longtime nursing-­home resident who was born in London as the only child of a wealthy hotelier and immigrated to America with her parents as a preschooler. When her frailty worsened in her nineties, she found her senior apartment no longer meeting her needs. She was still ambulatory then and had the option to live in an assisted living facility. But foreseeing her further decline and having no relatives nearby, she decided to move to a nursing home instead. Despite the various hardships involved in moving, many postretirement changes of residence make sense because they help elders cope with declining self-­sufficiency. However, a small minority of Center participants moved to housing that required more maintenance. For example, Hank and Marion, a married couple, sold their house and rented a regular apartment after Hank retired. But they missed gardening so much that in their eighties they bought a new house with a big yard. Others in this minority group moved to a larger house, built a “retirement home,” or had an addition built onto their house. The reasons for their housing choices varied from having their dream house to having inherited a parental home or enjoying a do-­it-­yourself home improvement project.19

Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements  •  103

The case of Murphy,20 a retired professor, illustrates not only a variety of reasons for moving in later years but also the importance of individual choice and decision-­making. He moved four times in less than ten years prior to his death at the age of ninety. An immigrant from eastern Europe and a lifelong bachelor, he had no family in the United States. Yet a desire for easier home maintenance and more assistance explained only his first move from a house to a senior apartment, which he made in his early eighties due to his declining health. The recently built senior housing complex where his apartment was located had a high reputation with good meals and interesting planned activities. Nonetheless, Murphy detested living among old folks so much that after only a few months, he moved to an age-­heterogeneous apartment. He stayed in this apartment for several years until he became too frail to maintain an independent life, which was when he made his third move to a nursing home. But he still hated being among “frail and senile people who did nothing but to wait to die,” so he quickly moved to a rented house. To take care of his needs for skilled nursing care around the clock, he hired three professional caregivers and lived in this house until his death. Fortunately, he had the financial resources to bear the cost. Nonmovers also departed from the common pattern of changing residence for easier maintenance and better access to assistance. As table 8 shows, seven of my interlocutors made no postretirement moves. Why did they remain in the same residence? Some elderly homeowners gave sentimental attachment to their longtime homes as their reason for not moving.21 Others remained at the houses they lived in because they deplored living in close proximity to neighbors in an apartment. Many elderly homeowners also declared that with their mortgages paid off, living at home was the least expensive option, though this claim might not always have been true, considering the costs of maintenance, property taxes, utilities, and insurance that come with home ownership.22 Pets also gave them a reason not to give up their own houses because many retirement homes banned pets for their residents.23 Anticipation of being cut off from younger people and seeing only old faces was another detriment of moving to senior housing in their minds.24 Contrary to the retirees who felt restless and moved to a new location, some older Americans loathed the idea of changing their lifestyle or feared facing a new environment. Two of them, Opal and James, made similar remarks independently from each other: they would stay in their house as long as they could and would leave it only when they died or needed to go to a nursing home. Some Center people’s desire to remain in their own home was such that they endured isolation, lack of security, and deterioration of their quality of life. This was especially true for those who lived out in the country, miles

104  •  Through Japanese Eyes

away from any conveniences. But city dwellers, such as the older Chicagoans in Buch’s studies (2015, 2018), also bore similar sacrifices to remain at their homes. These cases reflected elders’ belief that “living at home . . . positively affirmed their continued status as independent and adult persons, and it also meant that they had not yet been relegated to widely feared and maligned sites of institutional care” (Buch 2015, 41). As if reflecting such sentiments elders hold about their own homes, a variety of services have become available for aging in place. Homecare services send workers who do household chores (e.g., cleaning, grocery shopping, handyman tasks), help with personal care (feeding, bathing, dressing, toileting), and even take care of elders with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Elders and their families can locate these services by contacting the County Office of Aging and other agencies or from online sites (e.g., Amazon​.com/​services and visitingangels​.com). Generally, they are a less expensive alternative to living in a nursing home and are preferred by most elders. Adult day care also increases the likelihood of elders’ continuous stay at home by providing a place for activities and companionship and for giving relief to family members who take care of elderly loved ones. In addition, the “village movement,” a national grassroots effort to support aging-­in-­place,25 creates services in the local community to help older Americans stay in their own homes. A similar program called “Love Living at Home” was created in Winston County in 2015. Coexisting with this trend of extending elders’ time in their own homes is a notable increase of senior housing. In the three decades since my research started, many senior apartments have been built in Winston County, as well as more assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and homes for elders with Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, in 1995, the first lifecare retirement community in New York State opened.26 The cost of senior housing in Winston County varies widely, from subsidized affordable apartments to luxurious retirement homes. Older Americans have a wide range of housing options today. Whether moving or staying in place, many factors enter into elders’ postretirement housing decisions, including a better climate, health status, the availability of facilities and services for seniors, proximity to relatives, the burden of housekeeping, the cost of housing, postretirement restlessness, fear of being categorized as elders, and inheritance of property. Pets and hobbies such as gardening and carpentry may also influence their housing decisions. In choosing suitable housing in later years, “no two situations are the same,” declared John, the former president of the board of directors at Lake District Senior Center (Morris 1987).27 Nonetheless, Center people’s quest for independence underlies both the frequent changes in residence and the fewer cases of no postretirement moving I observed during my research. Their wish to maintain

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freedom of choice and decision-­making abilities was also reflected in their diverse reasons for these two opposing actions.

Living Alone and Changing Residence among Older Japanese: Comparison with the United States Until I moved to San Diego in 1976, I followed the same path my grandmother and my parents had taken before their marriage and lived with my family in the house where I was born. However, once in America, my life followed a very different course. I lived alone for the first time in my life,28 even though I sometimes shared an apartment with a roommate. I also made multiple moves, including a move from California to New York to go to graduate school and then to Taiwan, China, and Thailand for extended stays. Like the majority of older Americans I met during my research, I have been living alone since my husband’s death in 1999. Though I have stayed at the same place since my marriage in 1984, I plan to sell my house by the mid-­2020s and eventually move to a lifecare retirement community. My name is already on its waiting list. Learning about my interlocutors’ housing arrangements and witnessing their declines in their later years made me think about my own old age. With no children and my husband’s nieces and nephew living more than a three-­hour drive away, I believe that moving to a retirement community is a sensible plan. My high school classmates in Japan think otherwise. During one of my biannual trips to visit my mother, I attended a high school reunion and saw my classmates for the first time in more than quarter of a century. Learning that I am a childless widow, many of them asked if I would return to Japan after retirement to be close to my family. Hearing my decision to stay in America, they asked another question: “Who will take care of you when you get old?” My answer of living in a retirement home shocked them. It also aroused sympathy for me. Among other things, my classmates’ reactions derived from the strongly negative perception of rōjin hōmu, or old people’s homes, in Japan, which in their minds were equivalent to the poor house in America’s past. I told them how nice the lifecare retirement community in Winston County was and how actively engaged its residents were. My classmates had also heard about luxurious retirement communities in Japan that were far different from rōjin hōmu. But I could not alter their negative attitude toward living in an institution for elders because their responses were also colored by the Japanese tradition of family-­based eldercare and the widespread belief that the family are the best caretakers for the aged. Obviously, living in a retirement home was not the choice of my classmates.

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Be that as it may, ever-­increasing longevity29 and many changes in the Japanese family—­such as migration to urban areas, alarmingly low birth rates, delayed or no marriage, and increases in divorce and remarriage—­meant that three-­generation families were decreasing and families consisting of a single person or a married couple were on the rise. According to the 2010 census, the number of three-­generation households diminished to 5%, while one-­person households and conjugal households had increased to 32% and 20%, respectively. Single-­person households surpassed nuclear families that constituted 28%.30 These changes were clearly reflected in the living arrangements of older Japanese. The same census reported that out of 29.24  million people sixty-­ five and older, 4.79 million (16.4%) lived alone (Asahi Shimbun 2014d). The number of single-­person households occupied by elderly Japanese had been continuously increasing and reached 5.52 million in 2013, accounting for 26.5% of the households with at least one member aged sixty-­five or older.31 This means that one out of four elders sixty-­five and older lived alone. At the same time, among older Japanese, the ratio of those living with adult children was much higher than that of the national average: 39% in 2015, though this number was a notable decrease from 54% in 1995 (Asahi Shimbun 2018). While the Japanese boast longevity and both men and women are expected to live into their eighties, kenkō jumyō, or the life span of health and the ability to lead a normal life, is considered to be seventy for men and seventy-­three for women (Asahi Shimbun 2014c). In other words, with frailty, other physical and cognitive impairments, or even some serious illnesses, older Japanese are likely to need varying degrees of assistance during the last decade of their lives. As an increasing number of elders live alone or only with a spouse, rōrō kaigo, or seniors (e.g., spouses and in some cases aging children) taking care of elderly family members, is becoming common in contemporary Japan. In 2013, rōrō kaigo accounted for a little over 50% of eldercare and was primarily given by coresiding family members (Asahi Shimbun 2014b). Hence as people grow older, aging in place, which the Japanese government earnestly promotes and most Japanese strongly desire, gets harder even with homecare services offered by national long-­term care insurance. A good number of older Japanese, especially those who need skilled nursing care or have dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, move to geriatric hospitals and eldercare facilities. This trend is clearly reflected in an increase in the number of such facilities in Japan. For instance, the number of tokubetsu yōgo rōjin hōmu—­public nursing homes known by their abbreviated form, tokuyō—­more than doubled from 4,463 in 2000 to 9,645 in 2016. A much sharper increase occurred in the number of group homes for elders with Alzheimer’s disease.32 Their number jumped from 675 in 2000 to 13,114 in 2016.33 There are also various other types of facilities, including old people’s homes with a small fee (keihi rōjin hōmu), retirement communities (yūryō rōjin hōmu), and senior

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apartments with care services (sābisu tsuki kōreisha muke jūtaku, abbreviated sakōjū). Nonetheless, eldercare facilities are in severely short supply. For instance, 520,000 elders were on the waiting list for tokuyō public nursing homes in 2014 (Asahi Shimbun 2014a).34 The case of Mrs. Satō, a farmer’s wife in Osaka, illustrates how the deterioration of health necessitates changes in residence. Mrs. Satō made her first move from home to a hospital when she broke her femur. She then moved again to another hospital for rehabilitation. After being discharged from the second hospital, she spent several months in an eldercare facility called kaigo rōjin hoken shisetsu, abbreviated rōken, to continue rehabilitation so that she could resume life at her own home. Sometime after returning home from rōken, she began to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and eventually made her fifth move to a tokuyō public nursing home.35 Mrs.  Satō’s case also exemplifies rōrō kaigo. For most of his seventies, Mr. Satō had played a caregiver’s role, which was traditionally the responsibility of a coresiding daughter-­in-­law. He looked after his wife at home and, while she was in the hospitals and eldercare facilities, visited her every day. He also shouldered all the domestic chores. Since the nuclear family “had become a strong normative model” by the 1970s (Roberts 2016, 1), most Japanese baby boomers, including my high school classmates, established their own nuclear families after marriage. Thus they now, like the Satōs, may face rōrō kaigo—­taking care of their spouses themselves or being taken care of by their spouses—­despite the fact that most of them have children. They may also need to move in order to receive the help and care they need. Though they may not move as many times as Mrs. Satō did, it is likely that the majority will move at least once to a hospital, where nearly 80% of Japanese now die.36 In short, myriad changes may make it untenable to spend old age surrounded by children and grandchildren as my grandmother and her contemporaries envisioned and traditional Japanese culture delivered to most of them. In other words, in contemporary Japan, elders face the same issue that generations of older Americans have been coping with for decades: how to take care of themselves when their self-­sufficiency diminishes. Though living alone and changing residence in old age may now be common phenomena in both the United States and Japan, there are some notable cultural differences. Behind older Americans’ choices of living alone and changing residences after retirement are dominant cultural values, such as independence and freedom of choice, and their desire to conform to them. But the current situation of many Japanese elders living alone or moving to receive eldercare outside of the family does not necessarily reflect the dominant Japanese values of interdependence and the Confucian ethic of filial piety. Another important value of meiwaku o kakenai, or not to burden others, may play a vital role in Japanese elders’ living arrangements. I return to this point in the next chapter.

5

Who Supports Older Americans? Families, Self, and Other Sources In their declining years, my grandmother and my parents received care from their family, primarily those who lived with them: my grandmother from my parents, my father from my mother, and my mother from my sister, who had moved to my mother’s house with her family after my father’s death. I also made regular trips to Japan and helped with their care. My husband, who was healthy when my grandmother and my father died, understood the Japanese expectation of eldercare by the family and supported my wish to be with my next of kin in the last phase of their lives. He endured my long, frequent absences from home. Years later, when my mother began to show signs of decline, my sister helped her with her daily needs and I, widowed by then, contributed by visiting Japan twice a year for nine years. Many Japanese baby boomers like myself grew up in a three-­generation household, living with our grandparents and witnessing their declining years and deaths.1 In comparison, intergenerational contacts among Americans and their experience-­based knowledge of senescence tend to be much more limited. In all but a few cases, the American elders I came to know during my research lived separately from their adult children and their families. Geographic dispersal of families might make frequent contact difficult, yet even when they lived in the same area, few of them saw each other on a daily basis. 108

Who Supports Older Americans?  •  109

Consequently, many American children grow up without knowing people of older generations very well, including their own grandparents. Participants at Lake District Senior Center often exchanged anecdotes of young children’s ignorance of old age. Youngsters asked, “Grandma, does your wrinkle hurt?” “Great-­grandma, how do you get old?” and “Great-­granny, are you dying?” Innocent though these children might seem, the third question indicates that a five-­year-­old boy was already colored by the American association of old age with death, most likely, without really understanding what death was. In addition, children sometimes did not recognize the intergenerational relationships in their own family. For example, while a grandson was engaged in an “adventure” with his grandmother, he told her, “You’re so much fun, Grandma. It’s too bad that you never had any children of your own” (Dickinson 2010).

Who in the Family Helps Elders? Intergenerational separation, however, does not mean absence of love or mutual support between parents and adult children. On the contrary, the family is a primary source of eldercare for older Americans. Together with spouses, children and in some cases grandchildren play a vital role in providing elders with assistance, especially in case of emergency, and bringing joy to their lives. Center people whose children and grandchildren lived locally regarded their visits as important events. Some elders baked cakes or cookies for their visits. Others cooked children’s favorite dishes. Those who had given up driving called children for a ride when they went to the places that were accessible only by car, such as the doctor’s office. Elderly parents for their part helped their children by doing certain chores regularly or when help became necessary, such as babysitting grandchildren and checking on the children’s house when the family was away. Geographic distance is not as big an obstacle to maintain family ties as is often believed, especially as the use of the internet and social media has spread among elders (Ahlin 2017; Ono 2015). In addition to calling and writing, some Center participants made an annual trip to see their children in other states, and children reciprocated by visiting parents. When children came to see parents either locally or from out of town, they performed tasks that aging parents found difficult, such as moving heavy furniture, pruning shrubs, and fixing a leaking faucet. A legendary story about family support at Lake District Senior Center was the raised flower bed built for Florence, age ninety-­seven. A retired teacher and widow, she lived alone at a senior apartment. She loved flowers and grew her own all her life. When declining physical capacity compelled her to give up her house, her children and grandchildren2 built a raised flower bed at one

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of their houses that was high enough to allow Florence to enjoy gardening without bending her back. To show her appreciation, Florence pressed flowers from her garden to make greeting cards for her family and friends. She also donated them to the gift shop at the Center. Florence’s case illustrates how Center participants not only received help from their families but also reciprocated with the resources available to them. When the illness or frailty of advanced age amplifies older Americans’ needs for assistance, family support becomes even more important. Even with the variety of eldercare available today, family remains the primary source of support for older Americans (Achenbaum 1983, 126; Campbell and Ingersoll-­Dayton 2000, 231). John Krout writes, “Approximately 80 percent of the care received by elders is provided by family members or friends (informal caregivers) and for every elder in a skilled nursing facility, approximately three others who are equally impaired are cared for by informal caregivers” (2004). When Center participants had serious medical problems or major operations, their children often came to assist them, many of whom traveled a long distance to be with their sick parents. Occasionally, aging parents had their surgeries in a hospital near where their children lived. Likewise, some parents entered a nursing home located near their children’s residence. In the last two cases, which involved parents’ relocation, some children informed their parent’s friends of their hospitalization or new address. The case of Mabel’s medical crisis illustrates the significance and the extent of family support. Mabel was a former secretary. Her daughter, Marjorie, moved to Arizona to teach at a high school. To assist her divorced octogenarian mother, Marjorie made the first of a series of trips when her mother had heart surgery. She stayed while Mabel was in the hospital and was recovering at home after her discharge. Before going back to Arizona, Marjorie rearranged her mother’s house so that Mabel could live alone in her post­surgical condition. As soon as Marjorie had taken care of her own affairs at home, she returned to New York because the medical examinations before Mabel’s heart surgery revealed that she had a large cancerous tumor in her colon that had to be removed immediately. Marjorie remained to help Mabel throughout her second surgery and recuperation. Several weeks after Marjorie went back to Arizona, Mabel had a stroke in her house. Severely paralyzed, she was unable to call for help. Fortunately, a social worker on a scheduled visit found her and called an ambulance. Though Mabel survived the stroke on top of her two major operations, her speech and mobility became impaired. To help her mother settle in at a nursing home, Marjorie commuted between Arizona and New York. She flew in occasionally to spend time with her mother, to move Mabel’s personal belongings to the nursing home, and to take care of bills as well as other paperwork. Marjorie also kept her two brothers informed of their mother’s condition.3

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In discussing family support of elders, it is important to remember the spouse’s contributions. During my long-­term research, I saw the disappearance of some regular participants at Center programs due to the illness of their spouses. For instance, Natalie, who seldom missed the art class and its social activities, stopped coming for several months while her husband was going through a series of hip replacement surgeries and postoperative physical therapy. When Pricilla’s husband had a stroke, she, too, gave up her Friday afternoon dancing for nearly half a year.4 I came to truly understand the reasons for these women’s long disappearances after my husband’s first cancer operation in 1992, when I learned firsthand how much homecare was required for major medical treatments. My husband’s surgery involved tracheostomy, laryngectomy, a neck dissection to remove lymph nodes, and the reconstruction of the cancerous top half of his esophagus by using the muscle from his armpit and the skin from his thigh. Upon his discharge from the hospital where he had spent two weeks, we needed to sterilize the surgical incisions and wounds and to suction his stoma (a hole made at the base of his neck for breathing) three to four times a day. A few days later, a speech therapist started coming twice a week to teach him how to speak with an electrolarynx. Between her visits, he practiced with me. Because he had to insert the wand of his electrolarynx in his mouth, bilabial consonants were the most challenging to produce. For example, b and m sounds were undistinguishable unless he pressed his lips more tightly to pronounce m than b. To master these sounds, his speech therapy continued for more than a year until he returned to teaching in January 1994. When his surgical wounds healed a few months later, two new treatments were added. Three times a day, he swallowed long rubber tubes of three different sizes filled with mercury in order to dilate the section of his esophagus where the reconstructed top part was sewn to the natural one below. He also had daily radiation treatments for three months at a hospital fifty-­five miles away. Doing all these things is comparable to a full-­time job for both the patient and the caregiver. To avoid missing any of these treatments, I made a detailed schedule to pin on the wall. We faithfully followed it every day for many months. Some surgeries may not require as much homecare as my husband’s first cancer operation did. But I do not think my husband’s case was exceptional because of the stories I heard from some Center people, especially those who had open-­heart surgery. For instance, Clarence, a retired dentist who had triple bypass surgery in the late 1990s, recollected how hard his wife worked to take care of him. He claimed that without her devoted care he would not have survived his surgery. Even when such intensive homecare was not required, caregiving spouses must take over the tasks that were normally done by or shared with their spouses.

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The importance of the spouse as a primary caregiver during my husband’s cancer treatment taught me that a married couple in the United States constitutes a socially recognized unit that is similar to the family in Japan, even though the smallest social unit in the United States is an individual. This view of a couple as a unit applies not only to childless couples like us but also to those with children, such as Natalie, Pricilla, and Clarence mentioned above. Consequently, unless he or she is too old or too overwhelmed to handle the situation, it is normally the spouse that the doctor first informs of the condition of the patient after surgery. It is also the spouse who is asked to make the decisions when the patient is incapacitated unless someone else is designated as his or her health proxy.5 Some parents may find this hard to accept. When Sue’s forty-­two-­year-­old son was in coma with terminal brain cancer, the doctor asked his wife whether to continue or discontinue the treatment. Several years after her son’s death, Sue expressed her resentment: “I had known my son [for] his entire life, and his wife only [knew him] for twelve years! It’s not fair.” In a similar situation in Japan, it is the children, often the eldest son, to whom doctors reveal the patient’s conditions and possible treatments. It is not uncommon that a terminal illness, such as cancer, is disclosed only to the family member but not to the patient, including in the case of the late Emperor Hirohito (Asahi Shimbun 2014e). When my father was diagnosed with treatable prostate cancer in the mid-­1980s, his doctor asked to talk to the eldest son. Having learned that the family had no son, he asked for the eldest daughter—­that is, me. Because I was in America, he reluctantly told my mother the true diagnosis.

“Senior Citizens Help Themselves” In the 1960s when Lake District Senior Center made a great leap forward, the popular slogan was “Senior citizens help themselves to help each other.” My research, which began nearly two decades later and continued for three more, indicates that self-­help has remained vital in dealing with aging woes among Center people. Even when they were seriously ill, some of my informants exhibited steely determination to be independent, though illness presented an occasion when family members offered various practical assistance as well as emotional support and “expressed affection in greater measure than occurs day by day” (Streib and Thompson 1960, 479). This was especially the case toward their children. Elders whose spouses were still alive found it less difficult to rely on them because generally spouses constitute a sole corporate unit within the American family.6 For instance, a few days after her cataract operation, Florence experienced acute pain in her eye. She called her doctor and took a taxi to see him. Similarly, Theresa, a widowed housewife, took a taxi to the hospital emergency

Who Supports Older Americans?  •  113

room in great pain after she accidentally ran a sewing machine over her fingers. When Doris had her cataract removed by the then new laser surgery at a hospital fifty miles away, she and her husband, both immigrants from England, hired a retiree to drive them there because neither of them drove. These elderly parents chose not to solicit help from their children though all of them lived in the local community. But their reluctance to seek family assistance did not indicate friction or absence of interactions and affection between parents and children. They maintained close intergenerational relation­ ships. As mentioned earlier, Florence’s family made a highly raised flower bed for her. Theresa and her daughter frequently talked on the phone about their shared hobbies of sewing and knitting. Doris and her husband moved from New York City after retirement to be near their daughter and regularly saw their three teenage grandchildren. For these three seniors, family support was readily available, and this knowledge was a source of psychological security. In addition, they sought family assistance when they saw it necessary. For instance, when Doris started vomiting in the middle of the night and it did not stop even after her stomach emptied, her husband called their daughter to take her to the hospital. Nevertheless, these elders tried to tap other resources, self-­help among them, before contacting children for assistance. As the late Jacob Climo aptly observes, “Children and parents maintain and reinforce bonds of affection and family solidarity within a framework of mutual nondependence” (1992, 44). During her medical predicament, Mabel similarly fought to maintain her independence, though she also received a great deal of assistance from her daughter, Marjorie. After her heart surgery, Mabel’s doctor advised that she move to an assisted living facility even though this surgery occurred prior to her colon cancer operation and stroke. Concerned about her mother’s solitary life, Marjorie begged her to take the doctor’s advice. Mabel, however, adamantly insisted on going home after each of her two major operations. Although she was ambulatory, she could not walk up and down the stairs in her postoperative state. This meant that she had to give up sleeping in her bedroom because her house had no bathroom on the floor where her bedroom and kitchen were located. After her repeated pleas failed to sway her mother’s ferocious determination to go home, Marjorie set up a bed and a makeshift kitchen with an electric burner, a microwave oven, and a small refrigerator in the hallway next to the bathroom on the lower level of the house, half of which was a basement. All the windows and doors were locked except the sliding glass doors near Mabel’s bed to allow visitors (a social worker and a few close friends) to come in.7 Mabel chose to endure these inconveniences in order to maintain an independent life at home rather than moving to an assisted living facility for ready help and security. Not surprisingly, for many years, she had been declining her

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daughter’s invitations to move to Arizona and live in her house. In addition to her strong determination to be independent, Mabel’s case demonstrated how vital it was for her to have the freedom to choose and to make decisions. All these cases of elders’ efforts to maximize self-­help correspond to Lamb’s observation that “in contemporary Western societies, the self-­reliant individual is often idealized as the best source of eldercare” (2015, 37).8 Self-­help was also important for older Americans in the past. Some Center participants vividly remembered how independent their parents were. Alan, a ninety-­year-­ old retired executive, reminisced about his mother’s old age: “After my father died in his seventies, my mother continued to live alone in the house until her death in her eighties. Upon becoming a widow, she began to sell homemade bread to her neighbors for a small amount of cash income. My brother and I offered to increase our financial contribution to her, but she politely but firmly declined.” Similarly, Nora, an octogenarian, described her late father as a man who maintained an independent household and managed the family farm after her mother had died and all the children had gone elsewhere to pursue their careers. Despite his poor health, he continued to do so until his death with the help of a live-­in housekeeper and a handful of farmhands. Self-­help is also important for Japanese elders to avoid imposing meiwaku, or a burden, on others. I discuss this point in the last section of this chapter.

Services and Institutions to Enhance Autonomy and Sustain Life Older Americans, both in the past and today, try to minimize their dependence on their children by finding other sources of support. In contemporary America, where it is virtually impossible to find a live-­in housekeeper as Nora’s father did, a variety of extrafamilial services and institutions are available. Homecare workers enable frail elders to continue to live at home. Assisted living facilities and nursing homes sustain the lives of those with declining health and diminished abilities. Senior apartments make an independent life possible with less maintenance than living in a house. In addition, transportation services give mobility to those who no longer drive. Meal delivery services bring homebound elders both nutritious food and a contact with the outside world. Furthermore, senior centers offer a wide range of social, recreational, educational, and volunteer opportunities. Adult day care centers help older folks who need assistance remain socially engaged. Sooner or later, most of my informants took advantage of some of these services and facilities to cope with various aging issues in their lives. A good number of them eventually moved to a nursing home where they received assistance for their basic needs—­such as eating, dressing, bathing, and toileting—­and died

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there. In American society, such institutions are “widely feared and maligned” as “sites of neglect, abandonment, and social death” (Buch 2015, 41). In theory, balanced exchange exists between nursing home residents and their caregivers because the care the residents receive is paid for. Yet when elders depend on their caregivers for their very existence, the latter have potential power to transform the former into a supplicant.9 Unequal power can also lead to elder abuse at the hands of kin or service providers. How do older Americans deal with this situation? The cases of Diane and Dorothy,10 two Senior Center regulars I came to know well during my initial fieldwork, offer some possible answers. Both Diane and Dorothy earned respect, admiration, and affection from the nursing home staff despite their total dependence on their caregivers. One important factor behind this was their ability to maintain balanced exchange with their caregivers, which most likely neither of them was aware of. Although “just about anything under the sun . . . can all serve as resources for exchange” (Befu 1977, 270), these resources must have some value for exchange partners. What resources did Diane and Dorothy have to reciprocate for the care they received in addition to the fee they paid? Expressing gratitude was one of them. Kathy, a nurse at the nursing home, remarked that both Diane and Dorothy always said thank you, even for a little routine task she performed for them, such as giving pills and bringing water. She very much appreciated their courtesy because some residents took her and other staff for granted and were unreasonably demanding. There were days when grumpy residents yelled at her and insisted that she attend to their needs immediately because they paid her salary. Having a positive attitude toward life also generated respect and admiration. Their impairments did not deter Diane and Dorothy from living their lives. Diane, who claimed to have come to the nursing home “to live,” was wheelchair-­bound and almost blind and deaf. But she did not let it keep her from participating in her favorite activities in the home. Diane also paid for her care out of her own pocket until her death. The cost of skilled nursing care is so prohibitively expensive that most middle-­class elders deplete their lifetime savings several years after entering a nursing home and become Medicaid recipients.11 Though Diane was a middle-­class former high school teacher, she had saved enough money to cover her nursing home stay for nine years. Five years after moving to a nursing home, Diane asked her trustee at a local bank how long her money would sustain her. When she learned that her fund would cover seven more years of nursing care, she made a substantial donation to the nursing home for a machine to move residents in and out of the bathtub. Dorothy was also an active participant of the nursing home programs. She loved dancing so much that after becoming nonambulatory, she still danced in her wheelchair. Reputed to be fiercely independent, she sank her diminutive

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body in her wheelchair and propelled it to the dining room for meals and to the recreation room for various activities. She often said, “No matter how old I have grown, I am always young at heart.” Though her sojourn in the nursing home extended for more than a decade (she lived to be 102), she remained that way. As one of the Senior Center staff said, neither Diane nor Dorothy felt sorry for themselves as others might have. Both Diane and Dorothy also had regular visitors, “highly visible resources” (Gubrium 1975, 98) that might affect the staff ’s treatment of the residents. Among Diane’s regular visitors was Marcia, the daughter of Diane’s late cousin, who visited her at least once a week. Though Dorothy had no relatives in the area, she received weekly faxes from her late husband’s niece in Michigan and occasional visits from her friends in Winston County. In addition, her niece-­in-­law, son-­in-­law (the widowed husband of her daughter), and grandchildren came to see her several times a year. The advanced age of Diane and Dorothy (both became centenarians) also contributed to the nursing home staff ’s admiration of them. As discussed in previous chapters, at the age-­homogeneous Lake District Senior Center, advanced age lost its negative connotations, and those who had lived an unusually long life were regarded as an asset for the Center community. Diane and Dorothy became such assets for the nursing home community as well due to not only their age but also their other remarkable qualities. It was no wonder that the nursing home hosted an informal gathering shortly after the death of each of them. While alive, these centenarians often said that neither a funeral nor a memorial service would be necessary for them because those who would have come were already long dead. Both of them completely erred in their prediction; at each memorial gathering, their relatives, friends, and the nursing home staff and residents filled the activity room to celebrate the well-­ lived lives for these two extraordinary women. The cases of Diane and Dorothy indicate that elders with physical infirmity are still able to engage in balanced exchange with their caregivers. Their cases also demonstrate that disability in old age is not necessarily synonymous with unsuccessful aging. This discovery challenges a basic premise of the successful aging discourse—­that one must be healthy, active, and independent—­which Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin call “a contemporary obsession” and which has been the dominant paradigm in gerontological studies (2017, 1).

Intergenerational Autonomy: Comparison with Japan Older Americans’ reluctance to depend on their children derives not only from their conformity to “the national ethic of self-­reliance” (Cohen 1998, 63) but also from the belief that the ideal relationship between parents and adult children is predicated on the functional independence of both parties

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(Clark and Anderson 1967, 275). Thus no matter how close and supportive the relation­ships may be, intergenerational autonomy is maintained and the boundary of each family is clearly demarcated. This “protective distance” is preferred by both parties and may enable them to “extend themselves emotionally . . . more freely and amiably” (Perin 1988, 39). It also helps minimize the problems caused by generation gaps. This “small family” norm has not been altered for more than one hundred years. The multigenerational household, which in Japan has been a cultural prescription for taking care of the aged, has been “a minor family form” in American society (38). Be that as it may, “In reality, frail elders in Western contexts do receive much help from family members” (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 9–­10), just like many of their Japanese counterparts do. However, clear differences exist between the two cultures. While “[older Americans] tend to shun receiving full financial support, co-­residence, and intimate bodily care (such as toileting and bathing) from kin” (10), in Japan, living with elderly kin and helping them with bathing and toileting is not unusual. For instance, Ichiyō Ōshima (2017), a retired editor, moved to his hometown to take care of his nonagenarian father while his wife stayed in Tokyo to look after her mother. His task of caring for his father included changing and washing his clothes after his incontinent father’s frequent “accidents.” A Japanese poet who resided in California and regularly visited Japan to look after her widowed father wrote, “For the last two days of his life, he looked too exhausted even to stand up. So I took him to the toilet and held his penis to let him urinate. After he had diarrhea, I cut his incontinence underwear with scissors to clean his soiled bottom and wipe him” (Itō 2016, 213–­214). She had helped her mother in the same manner. The country’s national long-­term care insurance facilitates such homecare by covering the cost of home visits by herupā, or eldercare workers.12 Even so, dealing with fecal incontinence is stressful. Toshiko, a Japanese seamstress who looked after her father at home, said, “Unlike a baby’s, adult’s feces stunk! The smell penetrated the whole house!” Felicity Aulino who studied eldercare in Thailand calls fecal incontinence “a disaster.” When she smelled “the distinct odor of wet feces . . . [her] heart drop[ed] in [her] chest” even before she saw stains on the elder’s clothing (2019, 27). Cleaning incontinent next of kin also generates complex emotional reactions. David Lodge says in Deaf Sentence, a novel grown out of his own life, “It was an extraordinary experience, which took the reversal of the infant-­parent relationship through the taboo barrier. Basically I was helping to change a nappy on an eighty-­nine-­year-­old man, but he happened to be my father” (2008, 267). When I lived in Japan, I heard about multiple cases of bedridden older neighbors who were helped by children with their toileting. People said that these children were repaying their on, or indebtedness,13 by reciprocating

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for their parents’ earlier task of changing their diapers. My sister and I had no opportunity to repay our on in this manner because both of our parents died in the hospital and had been ambulatory until close to death. Though family assistance with elders’ toileting may be common in Japan, I have repeatedly heard older Japanese wish to die without receiving such help: shishi-­baba no sewa ni narazu ni shinitai. This explains why many elders visit pokkuri14 temples to pray for a sudden, painless death. Americans’ preference to “shun receiving  .  .  . intimate bodily care” from family members (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 10) is also applicable to caregiving by spouses. Thus my experience as my husband’s caregiver was quite different from that of the two Japanese mentioned above. Though I had been closely involved in his cancer treatments for more than six and a half years, my assistance with his toileting and bathing was limited to holding him with a hospice nurse when he walked to the bathroom at the hospice residence and sponge-­bathing his back when he returned home after his first surgery because he was not allowed to take a shower for a while. He cleaned the rest of his body by himself with a towel, which I repeatedly soaked in warm water and wrung out. Closely linked to Americans’ adherence to intergenerational autonomy is the freedom of decision-­making by the individual family members. After years of living in the United States, I have found that most Americans reject the idea of the family as a source of moral authority, which is often manifested in the authority of the family head and guides people to maintain family honor and enhance family interests. Sociologists have contended that kin relationships in America are largely subject to individual choice rather than formal kinship affiliations and obligations. Hence personal preferences play an important role in forming ties with relatives outside the nuclear family (Bellah et al. 1985, 89; Johnson 1989, 90–­91). Robert Bellah and his colleagues argue, “Even relations between parents and children are matters of individual negotiation once the children have left home” (1985, 89). Many intergenerational relationships among Senior Center participants demonstrate the voluntary nature of familial ties. Personal preferences sometimes superseded geographical proximity, one of the major factors shaping intergenerational relationships. It was not unusual for elderly parents to maintain close ties with their children thousands of miles away through regular visits, telephone calls, emails, and social media and to see other children who lived nearby only as frequently as they saw out-­of-­town children. When elders had more than one child, their relationships with each one of them might vary. Mel, a widower, lamented that while one daughter called him once in a while and sent him cards on his birthdays and holidays, he had not heard from the rest of his children for many years. Mabel had a similar experience. Though her daughter, Marjorie, commuted between Arizona

Who Supports Older Americans?  •  119

and New York to take care of her mother’s medical quandary, Mabel’s relationships with her two sons had been strained for many years. They rarely contacted her, much less visited her. After their sister’s repeated requests, they came to see Mabel only once shortly before her death. This “protective distance” (Perin 1988, 39) between parents and adult children may enhance intergenerational relationships, but it may also have the potential to create estrangement between them. Even when parents maintain contact with all their children, it is typically the case that they interact with some of them more frequently than others. Although many factors are involved in this differentiation—­including geographical proximity, financial situations, children’s work schedules, the amount of spare time they had, and the number and ages of grandchildren—­personal preference plays a significant role.15 When the demarcation of the boundaries between the parent’s family and the children’s family is lifted and the “protective distance” (Perin 1988, 39) disappears, frictions may occur. The sole case of parent-­child coresidence in my 1987–­1988 data provides a good example. Joel, a widowed sexagenarian, took in his widowed nonagenarian father to live in his house. Alert and ambulatory, his father required no special geriatric care. But his constant presence at home bothered Joel. A small matter, such as a toilet seat his father always left up, annoyed Joel. He also found it hard to respond to his father’s questions, which in his opinion were too trivial, too numerous, and too repetitive. Joel said there were two things that helped him cope with this situation. First, he had privacy upstairs in his house because his father could no longer climb stairs. Second, going out of the house gave Joel a nice respite. He enjoyed painting in the art class at Lake District Senior Center and eating lunch at his favorite restaurant afterward. In the traditional three-­generation households in Japan, conflicts also occurred. Those between the mother-­in-­law and the daughter-­in-­law were most common, even though some brides who married into their husband’s family enjoyed good relationships with their mother-­in-­ law (e.g., Nakano 1995). Though the three-­generation household in the United States has not been common for more than one hundred years (Perin 1988, 38), a good number of Center participants grew up in a family in which one or both of their grandparents coresided. Klinenberg notes that “a century ago nearly 70 percent of elderly American widows lived with a child” (2012, 162). Before the legislation of 1965 (e.g., the Older Americans Act and the Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act) increased both societal awareness of aging issues and the systems and facilities to deal with them, some Center people took in their aging parents or parents-­in-­law in order to care for them in their homes. Why did they defy the rule of intergenerational autonomy? Center participants agreed that in America’s past, it was a family’s responsibility to take care of their elderly relatives due to the lack of facilities and

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services for eldercare. The sole alternative was sending them to the poor house. Thus even if adult children in America’s past may have felt ambivalent about living with aging parents, many of them brought them into their homes not only because the poor house was “the most tangible and heart-­rending symbol of the elderly’s plight” (Haber 1993, 96) but also because “it would have been a disgrace to have any relative in the poor house” (Streib and Thompson 1960, 452), which was only for those who had no family or were poverty-­stricken. Nonetheless, the preference for intergenerational autonomy was apparent both among Center people who grew up in a multigeneration family and among those who took care of their parents in their homes. I continually heard them say, “I don’t want to live with my children. When I can no longer take care of myself, I will go to a nursing home.” Helen, an African American retired cafeteria worker, was not an exception even though her mother amicably had lived with her in her home and Helen fondly recollected various anecdotes from that period of her life. There were some similarities between intergenerational relationships and the support relationships among Senior Center participants, such as minimizing dependency, maintaining autonomy and individual choice, remaining an equal partner in exchange, and using multiple sources of assistance. Personal preferences and a wide range of variations also characterized both relationships. Nevertheless, one major difference is noteworthy: Center participants had an option to terminate support relationships with their peers but less so with their family. I witnessed several peer relationships voluntarily end for various reasons, including participants’ schedule changes, the physical and cognitive decline of one of the partners, and a partner’s move out of the area. This option, however, was not normally exercised in relationships with next of kin. Estrangements between elderly parents and their children did exist, but they were rare among Center participants.16 Another feature of intergenerational relationships in America is the dynamism and flexibility in them. Although the autonomy of each generation may be an ironclad rule at some stages, my long-­term research has revealed that the relationships evolve over time. As parents grow older and become frailer, changes occur in the kind of assistance they need and what children can provide for them. When the older generation reaches the point where they can no longer maintain an independent household, some children choose to take their parents into their own homes, not only out of necessity but also out of love, concern, and guilt. The fearful image of nursing homes held by many Americans may also contribute to this decision. A number of Senior Center participants who looked after their aging parents at their own homes said that they could not bear to place their parents in a nursing home. But they also claimed that when they themselves could no longer maintain an independent

Who Supports Older Americans?  •  121

life, they would initiate the move to a nursing home rather than live with their children. The multigenerational family is still rare in the United States. I encountered only one case of it in my original research and three in my follow-­up research of the succeeding two decades.

Some Recent Changes in Elder Support in the United States and Japan During the three decades of my research, the forces of social change have intensified and its pace has quickened. The economy, political climate, demographics, globalization, and digitization all have had strong impacts on elders’ lives both in the United States and in Japan. Some of the changes in elder support may appear to depart from the well-­established customs and norms in these two societies. Let us consider what causes these deviations.

Intergenerational Cohabitation in the United States One notable phenomenon in recent years in America is an increase in multigeneration families, which violates the rule of intergenerational autonomy and separate households for parents and adult children. About 20 percent of those sixty-­five and older now live in multigeneration households (El Nasser 2010). According to an AARP survey of householders age fifty or older, multigeneration households increased by 4.1 million from 2008 to 2010, compared with an earlier increase of 2.4 million from 2000 to 2008 (Zimmerman 2011, 98). The much larger hike in the two later years may indicate the significant impact the 2008 economic downturn had on people’s living arrangements. Yet according to a Pew Research Center report in 2018, despite the economic rebound, the number of Americans who live in multigenerational households hit a record high. While the most likely age group to live in such a household was young adults, 24 percent of Americans ages fifty-­five to sixty-­four and 21 percent of those sixty-­five and older lived in multigeneration families in 2016.17 If the economy is not a sufficient reason, what else accounts for this phenomenon? A shift in the ethnic makeup of American society may also have contributed to an increase of multigenerational coresidence.18 Of Americans age fifty and over, African Americans and Hispanics each represent 10  percent and Asian Americans 4 percent. But these populations are growing faster than the white population. By 2030, these three minority groups are predicted to comprise 42 percent of the U.S. population ( Jenkins 2016, 23). Moreover, people in these groups are more likely to live in multigeneration families than whites.

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Nonetheless, financial concerns and ethnic diversities alone are not enough to explain this trend. All four cases of intergenerational coresidence in my data involved white middle-­class families. Moreover, cohabitation with aging parents is not unusual among people who are in the mainstream of American society and have the financial resources to hire helpers to maintain two independent households.19 Children’s reluctance to place their parents in institutional care and their love and concern about parents’ well-­being may weigh heavily in these cases. Demographics, especially enhanced longevity, also play a significant role because as people grow older, they are more likely to need assistance. Among the four parents in my research who moved into their children’s homes, two were in their eighties and two in their nineties. Additional factors may also be involved, including affective ties between the generations and the location of children’s residences vis-­à-­vis that of parents. In all four cases of coresidence among Center participants, the geographical distance played a decisive role in moving parents into children’s homes located in other states.

Diversification of Eldercare in Japan Traditional eldercare in Japan is family-­based and closely tied to living arrangements. The majority of Japanese elders lived in the three-­generation household and received care from the coresiding family members. Those who lived alone in their old age were pitied (Smith and Wiswell 1982, 200) and viewed to have failed in raising filial children. However, in recent decades, major changes have occurred to the sources of elder support, resulting in a drastic decrease in three-­generation households, and now one out of four Japanese elders is living alone. Consequently, the sources of eldercare have diversified. In 2000, national long-­term care insurance was instituted in Japan, making extrafamilial eldercare, such as helpers’ home visits, widely available. Caregiving within the family has also changed. Family caregivers today are not necessarily members of the descending generation, such as daughters-­in-­ law, but are in many cases spouses, and when children take care of parents, frequently both parties are older adults. As noted earlier, these changes in the family caregiving are called rōrō kaigo, or elders taking care of elders. Caregivers are also no longer predominantly women, such as daughters and wives: “30 percent of [them] are men” (Allison 2018, 190). Providers of elder support in contemporary Japan include senior housing and eldercare institutions. As a result, moving in old age, especially to geriatric hospitals and institutions to receive needed care for physical and cognitive deteriorations, is becoming more common. For many older Japanese, aging in place is untenable even though most elders would strongly prefer it and the national long-­term care insurance covers the cost of visiting homecare service

Who Supports Older Americans?  •  123

providers. Self-­help is an important resource for sustaining the lives of those living alone, whether by choice or circumstances.

Cultural Values and Seeming Departures from Tradition under Social Change Both in the United States and Japan, there have been some notable changes in how elders live and receive care. These changes, such as intergenerational coresidence in America and living alone in Japan, deviate from the norms and customs in these societies. What has caused them, and do they indicate major changes in the dominant values of each society? Though the number of multigeneration families hit a record high in 2016 and more than 20 percent of American elders were living in multigeneration families,20 merging two previously autonomous households into one has generated ambiguity and ambivalence. A good example of this is financial arrangements. Should the parent contribute to the living expense of the child’s household? If so, how much is appropriate? When renovations (e.g., adding grab rails to the bathroom or stairs) or additions (e.g., an extra bedroom or a bathroom) are required to bring the parent into the child’s home, who covers the cost? Should other children, if any, make some financial contribution—­or pay even more because their sibling shoulders the care of their parents? Another delicate matter is establishing new boundaries between the parent and the child’s family within the household. For example, when the family goes on vacation, should they take the parent with them, or hire a helper to look after the parent at home, or temporarily place the parent at an eldercare facility? The main concern of the parents is compromising their independence, which deters many older Americans from moving into children’s homes and makes them choose living in a nursing home instead. The loss of privacy may be one of the primary concerns for adult children, as Joel who lived with his father complained. These questions addressing the ambiguities involved in intergenerational coresidence in America were generally irrelevant to living together in the traditional three-­generation family in Japan, called the ie. The ie was a perpetuating corporate group that shared financial resources and the collective goals of maintaining the family honor and prosperity, as well as of continuing the family line into the future. In addition, the roles that each individual member was expected to play were clearly defined. The eldest son—­or the eldest daughter in case of no male heir—­remained in the parents’ house after marriage, and the responsibility for looking after aging parents fell on him.21 Though the ie as a legal entity ceased to exist after World War II, its moral influence persists in contemporary Japan. By contrast, American culture, which values independence and prescribes separate households for parents and adult children, does not

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specify who is responsible for looking after aging parents. Nonetheless, as Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin observe, “actual interdependence . . . exists throughout the life course,” even though it is “obscure[d]” by “[the] focus on independence” (2017, 10). Such intergenerational interdependence in America is situational and idiosyncratic rather than culturally prescribed. But my research has shown that (1) the family is a primary source of support for older Americans even though a majority of them live separately from their children and both parties prefer this arrangement to coresidence, and (2) a wide range of variations in the way family support is given and received is fashioned by the complex interplay between love and the quest for independence under certain personal circumstances, and these variations are intensified by the lack of specific cultural models. In short, in the midst of changes, the dominant value of independence continues to shape the relationship between aging parents and adult children in America. Though the recent increase of intergenerational coresidence may seem a deviation from this value, it is an example of interdependence among family members in order to adapt to changing social milieu. Similarly, behind many drastic changes in Japanese families and sources of eldercare, there are major Japanese values, such as interdependence and delayed reciprocity, that continue to impact people’s actions and sentiments in dealing with old age. It is not uncommon for adult children and their families to move into the parents’ home when one of the parents dies, as my sister and her family did after my father’s death, or when parents show the signs of physical and mental impairments. In some cases, the widowed parent or aging parents relocate to live in the children’s homes. However, coresidence in Japan today is not an institutionalized, obligation-­ridden system of eldercare under the ie, the traditional family system. Rather, it is a case-­by-­case adaptation to changing needs and circumstances. Hence some coresiding families encounter similar problems Americans in the multigenerational family do regarding financial arrangements, responsibilities of nonresiding children, and so on (Shūkan Bunshun 2019).22 Not living together, another option in contemporary Japan, does not mean the absence of eldercare by children. Many adult children live close to their parents’ homes and provide daily assistance. Some who live a distance away visit their aging parents regularly, even from abroad as in the cases of the aforementioned poet and myself. Others move into the parents’ homes to provide care, leaving their spouses at their own homes (Ōshima 2017). A good number of children quit their jobs to look after their elderly parents. Kaigo rishoku, or leaving a job to take care of family members, has become a pressing social problem, as it aggravates Japan’s labor shortage. In short, two decades after national long-term care insurance made extra­ familial care available, the belief in family as the best caretaker for elders

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lingers on ( Jenike 2003, 184; Long 2011, 70), together with the view of senior housing as “a socially less desirable alternative to living with [one’s] children” (Thang 2001, 38). Sugamo Kojima (2018, 73–­74), a nurse who works at an old people’s home, recollects the case of a middle-­aged unmarried son who single-­ handedly looked after his widowed father with Alzheimer’s disease. Because his father wandered around during the night, he tied his waist to his father’s with a sash before going to bed. When the son was hospitalized due to the fatigue caused by years of the double-­duty of working and caring for his father, the father was brought to the old people’s home for an emergency temporary stay. He became a permanent resident only after the home administrators convinced the son that his father needed a team of professionals to care for him. After witnessing multiple other cases of burned-­out caregiving children, Kojima has come to conclude that Japanese attitudes toward eldercare have not transformed very much in the midst of changes. She maintains, “It is still children’s duty to take care of parents. Therefore, putting them in an institution is out of the question” (2018, 79). Her observation of recent years corresponds to Akiko Hashimoto’s statement more than two decades earlier: “When need in old age is inevitable, an aging parent’s claim to dependence has significant social validity” (1996, 155; italics added). Such ideas of eldercare based on interdependence and delayed reciprocity may be subscribed to both by elders and by their children. However, as more Japanese live long beyond kenkō jumyō, or the life span of health and the ability to lead a normal life, the family alone can no longer look after its elderly members who suffer considerable physical and mental impairments. Thus Kojima wrote her book to promote the significance of institutional care, show the public the reality of institutional life, and share inspiring stories of its residents and their families. If the Japanese ethos surrounding old age persists and family-­based eldercare remains the preference to extrafamilial means, why do one out of four Japanese elders live alone? Various factors are involved in this phenomenon, such as the geographical dispersal of the family and aging parents’ preference for staying put over moving in with their children’s family. The low birth rate and delayed marriage or no marriage at all have also shrunk the pool of family members available for eldercare. In addition, two Japanese values play an important role in the increasing number of older Japanese living alone. The first is meiwaku o kakenai, or to avoid imposing a burden on others, which Takie Lebra regards as “one of the most sacred cultural codes” (Lebra 1984, 46). Thus meiwaku o kakenai is the most important norm in an upscale retirement community (Kinoshita and Kiefer 1992, 177). Even within intergenerational relationships in which aging parents are entitled to “rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127), “the social cost of . . . placing a burden on those who provide help . . . limit[s] the desire to draw on the well of social and symbolic capital associated with elder status”

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(Traphagan 2000, 154). This explains why a seventy-­eight-­year-­old man might care for his sick wife without asking for any assistance from their coresiding adult child (Allison 2018, 192). Japanese elders’ reluctance to draw on their “rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127) may also be attributed to the fact that “dependency [is] disapproved of mainly because it makes one a meiwaku [a burden for others]” (Lebra 1984, 46). In other words, individual autonomy is imperative to avoid meiwaku on others despite the emphasis on interdependence. There is a tension between the view of old age “as a period of rightful dependency” (Fry 1980, 127) and the “most sacred cultural [code] of avoiding meiwaku” (Lebra 1984, 46). Elders’ hesitation to receive entitled care may be strengthened when they realize that increased longevity may lengthen the period in which they need help and impose meiwaku on caregivers. Minimizing meiwaku may play an important role in Japanese elders’ decision to live alone. The second norm that may serve as a motivational force for living alone is ki o tsukau, or to use ki. Ki, as mentioned previously, are the “courteous sensitivities” that require “alertness and caring attention to other’s needs or feelings” (Lebra 2004, 44). To cause others to use ki may mean imposing meiwaku on them. This was illustrated earlier in the case of the elderly Japanese woman who was invited to a luncheon meeting sponsored by middle-­aged volunteer housewives in a Tokyo neighborhood (see chapter 2). Considering the amount of work involved in making this monthly gathering possible, she was compelled to use ki for receiving the goodwill from younger women (M. Fujita 2004, 220–­221). Living with an adult child’s family involves the use of ki by both aging parents and other family members, especially between in-­laws, because the proper use of ki is crucial for Japanese social interactions and is a hallmark of maturity. Living alone minimizes the use of ki, as well as meiwaku. It may provide a life of kiraku (easy on ki), in which the use of ki is minimized or nonexistent, as some older Japanese who live alone have discovered. During my three decades of research, many changes have occurred in the ways aging is experienced and elders are supported both in the United States and in Japan. Some of these changes may seem to deviate from dominant values. But my research suggests that they do not result from transformations of these values. Instead, they reflect people’s ingenuity, compromise, and adaptation to fast-­paced changes in the contemporary world. They also demonstrate that independence and interdependence are not two mutually exclusive concepts, even though American culture favors the former and Japanese culture the latter. It is vital to remember that both of these values “interpenetrate within the same culture” (Lamb 2000, 40).

6

Temporal Complexity in Older Americans’ Lives

During my prefieldwork library research, I came across pictures of the “stages of life” for American men and women. These pictures from the mid–­nineteenth century show a trajectory that peaks at age fifty and slides down for the remainder of life (see figures 6 and 7). The unsympathetic portrayal of men and women in later years is also apparent in the rhymes written underneath. For men, it says, “At seventy news he’ll hear and tell but dog-­like loves at home to dwell.” Similarly, a rhyme for women goes, “Chained to her chair by weight of years, she listless knits till death appears” (Achenbaum and Kusnerz 1982, 71). These pictures and rhymes intrigued me for several reasons. For one thing, they challenge the common assumption of elders’ high status in premodern times and their marginal status as the product of a modern industrial society (Cowgill and Holmes 1972; Scheper-­Hughes 1983). Instead, they support the historian’s assertion that in America’s past, “there was never a golden age of senescence in which the old were treated with veneration” (Haber 1983, 5). The second reason was the apparent cultural difference between America and Japan in conceptualizing time. Japanese regard time as a contributor to personal growth (Rohlen 1978, 132) and value the cumulative aspect of linear time. This generates a positive view of the aged as people who have accumulated knowledge and wisdom from their lifelong experiences. The maturity and full competence of writers, artists, actors, and highly skilled artisans are believed to come only after decades of engagement in their professions. Many 127

FIG. 6.   “The Life and Age of Man: Stages of Man’s Life from the Cradle to the Grave” (from

Images of Old Age in America: 1790 to the Present, courtesy of Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan)

FIG. 7.   “The Life and Age of Woman: Stages of Woman’s Life from the Cradle to the Grave”

(from Images of Old Age in America: 1790 to the Present, courtesy of Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan)

Temporal Complexity in Older Americans’ Lives  •  129

of them, who continue to work well into their seventies and eighties, receive great respect, and some of them are awarded medals or are designated as ningen kokuhō, or “living national treasures.” Such a positive view of accumulated time is also observed in the Tokyo financial markets where some security traders believe in “a correlation between time spent and achievements” (Miyazaki 2003, 260). The trajectory of life based on this Japanese temporality is a continuous ascent from birth that peaks late in life and is not dictated by the clock.1 Cyclical time also influences the Japanese idea of old age. A good example is kanreki, the first of a series of milestone birthdays for Japanese elders at age sixty. One’s sixtieth birthday is an auspicious occasion when the birthday celebrant has completed a full circle and attained “rebirth,” because two zodiac signs of his or her birth year—­one in the ten-­year cycle and the other in the twelve-­year cycle—­converge again (Tsuji 2011, 28). Therefore, until the recent past, the kanreki celebrant wore a red cap and a red vest like those newborn babies are dressed in, symbolizing his or her “rebirth.” Robert J. Smith describes the temporal experience of older people in mid-­twentieth-­century rural Japan: “The Japanese are not tyrannized by the clock. . . . The older adult is not . . . a prisoner of time, nor does he feel that it is running out for him. He makes no effort to appear younger than he is. The minutes, hours, and days simply pass, filled with a variety of activities which are performed as the need to do them arises. Time does not drag and it does not threaten; it is there to be used but it does not stretch emptily before the older person” (1961b, 99–­100). The striking contrast between the “friendliness” of time in older Japanese’ lives and the “harshness” of it in the lives of their American counterparts inspired me to reconsider negative attitudes toward old age in America from a temporal perspective. Behind the curved trajectory of life in figures 6 and 7, I recognized the dominance of a clock-­regulated linear conception of time. Clock time generates the idea of life as “the progression . . . from birth to death” (Pollock 1971, 441), thereby positioning elders near its end, death. With its unidirectional, irreversible flow, clock time affirms future-­orientedness but reckons little future for older Americans, whose time is running out, and gives little credit to past achievements that could bestow prestige and privileges on elders in Japan and elsewhere. Being measured precisely, clock time transforms time into a commodity and strips older people of their worth because their time is no longer salable. All these assumptions lead to the American view of elders as useless, futureless people who are in the limbo between life and death (e.g., Hazan 1980; Skord 1989, 131). Such a view is unmistakably reflected in my college roommates’ comments on Mr.  Billingham, my octogenarian friend from Indiana: “He has outlived his usefulness”; “He would

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be happier dead.” This view even colored the question a five-­year-­old asked a Senior Center participant: “Great-­grandma, are you dying?” This chapter explores how elders at Lake District Senior Center dealt with the “tyranny of the clock” (Smith 1961a) by questioning the linkage between clock time and negative views of old age. The chapter demonstrates the temporal complexity of senescence and illustrates how my interlocutors were active players with time, simultaneously shaping and being shaped by it. To highlight the specific features of older Americans’ temporal experiences, I make occasional references to Japan. I also investigate the temporal experience of Japanese elders today because, since Smith’s observations more than half a century ago, Japan has transformed into a highly industrialized society.

Making the Most of Time The clock-­dominated American discourse of time has strong potential for marginalizing the aged. How do older Americans cope with this situation? One commonly assumed strategy is to live in the past. Lacking both present and future possibilities, older people often escape to the private haven of the past and thus love to reminisce. Living one day at a time is another strategy. Its focus on the present contributes not only to making elders’ current problems more manageable by limiting their temporal scope but also to sheltering them from a future that is shadowed by illness and death. Many Center people adhered to this strategy. When Florence, age ninety-­seven, heard her friend say, “In three years, you will be a centenarian and receive a birthday card from the president of the United States,” she replied, “I don’t think that far ahead. I take one day at a time.” Though older Americans’ pasts may be unacknowledged and their futures may seem bleak, both past and future play a pivotal role in making their lives meaningful and functional. Thus reminiscence is not merely an escape from present predicaments. Likewise, taking one day at a time is not simply to avoid current problems and the uncertainties of the future. Moreover, it is not elders alone who rely on this strategy. “One day at a time” is such a widely adopted approach to dealing with problems that it is a cliché and was the title of a popular situation comedy on television. I have found that “keeping busy” with the meaningful use of postretirement free time is the primary strategy for coping with the temporal dilemma of senescence.2 Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known as Grandma Moses who started painting as a septuagenarian, said, “Painting’s not important. The important thing is keeping busy.” Many Americans think retirement promises a “sudden surfeit of time” (Savishinsky 2000, 16) and finally frees them from the tight grip of the ever-­ticking clock. Breaking the Watch (Savishinsky 2000), the title of a book on retirement in America, aptly expresses these

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expectations. Older Americans in my study recalled how much they enjoyed sleeping in late, having leisurely morning coffee, and not having obligations to meet when they first stopped working. However, most retirees kept the watch at bay only for a short time, several months at most, because the expanse of time with no specific use soured to “enforced leisure” (Myerhoff 1992, 237). So once they started to find this inactivity and lack of structure depressing and demoralizing, they sought out busy lives again. Mae and Beth, the mother and daughter who “sat like two rocks” at home, participated in Center activities and did many hours of volunteer work. During the eighteen months of my initial fieldwork, Diane crocheted seven baby blankets to donate to the Center’s gift shop while pursuing various other activities. Many younger Americans, however, have no idea how busy retirees are because old age and idle time are so strongly associated. An RSVP coordinator said, “One thing that belied my assumption about older people is their management of time.” She was surprised to find that 50 to 60  percent of elders registered in the program turned down volunteer opportunities. Their reasons also betrayed her expectation that this was to help take care of grandchildren: in fact, traveling and other volunteer work topped the list. Before my research, I had similar assumptions regarding time-­rich seniors. When I first saw the Center’s activity room filled with people more than half an hour before the art class started, I immediately thought they showed up early because they had plenty of time and were cautious enough to allow themselves extra time to reach their destination. I soon discovered that they came early to have lunch together. What are the merits of keeping busy after retirement? It “serves as an antidote to pessimistic stereotypes of decline and dependency” (Katz 2000, 135). It also saves elders from the “sin” of wasting time and justifies their postretirement lives (Matthews 1979, 82; Gubrium 1975, 195–­196; Myerhoff 1978, 2). David Ekerdt argues that the “busy ethic”—­“an ethic that esteems leisure that is earnest, occupied, and filled with activity”—­honors the retiree’s life just as the work ethic “holds industriousness and self-­reliance as virtues” for the working person (1986, 239). Thus the busy ethic provides moral continuity, which eases the transition into retirement and bridges the differences in status before and after retirement.3 Keeping busy by volunteering also benefits society, as the RSVP records demonstrate. Most Center people believed in the busy ethic. They boasted about how their days and weeks were filled with activities. A group of quilters called themselves “Busy Bees.” Being busy was also a source of humor. When someone called a friend and received no answer, he or she might jest, “You naughty girl, where were you last night?” When teased about their busy schedules, some seniors replied, half-­jokingly and half-­seriously, “It saves me from mishap!”

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This emphasis on “doing” and disregard for “being” as an activity in American culture creates a problem for frail elders who spend most of their time just “plain sitting” (Hall 1959, 139). Diane, a devotee of the “busy ethic,” became too infirm to participate in the planned activities at the nursing home in the last several months of her life. She kept mumbling, “I just rest a lot. Is it OK?” and “I don’t know what to do. Is it OK?”4 Although traditional Japanese culture was depicted as accepting “being” as an activity (Hall 1959, 139; Smith 1961b, 99–­100), an old Japanese proverb (much like a similar one in English) warns that “time is money.” Thus elderly Japanese try to keep busy as well. Like Diane, my grandmother avidly crocheted vests and pillowcases after she had handed over responsibility for the household to my mother. Many retirees in Japan pursue old hobbies or find new ones. They take classes in cooking, poetry, woodcarving, conversational English, and so on. Some elders are enrolled in degree programs at universities or even graduate schools. Also popular among Japanese seniors are walking (Tsuji 2014b), traveling, mountain climbing, and various sports, such as golf and gateball (a game that is “most easily described as a team croquet”; Traphagan 2000, 115). At a public housing facility for seniors in Tokyo, “‘(I’m) so busy!’ becomes the most common greeting” among the residents in summer and fall, the period with more activities than the rest of the year (Thang 2001, 53). While engaging in activities may be a key for successful aging in both Japan and America, it also has some culture-­specific meanings. According to John Traphagan, activities for Japanese elders are “a form of work” that helps them remain physically and mentally healthy and continue to be active members of society (2000, 181–­182).5 Being embedded in networks of relationships is “the mainstay of Japanese personhood” (Tsuji 2006a, 418) as much as independence is for Americans. Hence in Japan “doing is fundamentally important for being a moral person” (Traphagan 2000, 182), and keeping busy with activities spares Japanese elders the “cultural nightmare” (Plath 1980, 217) of “[being] excluded from the realm of social interactions” (Traphagan 2000, 182). While the meaning of Japanese elders’ activities is closely linked to their relationships with others, older Americans’ activities are more self-­focused. For them, keeping busy is primarily a means of self-­fulfillment and self-­expression. It is “therapy” for the individual elder, even when it involves services for others, such as volunteer work and babysitting grandchildren.6 The other-­orientedness of Japanese elders’ activities is also manifested in who controls time. While retirement generally allows older Americans to take charge of their own time, this is not always the case with older Japanese. Leng Leng Thang notes that when the management of a Tokyo senior housing facility made a last-­minute announcement that a children’s day care would visit, the residents canceled their plans in order to participate in this mandatory

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event. They delegated the control of their time to the management as “a part of group living” (2001, 54).7 To keep busy, older Americans adopt two basic strategies: filling time and structuring time. They fill time with activities that are meaningful to them, such as hobbies, traveling, and volunteer work. Daily routines—­going through mail and doing chores around the house—­also occupy time. “A day goes by quickly while I am puttering around the house,” commented Lydia, a widow and devout Lutheran who immigrated to the United States from Finland when she was four and became a factory worker after her children started high school. In addition to filling time, activities and routines structure it. Many activities of Senior Center participants were held regularly, at a certain time of the day on a certain day of the week or the month. Diane described her busy life: “On Sundays, I go to church for the Bible class and the Sunday service. On Mondays, I teach my knitting class at the Center; on Tuesdays, I go to the nutrition class; on Wednesdays, I attend the Founders group meeting; and the third Thursday of each month is the day for the retired teachers meeting . . .” Eleanor’s life, like Diane’s, was so filled with planned activities that she gave herself Tuesdays off. It was not only events at the Senior Center and the church that followed regular patterns. Many seniors established a routine schedule for eating out, doing grocery shopping, and going to the hairdresser. Television programs also helped Center people fill and structure time. What they had watched the previous night and what they looked forward to watching that day were regular conversation topics at the Center. Japanese elders also find a “friend” in television to fill and structure time. An octogenarian widow living alone in a rural village said, “I am glad to live in the era of television. Without it, I don’t know what to do with my time. I am so grateful for having a television.” Because routines boost people’s morale, “survivors of natural disasters often try to fall back quickly into prosaic routines” (Murphy 1987, 26). May Sarton asserts, “A day without a steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic” just as “[a] body without bones would be a limp impossible mess” (1996, 15). Maria Vesperi observes that routines as a “measure of [one’s] self-­worth” had positive impacts on an older woman’s drastically reduced self-­esteem in widowhood (1985, 130). After my husband’s death, having a new routine helped me cope with the bereavement: for example, in the morning, I turned on the light and rang a temple bell from Thailand placed next to his urn. Similarly, Agnes, an American widow, and Mr. Oka, a Japanese widower, both found comfort in their weekly visits to the graves of their deceased spouses. In old age, body-­ maintenance routines might turn out to be a blessing. Robert, a retired art teacher, remarked, “We brushed teeth as a child because mother told us to do so. But now it has become a welcome routine to regulate my life.”

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Engaging in regular activities offers another merit. When people repeatedly encounter each other at the same place and time, there is an opportunity to form new social relationships. Older women do not faithfully go to the same beautician only for hair care. They enjoy chatting with the beautician and other regular customers (Furman 1997). In summary, Center people kept busy to cope with “the tyranny of the clock” (Smith 1961a), particularly its demand for productive use of time. Paradoxically, the clock and the calendar became indispensable in planning and coordinating the activities that kept them busy. Limited space at the Senior Center also amplified the importance of the clock by commanding punctuality. When the clock struck a certain hour, activities stopped abruptly to make the room available for the next group. The bus schedule regulated some people’s participation in Center activities. Gretchen, a regular in the quilting group, always left ten minutes early to catch the bus home. However, despite the crucial role the clock plays, it does not dictate older Americans’ lives. The next three sections examine the complex interplay between people and the clock.

Inconsistencies in the Busy Ethic and the Role of the Clock Though clock time may remain a primary temporal discourse after retirement, older Americans do not succumb to its tyranny for two major reasons. First, time is subject to human interpretation and manipulation. Therefore, there always exist “counter discourses of time” (Greenhouse 1996, 7). This fact contributes to the second reason: older Americans’ temporal world is much more complex than the linear model of time prescribes. To illustrate subjective interpretations of objective time, this section reexamines elders’ strategy of keeping busy and the role of the clock in their lives. While Senior Center participants kept busy to comply with the demand to utilize time, they seemed to ignore speed, to which the idea of time as a commodity accorded a high value. Normally, activities at the Center were carried out at a leisurely pace, even in dealing with the world of nanoseconds. The computer classes moved more slowly than those held elsewhere without any sign of impatience or disapproval from fellow students. Obviously, speed ceased to be “an important factor in . . . [older Americans’] motivation” (Hallowell 1955, 218). This attitude cannot be explained by their physical deterioration alone, for even healthy, able-­bodied Center participants did not strive for speed as much as they did for staying active. What mattered to them was “not the actual pace of activity but the preoccupation with activity and the affirmation of its desirability” (Ekerdt 1986, 243). For this reason, Center participants perceived their activities as “work without the feeling of work” (Savishinsky 2000, 81).

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Thus the busy ethic of retirees was distinctively different from the work ethic of working people, though both honored the lives of people in their respective groups. Marc Freedman notes that what distinguishes activities between senior citizens and younger adults is not what they do but how they do it. He argues that older people understand “some things in life . . . are best done slowly” and “efficiency, expediency, and productivity have a way of undermining [people’s] endeavors.” Hence elders’ “slowness” is a “virtue” that “can nurture and deepen relationships” (1999, 233). Elizabeth Vining offers another possible explanation: “At seventy I can afford to be an observer. I am out of the struggle” (1978, 55). On this shift from “doing” to “being,” May Sarton remarks, “My life reduced to essences. . . . I live with essences, with what is innermost these days because what is outermost is often beyond my strength. . . . I have more time for being and less ability to do than ever before” (1994, 11). These attitudes of elders might account for the flexibility with which they use their time, something that rarely existed in their working days. Although many retirees said activities kept them so busy that they never had enough time, they did not seem as time poor as they claimed. It was often possible at the Center to plan something or recruit somebody on very short notice. Also, in scheduling an event or a meeting, some Center participants habitually made themselves available for more than one date and left the decision to the majority opinion. In short, Center people engaged in activities to fill time, but they did not fill it to the brim. Furthermore, they often changed or canceled their plans. Grace was scheduled to participate in the senior chorus performance at a church and the fashion show at the Center on the same day. After appearing as a model at the latter, she said, “I skipped singing at St. Margaret earlier today. The chorus had enough sopranos. It was too much to have two major events in one day.” Similarly, many seniors signed up for various classes at the Center, but not all of those registered actually came to the classes. Such temporal flexibility is different from the elasticity with which Japanese use time. Japanese change or cancel plans due to obligations that derive from specific roles and relationships with particular individuals. Japanese convention also dictates who has the first claim on one’s time (Tsuji 2006b). By contrast, Center people changed or canceled their scheduled plans primarily for their own reasons. Even when they did so to accommodate others’ requests or to benefit and convenience them, the decision was made voluntarily by each individual elder. In addition to temporal flexibility and the insignificance of speed, the way American elders structured time showed another inconsistency with clock time; they did not always rely on the mechanical clock. Like the “cattle clock” among the Nuer (Nilotic people primarily living in the Nile Valley), their activities often functioned as “the daily timepiece” (Evans-­Pritchard 1940,

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101–­102). For example, as Robert mentioned, body maintenance, such as brushing teeth, served as “a welcome routine to regulate [one’s] life.” So did daily mail delivery. For those who had a telecare arrangement, a daily phone call was another “timepiece.” At nursing homes, meals became “three of the most guaranteed events” (Gubrium 1975, 160–­161) that gave temporal structure to the residents’ lives. The normal work routines of nurses and aides also served the same purpose (Gubrium 1975, 170; Savishinsky 1991, 232). Likewise, for the residents of Tokyo public senior housing (Thang 2001), the time for meals, cleaning, and bathing determined by the management served as their “daily timepiece” (Evans-Pritchard 1940, 100–­101). Not only daily routines but also events repeated weekly, monthly, or seasonally helped regulate elders’ lives. Diane, a nursing home resident from 1996 until her death in 2005, relied on various weekly events for temporal order. These events—­a friend’s visit on Sundays, bingo on Mondays, a relative’s visit on Tuesdays, the Bible class on Thursdays, and so on—­also became a highlight of the day, giving her something to look forward to. For some Center participants, seasonal change signaled the time for their annual migration south in winter and back home in spring. For my grandmother, monthly remembrances of the deaths of her husband and three sons served as her “timepiece” (EvansPritchard 1940, 101–­102). Each month on these four different days, a priest at our family temple came to chant a sutra for the deceased ancestors. Elders at Lake District Senior Center did not always measure senescence by chronological age either. For example, although age eighty was normally used to separate the young-­old and the old-­old, Rachel, a regular of the square dance group, dichotomized old age in a different fashion. According to her, regardless of their age, people who had interests in life belonged to the junior phase, and people who lost them to the senior phase. Elders’ physical conditions served as a divider between “welderly (well-­elderly)” and “frailderly (frail elderly)” (Rossbach 2006, 93).8 Center people’s active interplay with time was not limited to their selective conformity to clock time. Sometimes, they defied clock time’s basic assumptions that (1) time is unstoppable and irreversible, (2) old age is a downhill slide to death, (3) the past is unchangeable, and (4) older people have no future. In the next two sections, I continue to examine the complex relationships we humans have with time.

Old Age and the Metaphor of a Steady Downhill Slide to Death The imminence of death is real in old age. News of a death was so frequent at Lake District Senior Center that many participants kept a stock of sympathy cards. Some other events in elders’ lives also correspond to the “downhill” metaphor of the aging process. Many Americans believe that body and mind

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are in decline as people grow older. Elders’ housing arrangements may follow a similar pattern in response to their diminishing self-­sufficiency: from a house to a mixed-­age apartment to a senior apartment to an assisted living facility to a nursing home. Though declining health and increasing need for assistance are negatively correlated, both are thought to follow a linear progression. Old age, however, is too long and too eventful to be dismissed as a steady, irreversible downhill slide to death. Most Americans live for more than a decade after retirement. A large number of Center people spent two decades in retirement, and some more than quarter of a century. In the cases of centenarians like Florence, Diane, and Dorothy, retirement lasted for more than forty years. Center people’s housing arrangements were also complex and were not always driven by concerns about an impending “downhill slide.” They were multifarious, guided primarily by intergenerational autonomy without specific models to follow, and determined by individuals’ decisions. While many experienced a series of postretirement moves, some lived at the same place until death. Moreover, not everyone’s housing choice followed the linear, declining pattern. Even a nursing home—­where invalid residents were stereotyped to live “from the wheelchair to the bed, the bed to the wheelchair” (Vesperi 1985, 58)—­was not a terminal residence for everyone. Some elders left it to go home after rehabilitation improved their physical condition and resumed independent lives. Diane’s idea of a nursing home as a place “to live” also opposed the stereotypes. In 2003, seven years after her move, she still indeed lived there and celebrated her one hundredth birthday, which the local television station broadcasted. “Most societies have ‘social clocks,’ widely shared norms about appropriate timing for major life events” (Keith 1980, 354). However, some elders deviated from them. Marriage, a major rite of passage most common among the young, is not unusual in old age. Since my initial research in 1987–­1988, seven couples in their seventies and eighties married. Romance in later years was even more common.9 Many older couples lived together without getting married for reasons such as to avoid inheritance complications or to continue to receive their late spouses’ social security benefits.10 Death also occurs out of normal sequence. A good number of Center people were predeceased by their children. My grandmother, who had lost two adult sons and one preschool boy, shared their experience. World War II claimed the sons of many Japanese and American parents of her generation. As discussed in the last section, cyclical time also regulated Center people’s lives. Many of their activities were planned on a weekly or monthly cycle. A classic example of cyclical time is seasonal change, which also creates a temporal pendulum for the snowbirds who migrate to the south in winter and return home in spring. The long duration of senescence also allowed Center participants to live through a series of events that recurred in a certain sequence.

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One such example is leadership roles at Lake District Senior Center. After the election of a new leader, the period of his or her leadership ensued. When the leader aged or fell ill, his or her role was handed over to someone younger or healthier, but the former leader might still participate in Center activities. As time passed, the former leader came to the Center less frequently and eventually disappeared from the scene, appearing only in conversations with the occasional news about his or her condition. The former leader’s death completed the sequence, and the cycle was repeated by his or her successor. While nature repeats her seasons year after year, cyclical events in senescence do not. The snowbirds eventually stopped their seasonal migration when they were widowed, their declining health made traveling difficult, or they permanently moved to a place in the warm climate. Cyclical changes of leadership also ceased when the group became dysfunctional or disbanded due to the aging of its members and lack of new ones. The Founders and the machinists groups suffered this fate, though both met regularly and had many active members during my initial fieldwork. By contrast, the Center’s gift shop remained open long after the death of Eleanor, the longtime shop manager who had trained two sexagenarian women to take over prior to her death. Some older Americans’ housing history might be viewed as circular. It started in their youth when they left home for education, work, or marriage and moved into a small, simple place, such as a room in a dormitory or a house, or a modest apartment. Then came a long period of home ownership, which ended in their advanced age when they returned to the small and simple, this time moving to various types of senior housing. Thus Evelyn’s life in a nursing home showed some similarities to Adrian’s life at a boarding house before her marriage more than half a century ago. In both, their living quarters were compact, and their possessions were small. Some facilities were shared with others (e.g., a bathroom) or missing (e.g., a kitchen). Their food was prepared by others, for Evelyn by the nursing home staff and for Adrian by a nearby diner with which she had a meal contract for one dollar a month. Such circular housing history among older Americans differed from housing history of most Japanese when the traditional three-­generation family was the norm. Marriage moved people from one three-­generation household to another (normally women to their husbands’ family homes), where they most likely stayed until their deaths. However, as in the case of leadership roles at Lake District Senior Center, changes occurred in their status within the household in the following sequence: from (1) heir or heir’s bride; to (2) family head or family head’s wife, who was the household manager; to (3) inkyo, or elder, who passed the family responsibility to the next generation; and finally to (4) ancestor after death. The metaphor of old age as a downhill slide to death also ignores the ebbs and flows of a long retirement. Adrian’s life turned hellish when a stroke

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left her husband bedridden. However, after his death and her adjustment to widow­hood, she enjoyed life again. The experience of various kinds of rebirth also defies the downhill metaphor of old age. After successful cataract operations, elders both in America and in Japan typically said that the world looked so fresh and vivid, they felt as if they had been reborn. My own cataract surgery in 2016 made me realize how true this rebirth metaphor was. Similarly, with therapy, stroke patients can regain mobility and speech just as babies learn to walk and speak. Some older people experience a rebirth by exploring their untapped talents and interests. Many of the Center’s art class students, as well as former president George W. Bush, have found in painting a new goal and infinite possibilities in their lives. These painters’ experiences indicate that inner self retains potential for growth regardless of one’s age and physical condition. They correspond to the Japanese idea of life as “an unending path of accomplishment” (Smith 1983, 100) whose trajectory is a continuous ascent from birth until death. Abrupt changes can interrupt the supposedly unfaltering flow of time. Because life’s ephemerality is pronounced in senescence (Lamb 2009, x), catastrophe, such as major illness and death, frequently occurred among Center participants. Gene and Jacqueline, an octogenarian couple, were hospitalized simultaneously, he for lung cancer and she for osteoporosis. Mabel had three medical crises—­heart surgery, a colon cancer operation, and a stroke—­in less than three months and became a nursing home resident (see chapter 5). Common traumas in senescence also include the death of a spouse and even of adult children. Moreover, moving, even when it is desirable to prolong elders’ autonomy, may cause hardships for those whose lives are uprooted. These experiences divide time into two parts: before and after the incident. For people who undergo a traumatic change, time is “no longer smooth and linear, but bisected and polarized” (Murphy 1987, 26). For parents who lost children, time may stop at their deaths, freezing their images forever. For some Japanese parents, however, the deceased children continue to grow in their mind. Thus a father offered a pack of cigarettes to the spirit of his son though he had died at age thirteen, too young to smoke (Robert J. Smith, personal correspondence, July  11, 2001). In Poppoya (The railway worker), a popular Japanese novel made into a movie, the deceased infant girl appears as a young woman in the aging father’s imagination (Asada 1997). Paradoxically, clock time itself might create temporal discontinuity. Mandatory retirement drastically altered one’s status at a precise moment by the precise measurement of time. Ellen, a former secretary, said, “One day I was worth so much, and the next I became worthless.” To respond to the tyranny of the clock, some older Americans attempt to stop and reverse time. Plastic surgery is a daring example of their challenge to time (Brooks 2017). Though the majority of American elders, including those in my study, do not go this

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far to “fight aging and hide aging” (Moore 1988),11 youth-­oriented American culture makes them reluctant to accept growing older. A well-­groomed elderly lady summed up this attitude in a television commercial for cosmetics: “I don’t intend to age gracefully. I intend to fight it every step of the way” (Moore 1988). With the aging of baby boomers, this tendency has become more intensified by commoditizing values of youth and creating new images of aging with the help of body care techniques that conceal its signs. “This attempt to recast the life span in fantasy images of timelessness” is evident in the titles of self-­help books for elders, such as Ageless Body and Timeless Mind (Sokolovsky 1997, xv). Sarah Lamb also notes that the successful aging paradigm prevalent in America does not accommodate the changes associated with aging and pursues “a permanent personhood” instead (2014, 44). It seems that Americans try to create a temporally static world because to accept aging (i.e., the changes imprinted by time) is to fail. This was manifested in various aspects of Center people’s lives. For example, they did not follow an age-­specific dress code. On my first visit to Lake District Senior Center, older women’s brightly colored clothing struck me because while I was living in Japan, convention required older women to dress in somber colors. In my memory, my grandmother’s clothes were always gray, navy, or dark brown.12 In addition, few of Center people’s activities were age-­specific, though some might have adjusted them to their aging bodies: for example, June, a septuagenarian with aching knees, avoided walking in hilly terrain. Some activities, such as knitting and shuffleboard, may be stereotyped as hobbies of older people. But most others were age-­neutral: painting, exercising, traveling, using computers, attending lectures, taking courses, and so on. While some older Americans may challenge the ever-­ticking clock and fight and hide aging, others accept the cold fact of it and acknowledge their limitations as well as potential. John, a ninety-­year-­old former businessman, said, “At my age, what can one expect? My philosophy is not to become a crybaby but to accept what one has and is.” A favorite utterance of ninety-­three-­year-­old Kathryn was “Such is life. I am grateful for what I have and will keep hopping.” Finding the advantages of old age also helps. Vining writes, “I can enjoy the thing-­in-­itself, whatever it is, without regard to the prestige value or the effect that it may have on my career” (1978, 55). A relief from occupational duties is another advantage. On a cold, icy day, Joyce exclaimed, “Am I lucky to be retired! It would have been a risky business to drive to work this morning.” Many Center participants shared her sentiment.

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The Significance of the Past and the Future in Old Age Some Americans believe that in old age, (1) the past disappears into oblivion and merely serves as a private shelter from the hostile world, and (2) the future does not have much meaning because only little of it is left. Yet I have found that the past and the future play essential roles in older Americans’ lives.

The Past in Old Age Older people are known to love reminiscence. As mentioned in chapter 1, elders at Lake District Senior Center spoke frequently about episodes in their youth, such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the Model T Ford. They also played games that intentionally brought back memories, sang old songs together, and wrote memoirs. Elders’ reminiscence, however, is not a “mere escapist desire to live in the past, as some claim” (Myerhoff 1978, 222), but it is more present-­oriented than is generally assumed. For one thing, memories are essential for human existence, not only because “much of one’s reality—­how one understands the world to be—­is based on semantic memory” but also because “episodic memory forms an important part of one’s personal identity” (D’Andrade 1995, 190; italics in original). For older people who are “burdened with such vast and disparate memories” (Myerhoff 1978, 222), reminiscence is particularly significant, “help[ing] them know themselves as the same person over time, despite great ruptures and shifts” (34). However, such a personal continuity “does not happen easily or inevitably. For this personal coherence, this sense of psychological integration to take place, the individual must be capable of finding and reliving familiar parts of his/her past history” (108). Sharing the past with their contemporaries helps elders do this by setting their private experiences within a common time frame and “bridging the gap between private and public experiences” (Vesperi 1985, 74–­75).13 In short, elders’ reminiscence is not “harmless, pointless activity” but “a healthy and productive process” (Savishinsky 1985, 130) that is essential for their very existence. Tracing their genealogy provides another means to seek continuity in elders’ identity. During a semester-­long archival research, I often encountered Americans unassociated with academia or the media at the historical society I consulted for my work. These people, many of whom were retirees, were in search of their ancestors. Some traveled a long distance. Similarly, my husband’s extended family spent more than half a century trying to find a small village in Germany, from where their forebears, a young married couple, had migrated to the United States in the nineteenth century. As an anthropologist, I am well aware that people’s origins occupy an essential component of their identity. I understand why online genealogy

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resources, such as Ancestry​.com, are popular and why Finding Your Roots, a show that tracks down the ancestors of well-­known people, is broadcast on prime-­time television. At the same time, I was surprised at the effort—­and enthusiasm—­with which Americans tried to find where they came from. Japanese generally have good knowledge of their forebears even beyond their immediate family, not thanks to formal pedigree documents but through traditional rituals to honor their ancestors. Daily, monthly, seasonal, and periodic rituals make the deceased ancestors familiar to the living, and kakochō, or the book of the past, at the family temple keeps the records of all the deaths in the family over the past hundred years (Tsuji 2011). Despite Americans’ eagerness to find their roots, however, “the ‘legacy of the past’ lies very lightly in the hands of today’s younger generation” (Clark and Anderson 1967, 424), who often respond to older Americans’ reminiscence with boredom or even disdain.14 To deal with this dilemma, Center participants controlled, either intentionally or subconsciously, when and how to bring the past into the present. If they told their experiences of bygone days in an age-­heterogeneous environment, it might bring out a general stigma associated with old age. But at the age-­homogeneous Senior Center, they willingly shared past memories with their peers because the Center offered in abundance the “audiences, listeners, and witnesses [that were] essential for self-­awareness” (Myerhoff 1978, 222). But even at the Senior Center, the past was not always welcome to the present. Despite their love of reminiscence and its crucial importance for their identity, Center participants avoided magnifying their pasts and deplored those who clung to old glories and accomplishments to dignify the present. The past might also indeed fade into oblivion. One such case concerned Mel, the former director of Lake District Senior Center, who dedicated his life to the betterment of society, first by working for the Boy Scouts of America and, after retirement, by volunteering for the Center. He made such important contributions to the Boy Scouts that successive presidents of the United States sent him birthday cards even after his retirement. During my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, Mel made regular appearances at the Center, though at ninety he was not involved in Center activities. Since his directorship of the Center had ended more than a decade earlier, most Center participants were ignorant of his past achievements and knew him simply as a quiet man who picked up rubbish from the floor and tidied up the kitchen. When he died, the obituary in the local paper highlighted his life, including his earlier work for Lake District Senior Center. But neither the announcement of his death nor the formal recognition of his past contributions was made at the Center. Learning about his death, only a handful of old-­timers shared their memories of him.

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Chance sometimes determined what was recollected and what was not. Thus it was possible that people who had known each other for a long time were ignorant about certain aspects of their friends’ past, such as Alice being a freedom fighter in Nazi-­occupied Europe (see chapter 3). Occasionally, people learned about their friends’ children only after major events (e.g., graduations and weddings) occurred or their friends became seriously ill and children came to help. This may be attributed to Americans’ tendency to compartmentalize their social ties. While these examples might indicate that older people did not always dwell in the past, there were times when they deliberately repressed the past to avoid painful memories, such as family conflicts and the premature deaths of children. It was possible that Alice did not talk about her wartime experience to avoid pain, and only after half a century could she comfortably disclose it publicly. Many older Japanese men who were drafted to fight in World War II also froze the memories of their wartime experiences. As their remaining years grew shorter and many of their fellow veterans died, some survivors began to tell their firsthand stories of war atrocities so that people would recognize the importance of peace. The past remembered might not necessarily be an accurate picture of what happened. A good example of this was Ava’s recollection of a stockbroker’s suicide during the Great Depression. When she told the story in October 1987, no one questioned its authenticity. However, when she died in 1999, her obituary disclosed that she was only ten years old in 1929, too young to be working on Wall Street as she said. It was possible that Ava mixed up what she had heard with what she had seen. Myerhoff ’s observation at the Jewish senior center might offer another possible explanation for why Ava “recreated” her past: “More afraid of oblivion than pain or death, [people at the Jewish senior center] always sought opportunities to become visible” by using “intense and relentless” reminiscence (1978, 33). If such was Ava’s aim, the accuracy of the past might not be of much importance. The loss of independence might also necessitate the alteration of the past, as the case of a former concert pianist illustrates. Severely crippled by arthritis, she became a supplicant. Having lost the mainstay of American personhood, the former pianist had no choice but to “‘recreate’ the self ” (Vesperi 1985, 71) in order to “manipulate or compensate for the perception of others” (50). This meant “discarding her pre-­established adult identity” (70) and “denying the very basis for her claim to recognition” (71). Thus “it was no longer appropriate to accept compliments on her musical ability” (70). Elders handled their past in various ways. They might cherish, revise, repress, or obliterate it to make it meaningful to their present existence. Consequently, each senior’s personal identity, in which the recollected past plays

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a crucial role, was not a mere accumulation of lifelong experiences. This fact may account for, at least partly, a seeming contradiction in the meanings of two chronologically correlated factors: the seniors’ past and advanced age. While the past is an essential component of one’s personal identity, age serves only as one of many attributes that make up who a person is (e.g., being a good teacher, a nurturant mother, an avid reader, and an enthusiastic gardener). Sharon Kaufman uses the term “the ageless self ” to note the insignificance of chronological age in older Americans’ self-­perception. She attributes the contradictions in “the ageless self ” to the fact that, contrary to popular views of old age “as a distinct period in life, old people themselves emphasize the continuity of the ageless self amid changes across the life span” and that “old people do not perceive meaning in aging itself, so much as they perceive meaning in being themselves in old age” (1986, 13–­14). Her observation is echoed in an octogenarian’s claim that “old age is only a costume assumed for those others; the true, the essential self is ageless” (Cowley 1980, 3). Older Americans’ “ageless self ” does not indicate a denial of the past, however. Rather, Kaufman argues, “identity in old age—­ageless self—­is founded on the present significance of past experience, the current rendering of meaningful symbols and events of life” (1986, 26). What emerges from older Americans’ life stories are age-­neutral “themes” (e.g., work, family, and helping others) that enable them “to interpret and evaluate their life experiences and [to] attempt to integrate these experiences to form a self-­concept” (25).15 My own research has also revealed that conformity to cultural ideals, mostly age-­ neutral factors in American culture, supported older Americans’ integrity and self-­esteem. Being independent in the face of diminishing self-­sufficiency in particular represented the core of their sense of the worthiness of their existence. Despite the triviality of age in their self-­identity, Center people were well aware of their advanced age and often experienced the gap between biological time and psychological time. Typically, elders said that they felt much younger inside than they appeared outside. This lag in psychological time gave them a shock when they saw their aged figure in the mirror or pictures taken in their youth. Psychological time does not correspond to social time either. Older Americans’ “ageless self ” makes a sharp contrast with their social identity, in which their advanced age and various manifestations of it—­such as gray hair, wrinkles, and retired status—­play a decisive role in determining who they are. Older Americans adopt various strategies to deal with these disparities. Some openly resist being categorized as elders. A recipient of Senior Circle, the newsletter mailed to elderly residents in Winston County, telephoned the Senior Center and demanded her name be removed from its mailing list. She was not alone in detesting the label of “senior.” Multiple motions had been made to remove the term senior from the name of Lake District Senior Center

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until, in 2004, it adopted the new age-­neutral name, Lifelong. Similarly, one of the Center groups had a heated discussion over renaming their group. Many objected to names that described members as “Senior Citizens” and preferred “Friends of Senior Citizens.” This suggested new name revealed another strategy to avoid the negative label of the aged: making a we-­they distinction by accepting such a label for other elders but not for themselves. During a committee meeting at the Center, Janet, a volunteer serving on the committee, made this we-­they differentiation when she was talking about the pros and cons of two proposed programs. She said, “I think they will prefer Plan B to Plan A. But both plans have some problems.” She kept referring to her fellow senior citizens as “they” until she suddenly paused to say, “Oh, I should’ve said, ‘we,’ shouldn’t I?” There are occasions when older Americans do not refuse this social identity because their chronological age has some important economic bearing, entitling them to Medicare and social security benefits, as well as to tax breaks and senior discounts. As far as I know, no Center participant ever declined Medicare or social security benefits. During my initial fieldwork, Center people felt ambivalent about senior discounts but eventually accepted them as entitlements. Despite their generally mixed attitudes toward their age, it became a source of pride and a personal asset at the Center, where age and past memories lost negative connotations. Thus upon meeting me, most people, especially those in their eighties and nineties, volunteered their ages. My research has shown that in conceptualizing the past, older Americans adopt more than one kind of time—­linear, cyclical, social, biological, psychological—­and these may not be compatible with one another. Such complexity and the paradox of the past in old age are epitomized in “the ageless self ” (Kaufman 1986). It is clear that the past is imbued with meanings—­be they positive or negative—­only through the selective filter of the individual elder. There seem to be two kinds of past. One exists in absolute time, which flows mechanically, external to human existence. This past consists of a simple accumulation of objective time. The other exists in the time cognized and interpreted by each individual with the influence of his or her culture. This past is subject to reinterpretation, recreation, and repression, as well as affirmation and oblivion. Both pasts are important in shaping human experience, and older Americans ingeniously, but in most cases unconsciously, choose the one appropriate for the particular situation they are in. The past, therefore, is “not merely the residue of earlier acts. . . . [Rather] it [is] dialectically involved with the present and offer[s] an alternative model of potentialities to be realized” (Hoskins 1993, x).

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The Future in Old Age An American octogenarian and a Japanese septuagenarian both challenged the stereotypical notion of futureless elders. In The View from 80, Malcolm Cowley declares, “One’s 80th birthday is a time for thinking about the future, not the past” (1980, 21). Likewise, Kikuo Sakai (2004), a Japanese man,16 says in his haiku, Sinryōya

Cool air of the early fall

koki to iedomo

my future spread ahead

mirai ari

on my koki [seventieth birthday]

Why is the future so important for older people who, at least statistically, have little of it left? For one thing, the very fact of aging makes it necessary to plan for the future, because elders’ physical limitations require advance preparation for what they could previously do on a whim. For example, some Center participants gave up driving and needed to arrange transportation to do grocery shopping, visit friends, go to the Senior Center, see their doctors, and so on. Although the local community offered transportation services for seniors, a reservation was required at least one day in advance. As the need for assistance grew with physical decline, planning became more necessary even for simple routine events, such as bathing and eating. The late Robert Murphy, a quadriplegic anthropologist, noted that disability “rigidified [one’s] short-­range perspectives and introduced a calculating quality into [life]” by terminating spontaneous actions, such as a last minute decision to go somewhere and “wander[ing] into the kitchen for a snack or outside for a breath of fresh air” (1987, 76). Disability might also result in the loss of control over time. Some nursing home residents, who depend totally on others for their daily needs, have no choice but to accept a plan made by their caregivers (e.g., Gubrium 1975, 172). Long-­term planning is no less important for elders. Everybody agrees that saving for financial security in old age must start early in one’s working days. Many Center participants also had a housing plan for the future when independent living became difficult. They shopped around and put their names on waiting lists for senior apartments or assisted living facilities. Shortly after her mother’s death, Diane did just that at the nursing home where her mother had spent her last years. A sexagenarian at that time, Diane was still maintaining her independent life. But witnessing her mother’s decline prompted her to plan for her own future incapacity. Thanks to her foresight, three decades later, when she broke her femur, she could move to a nursing home upon being discharged from the hospital. Center people’s future plans also included death. The purchase of a plot in the local cemetery was often a conversation topic

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among them. Some joined a memorial society to make their funeral arrangements. Elders also prepared a health proxy, living will, estate plan, and last will and testament. Important though future planning may be, older Americans’ attitudes toward it show tremendous diversity, including direct opposition. Depending on “the extent to which they plan[ned], or believe[d] in planning” for retirement, Joel Savishinsky divided his interlocutors into two categories: “Zen masters” and “master planners”: “[The former] emphasized a kind of Zen attitude of unscheduled openness and unformulated expectations about what the future might bring. [The latter] stressed a carefully thought-­out agenda of activities, resources, and priorities around which to organize retired life” (2000, 67). The majority of Center people fell somewhere between these two categories. One exception was George, a retired business owner, who adopted the Zen master approach and was enjoying his retirement. The statement “retirement is a good time if you plan for it” always annoyed him, because it implied that he could not be having a good time.17 My research revealed two common threads in the diversity of planning for retirement. First, elders’ quest for independence served as a strong incentive to plan for the future. Considering the possibility of senility or deterioration of other functions, they tried to make decisions while they still had the ability. Rose, a healthy married woman in her sixties, had already laid out a plan as to when to give up the house, what to do with it, and where to live afterward. A mother of five, she claimed, “Parents owe to children the responsibility of making decisions for their own future.” Second, older Americans use what is personally important as a measure of planning.18 Frequently, pets and hobbies influence their decisions. During my initial fieldwork, no-­pet policies were the norm at senior housing, and gardening was limited to pots inside their apartments unless the housing complex had community gardens. The desire to keep pets or enjoy gardening delayed elders’ moves to senior housing, though this situation has changed over the years and today many senior housing facilities in Winston County allow cats and small dogs and have a community garden. The case of Robert, a retired art teacher, illustrates the individualistic criteria for future planning. Robert was a quiet, gentle octogenarian with a nice smile. But since childhood, he had always firmly expressed his preferences and acted on them. For instance, when he was a preschooler, he chose to go to a Methodist church instead of the Presbyterian church where his parents, Scottish immigrants, and other siblings worshipped, and he remained a Methodist for the rest of his life. In a similar vein, his love of art was such that when cataract surgery did not completely restore his eyesight, Robert started piano and voice lessons. He wanted to cultivate a taste for music so that he could continue to enjoy art, albeit in a different form, in the event that he became totally blind. Robert was

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a “master planner” in this regard. Yet when it came to planning for other eventualities, he followed the path of a Zen master. He said, “I don’t think about the future, though I think I should.” Thus at age eighty, he still lived alone in a big three-­story house with no plan for his future housing. A decade later, when this lifestyle became too demanding for him, a lifecare retirement community opened. He moved into an apartment there and died a few years later. The individual-­based motivations and choices behind older Americans’ future planning are notably different from the way Japanese perceive their future in relation to their roles and positions in the groups they belong to. Haruko, a Japanese farm woman, described her future goals and aspirations in terms of her three roles: her daughter’s wedding (as mother), her relations with her son’s wife (as mother-­in-­law), and the care she gave her mother-­in-­law in her final days (as daughter-­in-­law; Bernstein 1996). Such a conception of the future is closely linked to the Japanese idea that one’s membership in groups and the positions and roles one plays within them are the principal building blocks of identity. Playing one’s role properly is an important means of self-­ realization (Tsuji 2006a). Whether older Americans adopt the Zen master approach, the master planner strategy, or a mixture of both, the future is an integral part of senescence and has significant effects on their behavior. As noted earlier, considering future eventualities, Dorothy decided to move from her senior apartment to a nursing home rather than to an assisted living facility. Similarly, while she still lived in her house, Diane chose to buy the smaller model of a television set in anticipation of the possibility that she would move to a nursing home. The future also has varied impacts on the way older Americans collect things. Some, in anticipation of moving to smaller living quarters, downsize their possessions, while others accumulate things for their possible use in the future. When donated fabric was offered free at the Center, many took a bagful of it home. Claire, a Black retired civil servant in her eighties, said, “Someday when I become homebound, I want to make doll clothes with these materials.” Elders’ attitudes toward purchasing major consumer goods, such as appliances and cars, also vary. Living on a fixed income and being in the last phase of life, many avoid buying such items and try to have them repaired if problems occur. But buying expensive durable goods is not uncommon among older people. In the year Diane, aged eighty-­five, bought a television set, she also purchased a brand-­new car after her old one was wrecked in an accident.19 Feng Mian, a child psychologist who escaped from Communist China to Taiwan in 1949 with her family,20 had extensive renovations made to her house two years before retirement. Neither Diane nor Feng Mian had ever married or had children who might take over their possessions. They invested not a small amount of money toward enjoying these purchases in the future.

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Though the predicament of old age is often attributed to its absence or bleakness, the future plays a significant role in taking care of elders’ problems. Faced with hardships, Center people said “Life keeps going no matter what” as often as “I take one day at a time.” Based on their life experiences, they knew things would work out sooner or later and looked forward to the time when the problems would be behind them. Even when the future did not look bright, moving forward might provide them with direction and some sense of comfort. Diane Ackerman, writing about the long struggle after her husband’s stroke and loss of speech, explains, “Return was impossible, and there was only one direction open; and so we kept our compass pointed forward” (2011, 286).21 Paradoxically, it is some younger Americans who avoid setting their “compass . . . forward.” When the Hathaways, an octogenarian couple, mailed their five children the information that might be needed after their deaths (e.g., bank accounts, life insurance, important contact information, funeral arrangements), none of them read it because they had no desire to think about a future without their parents. The imminence of death did not end the life of a dying person either. As long as her body enabled her, Julia, who had terminal brain cancer, kept writing thank-­you notes to those who sent her food, flowers, and cards. Adrian, who chose no treatments for her lung cancer because of her advanced age, wrote to a local newspaper to praise and thank the work of hospice workers. Some terminally ill elders take care of postmortem affairs by putting their wills and other documents in order or writing their own obituaries. Contrary to the prevailing view of futureless elders, the future has important, widely varied influences on older Americans’ lives. The future in senescence is complicated even further by the inconsistent way American society handles it. For instance, the very society that denies that elders have a future still allocates it to them when a septuagenarian applies for a twenty-­year mortgage on a retirement home with secure collateral.22 Likewise, no bank would refuse to open a five-­year certificate of deposit for a nonagenarian despite the statistical likelihood of his or her death before its maturity. Another contradiction is found in American attitudes toward saving money for the future. Supposedly future-­oriented Americans are not big savers. This raises a serious concern for the many baby boomers who may outlive their retirement savings.23 Furthermore, American culture is not as uniformly future-­oriented as it is commonly believed. A good example of this is social exchange. As Marcel Mauss (1967) argues, people everywhere are bound by the obligation to give, receive, and make a return, but the meanings and functions of reciprocity may vary cross-­culturally (Tsuji 2016). In American culture, where one of the primary functions of reciprocity is to attest independence by maintaining

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balanced exchange and avoiding dependency, the temporal dimensions of social exchange tend to be short ranged for several reasons. First, the obligation to give, receive, and make a return is more self-­imposed than externally pressured. This fact accords the individual the freedom to terminate—­or continue—­the relationship. Second, people are reluctant to accept favors and gifts because the inability to reciprocate entails a cultural taboo of dependency. Even “when a ‘favor’ is accepted, it is sought to be quickly squared off through payment” (Peerandina 1998, 26). Third, the norm of quick repayment—­together with the use of monetary value as the measure of balancing social exchange—­adds a business-­like quality to it (26). This diminishes the need to disguise rational calculation inherent in exchange by “stretching it out in time” and making giving look like “an inaugural act of generosity” (Bourdieu 1977, 171; italics added). Consequently, “past services rendered or aid given do not bind the recipient for long to a demand for reciprocity” (M. Clark 1972, 270). Such inability to save favors and services for future reciprocity creates problems for older Americans when their need for assistance increases and their resources diminish. By contrast, temporal dimensions of social exchange in Japan are inclined to be long ranged (Tsuji 2006a). The traditional idea of children as social security is predicated on a delayed reciprocity that occurs several decades later. To repay the debt of their upbringing, children take care of parents in old age and worship their spirits after death. Hence for the Japanese, one’s future does not end when one dies because memorial rites continue for many years after death (Smith 1974; Tsuji 2011). Nowadays, they normally last until the thirty-­third death anniversary. The family altar at home and the family grave are the locus of ancestor worship (Tsuji 2002, 2004). Jason Danely maintains, “The grave is a site for the affirmation of the past self and the imagination of future possible selves” (2014, 109).24 These rituals also prevent death from becoming “complete obliteration” (Myerhoff and Tufte 1975). Though the future may be of a short duration for older people, it remains significant for them regardless of their cultural origins. This is because the future is an imperative part of human life. Robert Kastenbaum argues that there are two equally important dimensions in human perceptions of the future: personal futurity and cognitive futurity. As he describes it, “Personal futurity is bound to the individual’s own life-­span and holds his own personal ‘destiny’” (1963, 217). This dimension of the future shows personal and cultural differences and, as one grows older, diminishes. Cognitive futurity is “the orientation toward utilizing time as an abstract cognitive category for organizing and interpreting experience in general” (217). “A tool of the intellect,” it is essential for human integrity and does not necessarily decrease with advanced age (216–­217). This aspect of the future may be panhuman. Therefore, while their cultures may treat the future differently, the

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aforementioned American octogenarian and Japanese septuagenarian both see the future spread out in front of them. The cultural difference lies in how the future for the Japanese may extend into the afterlife, whereas most Americans may agree with Jim, a Senior Center participant, who said, “The future does not end until you die.”

Temporalities in Senescence: Actual Pictures versus Stereotypes The dominance of a clock-­based idea of linear time in American society contributes to creating negative stereotypes of elders as useless people with obliterated pasts, no futures, and nothing to do but wait to die. It is also reflected in the American trajectory of life as an ascent to the peak in midlife and a downhill slide thereafter to senescence and death. But these views do not accurately depict the actual experiences of most Senior Center participants. The temporal dimensions of their lives were complex because time is “a man made notion which we have projected into our environment for our own particular purposes” (Leach 1961, 133) and is subject to our interpretation and manipulation. Hence clock time did not dictate my interlocutors’ lives mechanically and despotically. Though they accepted it as an unescapable frame in their lives, they also challenged, manipulated, interpreted, and judged it. They handled it in such a way that supposedly objective and continuous clock time stopped totally, stopped and restarted, reversed, bisected, or perhaps indeed flowed, but not necessarily with mechanical regularity. Consequently, past, present, and future were not always linked by a simple causal relationship controlled by the flow of time but dialectically related (Vesperi 1985, 49). Furthermore, past and future both played essential roles in making elders’ lives meaningful and tenable despite the widespread assumption of their uselessness. Contradictions and tensions in the clock-­based model of time intensify these temporal complexities even further. Among other things, clock time has two opposing faces. It may be our enemy, imposing an unavoidable frame on our lives and interfering with our quest for eternity. At the same time, it may also be a friend we cannot live without. Clock and calendar played an essential role in helping Center participants keep busy by filling and structuring time and establishing order in their retirement. In this regard, clock time ceased to be a hostile, abstract entity because elders made it “quite alive, embodied in purposeful activity and experience” (Munn 1992, 111). Time is also a dependable—­albeit slow—­healer for traumatic experiences. Dominant though clock-­dictated linear time might be, other forms of time—­ cyclical, pendular, static, biological, social, and psychological—­also regulated older Americans’ lives and colored their temporal orientations. Moreover, these different forms of time were not necessarily congruent with each other.

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Multiple temporalities, time as “a man made notion” (Leach 1961, 133), and temporal models imbued with contradictions not only magnified the complexity of older Americans’ experiences of time but also generated a wide range of individual variations in the way they dealt with time. As Hazan argues, time is “the cardinal constituent of [senior center participants’] behavior” and “must be viewed as a viable, manipulable resource open to infinite possibilities of handling and management through people’s attitudes and behaviors” (1980, 181). Older Americans were not passive travelers in the flow of time but active players in it.

7

Changes and Continuities over Thirty Years of Research When I started my fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center in February 1987, my parents and my grandmother lived together in the house where I grew up. Both of my parents had retired more than half a decade earlier. My nonagenarian grandmother had delegated to my mother her long-­held post as the household manager and was enjoying her “retirement.” My sister and her husband, who lived nearby, still worked full time. A childless couple at the time, they made occasional trips in Japan and overseas. My husband was in good health and busy with his teaching and administrative duties. This picture of my family both in Japan and in America drastically changed during the three decades of my research. My grandmother passed away in 1988. The news of her death came when I was in the art class at Lake District Senior Center. As if compensating for this loss, my niece was born in 1990. But my father enjoyed being a grandpa only for a few years; he died in 1992. A year after his death, my sister and her family moved into my mother’s house, transforming a one-­person household into a three-­generation one yet again. Two more deaths followed: my husband’s in 1999 and my mother’s in 2013. My niece, who in 1995 visited Lake District Senior Center as a preschooler and enchanted everyone, had by then grown into adulthood. Following the paths of her grandmother and mother, she became an elementary school teacher. Her parents retired and started to travel more frequently.

153

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In the same passage of time, myriads of changes occurred to my informants at Lake District Senior Center and the Center itself, as well as to American society and the world. This chapter explores some of these changes, along with what has not changed.

Journeys to Death in Senescence One undeniable change was the passing of my informants. Out of the couple hundred Senior Center participants I came to know well during my initial fieldwork, all but two had passed away by 2016, and one of these two died in August 2018. As a result, I attended many funerals and memorial services. I also had the opportunity to observe the dying process of some of the elders. The experience of losing so many people, including four members of my immediate family, made me keenly aware of the ephemerality of life. Death was no longer something abstract that will befall in the distant future but became “the universal sentence” (Sarton 1968, 180). In other words, I came to realize that a journey to death is an important component of senescence. This section discusses how my interlocutors treated death and describes some of their journeys to death. Death is often hidden in retirement communities and nursing homes (e.g., Keith 1977; Shield 1988). But this is not the case at Lake District Senior Center. For one thing, death is imminent in old age. Center people frequently heard about the passing of fellow participants and their families and circulated sympathy cards to send to their bereaved friends. Sometimes, their reminiscence touched upon the deaths of their loved ones. Preparation for death was also a frequent conversation topic. Elders talked about burial plots in the cemetery, funeral arrangements, health care proxies, and wills. Their preparations for death were as varied as their approaches to retirement, which Savishinsky (2000) categorized along a continuum, from the “Zen master” to the “master planner” (see chapter 6). Center people’s funerals and memorial services also varied. There might be no service, a simple graveside service, a gathering at a funeral home, or a church service followed by a reception with coffee, tea, and snacks or a formal meal at the country club. Such variations contrasted strikingly with the Japanese mortuary tradition of expensive funerals and many protocols (see Tsuji 2006a). Regardless of the extent of their preparations, all wished for a “good death.” Center people considered it a “good death” to die quickly and painlessly, peacefully in one’s sleep, or at home surrounded by families and close friends. When members of the knitting class heard that Jane’s husband had died unexpectedly of a heart attack the previous night, lively discussions ensued about the positive and negative sides of such a death. The majority of the class agreed

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that dying of a heart attack was desirable for the deceased because his or her suffering lasted only a few minutes. For this reason, they wished a quick death for themselves once they reached a ripe old age. At the same time, they also expressed their concern about the shock and grief of the unprepared survivors. Some also voiced the importance of saying goodbye and thank you to their loved ones. Sudden death would not give this opportunity to either the deceased or the survivors.1 Death from cancer contrasts with sudden death in that there is normally a long lapse of time between diagnosis and death. A good number of Center participants were cancer survivors. Some of them had their initial diagnoses many years before. Diane, for example, discovered she had a rare form of breast cancer sometime after she moved to a nursing home in 1996. Because this type of cancer would grow very slowly and she was a nonagenarian, she received no treatment and died of old age in 2005. Thanks to multiple treatments, my husband survived for over six and a half years despite an unfavorable prognosis. Cancer patients’ relatively slow journey to death gives them and their families time to say farewell and express gratitude, as well as to take care of various death-­related issues, such as writing a will or obituary and making funeral or memorial service arrangements. Some elders succumbed to cancer quickly, however. Maria, the longtime leader of the Founders group, died of stomach cancer without having much time to prepare for her death. After the diagnosis, she continued to come to the weekly meeting and was open about her cancer and treatment plan. However, her cancer was so aggressive that group members watched her rapidly decline from one week to the next. She died three weeks after her diagnosis, before her scheduled treatments even started. Maria’s death disturbed Center people not only because they had lost their competent, beloved leader but also because she had no obvious symptoms before her diagnosis and died in such a short time. By contrast, Florence’s death was unanimously accepted as a good one. At age ninety-­seven, she was the oldest Center participant at the time of my initial fieldwork. A widow, she lived alone in a senior apartment and remained active until close to her death at the age of 104 in March 1995. In 1993, a few months before my husband returned to work after his fourteen-­month-­long medical leave, as his practice outing, we joined a day trip organized by Lake District Senior Center to see fall colors at a state park several hours away from Winston County. Florence, age 102 at that time, was on this tour, getting on and off the bus on her own at every viewpoint along the gorge. She came out of the bus to join her fellow travelers for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the gorge and at a rest stop on our way home. Near her death, her physical strength gradually declined. But she did not suffer from any particular illness

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and maintained her keen mind. One night, she went to sleep and never woke up. Hearing about Florence’s death, people at the Center called it a good one and hoped their own would be like hers. In cases of death after an extended illness (e.g., cancer) or a period of grave physical deterioration (e.g., debilitating arthritis), Center people emphasized the importance of dying with dignity. What they wished most in these cases was to remain in charge and make necessary decisions by themselves, as exemplified by two Center participants, Adrian and Lilian. Adrian, who was diagnosed with lung cancer at age eighty-­four, decided to forgo treatments after carefully evaluating their pros and cons. She chose quality of life over longevity. After her symptoms worsened, she received hospice and palliative care at home. She spent the last phase of her life writing her own obituary and planning her memorial service, as well as organizing a support group, “The Insighter,” for the terminally ill. Her letter also appeared in the local newspaper, in which she let readers know about hospice services available locally and thanked hospice nurses and staff for their compassionate and professional services. She died at home, surrounded by her family. Lilian, a former elementary school teacher who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for many years, also took charge of her death. Shortly before she died, she told me matter-­of-­factly that she felt like the frame of her body was disassembling and painkillers no longer eased her pain. For several weeks before her death, she was seen at the Center more frequently than usual. She returned borrowed books to her friends and completed unfinished business at the gift shop where she worked as a volunteer. Then she abruptly disappeared from Center life until her obituary appeared in the newspaper. Later, Center people learned that Lilian had chosen to die by refusing food and water. With enhanced life expectancy and advanced medical care, living in a hopeless limbo between life and death has become a distinct possibility. Both Adrian and Lilian avoided such a fate through their determination to take charge of their own deaths. They were members of the Hemlock Society, an organization that advocated for the right to die. Though they joined the group separately, they sometimes talked about dying with dignity when they saw each other at the Senior Center. The medically induced limbo between life and death is also a concern for Japanese elders. One popular practice to deal with this issue is to visit pokkuri temples to pray for a quick, painless death. A common phrase, pinpin korori, expresses a similar sentiment; the first word denotes good health and the second half, like pokkuri, a sudden demise. When the passage to death is long, as in the case of terminal illness, the Japanese wish for songenshi, or death with dignity.2 In recent years, some Japanese write an endingu nōto, or ending note, to express their end-­of-­life wishes (e.g., do not resuscitate, do not tube-­feed),

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give funeral instructions, and leave practical information (e.g., a list of financial assets, the location of important documents). But specifying their wishes in an ending note does not guarantee that Japanese elders will take charge of their deaths as Adrian and Lilian did. In contemporary Japan, the family still plays a significant role in eldercare as well as in death and dying. Frequently, terminally ill Japanese are not informed of their true diagnoses. While infōmudo konsento, or informed consent, has become a well-­known term, disclosure of terminal illness to the patient is “controversial” (Long 2005, 82) and is not routine practice in Japan. This may result from “the cultural assumption that truth telling is dangerous and can lead to the patient’s rapid demise due to ‘shock’ and loss of hope” (75). Therefore, both of my parents died of cancer—­my father in 1992 and my mother in 2013—­without knowing the true nature of their illnesses. Neither did the famous actor and singer Yūjirō Ishihara, who succumbed to cancer in 1987. Cancer diagnosis was withheld even from Emperor Hirohito, who stayed on the throne from 1926 until his death in 1989 (Asahi Shimbun 2014e). To protect patients from the shock of approaching death and loss of hope, Japanese doctors give the cancer diagnosis to their adult children or spouses. In the case of my father, the true diagnosis was given to my mother and, in the case of my mother, to my sister and me. It was the actor’s wife and the emperor’s eldest son, the crown prince, to whom doctors disclosed their diagnoses. In recent years, serious or terminally ill patients are increasingly told the true nature of their illness.3 But doctors often talk to the family members first to ask for their opinions about the appropriateness of informing the patient. In 2017, when my brother-­in-­law had cancer, his doctor gave him the diagnosis only after consulting with my sister. Frequently, the family’s consent is required when elders wish to donate their organs and remains in Japan. These practices indicate that the family, not the individual, continues to be the smallest social unit in Japan even though the traditional three-­generation household has virtually disappeared and the single-­person kind has become the modal family of Japan.

The New Reality of Aging While my initial informants were journeying to death or had died, “the new reality of aging” ( Jenkins 2016) was emerging. “Older is the new normal,” declared Jo Ann Jenkins, the CEO of AARP, in 2016. To challenge the persistent negative stereotypes of old age, she aimed at opening readers’ eyes to this “new reality” in twenty-­first-­century America (15). Over my thirty years of studying senescence and forty years of living in the United States, I have noticed five key changes worthy of exploration here that have had significant

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impacts on older Americans’ lives, each by itself and in close connection with the others: (1) demographic shifts, (2) the successful aging paradigm, (3) technology, (4) consumerism, and (5) globalization. On one important aspect of the new reality of aging, Jenkins writes, “People today live longer and live better than ever before” (2016, 11). Americans’ average life expectancy dramatically increased from 47 in 1900 (13) to 76.5 for men and 81.2 for women in 2015.4 In the past, the demographic shape of the population was a pyramid-­like triangle with the young in a larger number at the bottom and the old in a smaller number at the top, but “now the triangle has become a rectangle and is even beginning to invert, with more people at the top than at the bottom” (15).5 This inversion will persist as baby boomers’ entry into senescence continues, leading to Jenkins’s statement that “older is the new normal” (15). The normalcy of being older may contribute to the prevalence of the successful aging discourse in gerontological studies and policy making, as well as among many older Americans, by calling for continuous activity, health, and independence with little attention paid to age-­related declines (e.g., Katz 2000; Lamb 2014; Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin, 2017). My interlocutors during my initial fieldwork in the late 1980s wished for health so that they could continue to lead independent lives. But compared with older Americans of succeeding generations, most of them did not pay as much attention to diet and did not do as much exercise. At that time, Lake District Senior Center offered only three exercise classes. Today, many exercise classes and various health-­ enhancing programs constitute the core of elders’ activities at the Center. Technology has had significant influences—­both positive and negative—­ on the new reality of aging (Prendergast and Garattini 2015). During my initial fieldwork, most Americans lived without personal computers and email.6 Smartphones and social media did not even exist.7 If my original informants were alive today, what would their reactions be when they found that simple, mundane actions—­starting a car, turning on a television set, and making phone calls or payments—­would involve strikingly different steps from those they had been familiar with? An elderly writer to an advice column complained, “I can no longer take this digital world.  .  .  . I cannot get an ice cube from my new refrigerator. It’s like an algebra problem. I used to get ice cubes from my old refrigerator by opening the freezer door and grabbing the ice cube tray. New refrigerators do not come equipped with ice cube trays. My old TV set used to turn on with the click on a single button on the remote. My new TV requires three or four clicks before the picture turns on” (Lane 2017a). Similarly, communicating by phone is not as simple as it used to be. When elders call banks, utility companies, hospitals, and pharmacies, they hear a recorded message that gives instruction on how to get the information they

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need or reach a real person. This is hard for hearing-­impaired elders to navigate. In addition, paying for on-­street parking is more complex than dropping coins in a parking meter. After parking a car, people need to find a pay station a little distance away. Making a payment requires their license plate number. The new machine accepts bills and credit cards, eliminating the need for many coins; however, when Adele, an octogenarian, used the new system for the first time by putting a ten-­dollar bill into the slot to park for a short time, she learned that these machines do not produce change. The ubiquitous presence of computers demands that elders learn to use them. For instance, older Americans have to go online to buy Treasury bonds for their grandchildren. They can no longer buy them at banks because savings bonds went paperless in 2012. But elders on a tight budget who are unable to keep up with new technology suffer not only inconvenience but also a sense of alienation and lack of competence and agency. Older people are also frequent victims of “tech scams” (Shadel 2017). Furthermore, social media generates a new concern: “digital ownership” after death (Moncur 2015, 257). Though some people find it “creepy,” the continuous display of the deceased’s account on Facebook is “the largest site of virtual memorials” with 30 million sites (out of 1 billion) having outlived their owners (Petrow 2014). While technology may create some problems, it allows elders not only to stay in touch with family members and friends but also to have access to an enormous amount of information. This helps mitigate elders’ isolation. Furthermore, high-­tech products such as robots help eldercare (Prendergast and Garattini 2015). Many seniors also find computer skills necessary and convenient and become “technogenarian[s], technology savvy elder[s]” (Loe 2017, 223), just like the elders of an earlier generation who mastered driving the Model T Ford. The internet also has impacted some American values. Social networking may have already altered the meaning of privacy, a treasured value that some Americans wish to maintain even when they are dying. Facebook circulates personal information among strangers. Crowdfunding allows individuals to solicit donations from virtual strangers for pursuing personal projects, such as making music CDs or raising legal fees or the cost of funerals. The site gofundme​.com has more than 125,000 memorial campaigns and raises over $330 million in funds each year.8 Undoubtedly, the internet occupies a vital part of the new reality of aging. Rampant consumerism is also an integral part of this. Numerous goods and services in the consumer market provide elders with new opportunities and choices that were not available in the past. To remain healthy, active, and engaged, they can buy a variety of health-­promoting items (e.g., medicines, supplements, health foods, and exercise machines), educational materials and opportunities (e.g., books, CDs, and classes for older adults), tickets for

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leisure activities (e.g., trips, theater outings, sports), games, and housing and services for seniors.9 Consumerism enhances elders’ visibility and influence because they represent a huge pool of potential buyers. According to Jenkins, the “longevity economy” consists of 106  million people age fifty and older and “account[s] for over $7.1 trillion in annual economic activity.” With the continuous entry of baby boomers into this market, that amount is projected to increase to over $13.5 trillion by 2032 (2016, 25). Today’s consumerism reaches far beyond the area of one’s residence to embrace the entire nation and even the whole globe. Older Americans’ diets include a variety of ethnic foods. Restaurants in rural Winston County serve Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican, Greek, French, Italian, and Ethiopian food. The majority of their customers are Americans. Some elders learn to cook these “exotic” cuisines. The repertoire of Annett, an octogenarian former science librarian, included Thai coconut soup and some Chinese dishes. This has been a tremendous transformation over the previous three decades. When I first moved to upstate New York in 1980, no stores sold cilantro, which I had learned to enjoy in San Diego, where Mexican food was popular. While writing my dissertation, I offered a course on Japan at Lake District Senior Center. When we cooked Japanese food together, elders in my class learned that tofu meant “bean curds” before eating it for the first time in their lives. Today, tofu is sold at every local supermarket. Trips abroad are also common among retirees. Aside from the usual popular tourist destinations, a few elders I met in my follow-­up research had visited Antarctica and a couple had spent a night in a Mongolian ger.10 Some even moved to a foreign country after retirement.11 One widow chose to spend the last phase of her life in Bangkok where her son and his family lived. A retired army captain, a single man, moved to Khon Kaen in northeastern Thailand, where he had been stationed during the Vietnam War. In addition to their familiarity with Thailand, three major reasons contributed to their decisions: (1) the low cost of living, (2) good affordable medical care with doctors who spoke fluent English, and (3) a “retirement visa” issued for foreigners. To respond to the popularity of retirement abroad, much information has become available in print and online.12 In the twenty-­first century, the internet, globalization, and the commodification of services for retirees have “de-­exoticized” a foreign country and transformed it into the last abode for some older Americans. Like their counterparts in America, Japanese elders also face the new reality of aging. In my childhood in Japan, I often heard jinsei gojūnen, or “fifty years of life.” Today, this term is replaced by jinsei 100 nen, or “100  years of life.” Japanese are among the longest-­living people in the world, with an average life expectancy of 80.75 for men and of 86.99 for women as of 2015 (Asahi Shimbun 2017a). Yet the mandatory retirement age remains 60 at most workplaces.

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Coupled with the virtual collapse of the traditional mechanism of children as “social security” and shōshi kōreika, or the combined low birth rate and aging population, securing financial resources for a long retirement and dealing with declining health and self-­sufficiency have become major social issues and personal concerns. Be that as it may, Japanese elders are also an important target in the consumer market. Wigs and toupees for both men and women are frequently advertised on television and in newspapers. Though both American and Japanese elders want to look young, the highly commercialized Japanese longevity market tends to focus more on medicine and supplements to deal with age-related health issues (e.g., aches and pains, frequent urination) and care goods (e.g., walkers, wheelchairs, portable toilets). Companies such as Panasonic have joined this market and make portable toilets and hospital beds for home use. A few months before my mother’s death, when a hospital bed and a portable toilet were delivered to her house, a Panasonic sales representative came as well. He helped us order care goods (e.g., bedsheets and a cleaning agent for the toilet) and file long-­term care insurance claims. The Japanese high-­tech care industry was a $1.08 billion market in 2006 and continues to grow. Available goods include “wheelchairs with voice recognition and a robotic-­arm with a spoon and fork that can be operated with the user’s chin” ( Jenike and Traphagan 2009, 254). Eldercare robots “can ensure and cultivate” “anshin (comfort)” for elders and their families (Robertson 2018b, 144).13 Globalization manifests in many facets of older Japanese’ lives. Like Americans, their taste in food has expanded to include many foreign dishes. For the last few years of her life, my mother developed a taste for Thai food and willingly ate cilantro, which due to its smell, most Japanese would not touch when I lived in Thailand in the mid-­1980s. Not only are there many foreign residents in Japan, but some eldercare workers are foreigners from other Asian countries (Świtek 2016). Trips abroad are also common among retirees.14 Some Japanese retirees spend a part of the year in Hawaii, Australia, Southeast Asia, or elsewhere; others make a foreign country their postretirement home (Ono 2015). Still others move to the countries where their adult children work.

Changes in the Culture of Aging After my eighteen-­month-­long fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center in 1987–­1988, I spent four months doing archival research at the local historical society and libraries to learn the history of Lake District Senior Center and other issues regarding old age in the region’s past. Two discoveries taught me that the culture of aging in American society had transformed considerably from the early twentieth century to the 1980s.

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The first discovery was the scarcity of services for older adults before the 1960s. Until the early 1970s, Winston County had only two senior housing facilities: the poor house and the old ladies home for destitute elders. Thus people bent the norm of intergenerational autonomy and cared for their frail elderly relatives at home to avoid the shame of having them in an institution. When Lake District Senior Center was established in 1952, so few senior centers existed in the nation (Krout 1989) that most Americans did not know what a senior center was. The second discovery was people’s strong resistance to extrafamilial assistance for older Americans. When Social Security was instituted in 1935, some Americans regarded it as unsolicited welfare or governmental intervention with private citizens’ lives. Similar reactions occurred in 1972 when New York State announced the opening of the Office for Aging in Winston County. People at Lake District Senior Center strongly opposed it because their community already had the Senior Center to deal with aging issues. Resistance to public assistance continued even after three legislations in 1965—­the Older Americans Act, the Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act, and the Housing and Urban Development Act—­made public money available to launch a variety of programs for senior citizens. Since then, facilities, services, and programs for senior citizens in Winston County—­and in American society—­have greatly expanded, and people’s attitudes toward extrafamilial eldercare have changed. In addition to many more senior apartments, Winston County today has a variety of other types of housing to accommodate elder’s changing needs as their infirmity worsens: a life­ care retirement community, assisted living facilities, housing for elders with Alzheimer’s disease, and nursing homes. For elders who remain in their own homes, “a variety of market-­based forms of long-­term care” have become available (Buch 2018, 4). A Granny Pod,15 a small house built in an adult child’s backyard or that of another existing house, and adult day care centers provide additional options. Senior discount programs are firmly established, and most older Americans do not hesitate to take advantage of them. Many factors caused these changes. Aging problems have become more salient because more people live longer and thus require assistance. Women’s participation in the workforce means they are less available to look after elderly relatives. The dispersal of the family also has made eldercare by next of kin more challenging. Passing of aging-­related legislation during the Johnson administration, as well as activism for seniors’ rights and against ageism (e.g., through AARP and the Gray Panthers), are other contributors that have led to the establishment of extrafamilial eldercare systems. These changes in American society have transformed extrafamilial eldercare from something shameful to an entitlement or a socially acceptable option. In short, the culture of aging

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has changed. While multiple factors were involved in this change, people played an essential role in causing it. A similar shift has been occurring in Japan. With drastically diminished intergenerational coresidence, more women in employment, and an increasing number of elders living longer with disability, chronic illness, and/or dementia, taking care of them often exceeds their families’ abilities and resources. Furthermore, “relationless” Japanese are on the rise. These people are cut off from kin, communal, and occupational ties and so have no one to look after them in senescence and death (Allison 2013). To respond to these changes, a “paradigmatic change”16 occurred in 2000 with the inception of Japan’s national long-­term care insurance. It is a mandatory social insurance program that endorses the public sector’s responsibility of providing anyone age sixty-­five and over with long-­term care for age-­related illnesses and limitations.17 A variety of senior housing has also become available (see chapter 4). Those who remain at home can receive an array of services, such as meal delivery, bathing service, home visits by helpers and nurses, access to adult day care centers, and short stays at old people’s homes. In the last several years of her life, my mother had lunch delivered twice a week to ease my sister’s workload. While these changes in the culture of aging in America and Japan show the malleability of culture, it seems that core values—­such as independence, egalitarianism, and individual choice in America and interdependence, hierarchy, and giri (reciprocal obligation) in Japan—­continue to govern people’s lives. This is because even when people’s behaviors are radically changed, “the cultural framework of meaning” tends to remain relatively unaltered (Geertz 1973, 169; italics added). Hence on close inspection, seemingly ad hoc adaptations to changing situations are made with “regulated improvisation[s]” (Bourdieu 1977, 11). A good example of this is the support networks among Senior Center participants, who depended on their peers to receive help in ways that did not violate the “national ethic of self-­reliance” (Cohen 1998, 63). “Regulated improvisation” (Bourdieu 1977, 11) is also apparent in the “new” concept of a three-­generation family in contemporary Japan. Such a family is based on interdependence between parents and children and has the same form as the traditional Japanese family in which parent(s) reside with one of their adult children and his or her family. But many multiple-­generation families today have adult children (e.g., a younger son, a divorced daughter) who, according to the descent rule of male primogeniture,18 do not have the designated posts in the traditional family as the eldest son and his family do. Moreover, coresidence does not start upon the child’s marriage but normally is delayed until parents grow old or one of them dies. A good example of this is my mother’s coresidence with my sister’s family after my father’s death.

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Anne Allison observes some changes in the Japanese value of interdepen­ dence: “Increasingly, Japanese themselves are choosing to limit (or eliminate) their dependency on others by living alone (currently one-­third of the population) and embracing an ethos of self-­responsibility (jiko-­sekinin). Self-­ reliance, self-­ independence, self-­ sustainability—­ selfness itself is the new credo” (2013, 152).19 As if reflecting this shift from interdependence to self-­ reliance and the large increase of the single-­person households, kodoku, or loneliness/solitude, has become a Japanese preoccupation. Many books have been published emphasizing the positive sides of kodoku.20 At the same time, however, kodoku is one of the three major concerns of old age among the Japanese that are known as three K’s: kane (money), kenkō (health), and kodoku. Various changes in contemporary Japan encourage older Japanese to be self-­ reliant and live alone—­or leave them no other choice. Be that as it may, elders’ self-­reliance also indicates their efforts to comply with “one of the most sacred cultural codes” (Lebra 1984, 46), not to burden others (meiwaku o kakenai). Thus to avoid meiwaku is the number-­one reason elderly Japanese choose to live alone “often at great risk to themselves” (Allison 2013, 125). Therefore, self-­ reliance, which may seem a departure from the value of interdependence, may be another example of “regulated improvisation” (Bourdieu 1977, 11) to adapt to the rapidly changing social climate. Does the persistence of these core cultural values in America and Japan mean that they do not ever change? In my opinion, these core values are in fact subject to change, but this happens so gradually that it is unlikely for us to see Americans coming to cherish interdependence over independence in the foreseeable future. However, it is vital to remember that core cultural values are constantly negotiated and reinterpreted by people. As a result, the same thing may start having different meanings with the passage of time. We have noted, for example, that extrafamilial eldercare, which includes today living in senior housing as well as receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits from the government, have ceased to threaten older Americans’ sense of autonomy.

American Views of Old Age and Elders’ Responses While notable changes have occurred in both the reality and the culture of aging, Americans’ negative views of senescence persist, together with their denial and fear of age-­associated changes (Applewhite 2016; Gullette 2004; Jacoby 2011; Jenkins 2016, Lamb 2014, 2017; Samuel 2017).21 Underlying these phenomena is the belief that aging is a disease that needs to be cured and age-­ related declines should be prevented or masked (Samuel 2017). Coupled with another American belief, that good health is “the moral duty of all individuals” (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 7), the declines in senescence become a shame or an embarrassment for older Americans.

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Hence the primary research focus has been to promote elders’ health, activity, and independence rather than dealing with age-­related declines and death, even though more Americans live longer and therefore are more likely to experience infirmity and disability (Cosco, Stephan, and Brayne 2013). As discussed previously, since the 1980s, the dominant paradigm in gerontological studies has been successful aging (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 1), which “[enacts] cultural norms of persons as healthy, active, independent, and long-­living subjects” (Lamb 2014, 50). Therefore, rather than addressing the changes that occur along the course of human life, the successful aging discourse advocates for “permanent personhood” (Lamb 2014) and encourages Americans’ reluctance to accept death as an integral part of life. The commercialization of old age also promotes the denial of aging by bolstering a strong preoccupation with youthful body imagery and its maintenance (Sokolovsky 1997). Like policy makers and gerontologists, older Americans, including elders at Lake District Senior Center, find the successful aging discourse enticing because they wish to maintain a healthy, active, and independent life. With the premise that “you can be the crafter of your own successful aging—­through diet, exercise, productive activities, attitude, self-­control, and choice” (Lamb, Robbins-­Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 2; italics in original), the successful aging discourse consecrates independence and individual choice, two goals my informants endeavored to achieve. Given that the oldest of the elderly segment of the population is rapidly growing and healthy, active, and independent senescence is becoming more unrealistic, critical reconsiderations of the successful aging paradigm have appeared (e.g., Lamb 2014, 2017). Yet the popularity of this idealized image does not seem to be waning. At the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, “‘successful aging’ [was] a catchphrase that [was] repeated regularly by speakers” (Loe 2017, 226). This is not surprising because successful aging brings some political gains. For instance, the neoliberal ideals of self-­responsibility underlying this paradigm contribute to reducing the health-­care costs of elders (Lamb, Robbins-­ Ruszkowski, and Corwin 2017, 7). Social and physical activity, essential for successful aging, also offer “a panacea for the political woes of the declining welfare state and its management of so-­called risky populations” (Katz 2000, 147). With the elderly population rapidly increasing as baby boomers grow older, the successful aging concept has become a “public policy imperative” (Pruchno 2015, 3). It seems that “individualization” (Beck 1992) of senescence is occurring, making each elder responsible for his or her own aging. Good health, social engagement, and independence were greatly desired by elders at Lake District Senior Center. But people at the Center also found that the successful aging model was unrealistic and hard to follow. For one thing, in senescence, major changes such as moving, serious illnesses, and deaths occur

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often and sometimes unexpectedly. These events drastically transform elders’ lives, including for those who have hitherto been healthy, active, and independent. Diane’s seemingly minor fall at the Senior Center broke her femur, which abruptly ended her independent life at home, as she became a wheel­­chair-­ bound nursing home resident. Moreover, the normal course of aging involves declining health, lower activity levels, and diminishing self-­sufficiency. During my long-­term research, I have witnessed many Center people go through these changes before their deaths. But according to the successful aging paradigm, these changes denote a failure. Does this mean that a good old age is possible only for a small number of incredibly lucky people who can somehow dodge the normal signs of aging until their deaths? My research at Lake District Senior Center shows that this is not the case. In general, elders who accepted the changes and limitations in senescence, as well as their need for assistance, tended to manage their problems and enjoy life. As mentioned earlier, Diane and Dorothy, two centenarian nursing home residents, demonstrated that disability in old age did not necessarily mean unsuccessful aging. Similarly, neither ninety-­year-­old John nor ninety-­three-­year-­old Kathryn denied their age-­associated changes and limitations, but like Diane and Dorothy, these nonagenarians appreciated what they still had rather than lamenting what they had lost. Meika Loe makes a similar observation in her study of people age eighty-­ five and older in America. Her informants not only accepted their physical deteriorations—­“stiff joints, balance issues, decreased energy, vision problems, and general weakness”—­but also “actively negotiate[d]” with these manifestation of old age (2017, 224). One of them regarded her weak knees as “just another stage of life and learning,” and when the condition worsened and increased her risk of falling, she began to rely on various mobility devices for support (224). Similarly, one centenarian “work[ed] toward achieving personal comfort and continuity” (219) despite her disability, pain, and lack of mobility. She claimed, “It is what it is, and that’s the story” (224). In other words, these older Americans in Loe’s study and my own have learned the importance of “to be” rather than “to do.” Their acceptance of “to be” does not mean that they sat idly, waiting for death, but that they accommodated their limitations and found ways to enjoy their declining years as much as possible. These elders demonstrated a successful adaptation to senescence because as people advanced into their eighties, nineties, and beyond, they had “more time for being and less ability to do than ever before” (Sarton 1994, 11).

From Lake District Senior Center to Lifelong In the past three decades, Lake District Senior Center has gone through many changes that enabled the Center to keep “rebranding” itself (Weil 2014) and

Changes and Continuities over Thirty Years of Research   •  167

continue its mission without becoming outmoded.22 As noted in chapter 1, the move to a new location with more space in 1997 led to the expansion and the diversification of its programs, such as adding computer classes and a wide range of academic teaching. In 2004, Lake District Senior Center rebranded itself again by changing its name to an age-­neutral Lifelong.23 This terminated the ongoing debate over removing senior from its name, reflecting the changing needs of older Americans and their unchanged reluctance to accept aging. It also signified the undeniable influence of the successful aging discourse on old age in contemporary America. This is also clearly manifested in Center programs and elders’ activities. For instance, the number of exercise classes and their participants have largely increased since the early days of my research in the late 1980s, as regular exercise is at the core of the successful aging paradigm. One class name, “Stay Active and Independent for Life,” unambiguously expressed that. Similarly, creating and taking charge of one’s own senescence is the aim of the Center’s “Aging Master Program,” a two-­week course that covers a wide range of topics: exercise, diet, medication management, fall prevention, financial fitness, advance planning, healthy relationships, community engagement, and so on. While exercise classes and academic classes came to occupy a significant part of Center programs, the popularity of handcraft classes diminished. Quilting, doll-­making, and sewing classes, which were well attended during my initial fieldwork, no longer existed. The clay class continued, but it was categorized as a creative activity, similar to the watercolor class and the senior theater troupe. The knitting class Diane had taught for many years was replaced by “Knitting Circle,” which was listed as one of the social groups, together with two book clubs, a mah-­jongg group, a chess club, a vegan dish-to-pass gathering, and other interests. Support groups also became available for patients, family members, and friends affected by Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and bipolar disorder. These changes in Center programs may suggest the altered self-image of elders in twenty-first-century America. They may also imply the attempt to reform the negative image of older people prevalent in both the past and the present. Knitting and chatting with other elders in “Knitting Circle” is far different from the stereotyped elderly woman in the nineteenth-­century rhyme who is “chained to her chair by weight of years [and] listless knits till death appears.” Likewise, elders who regularly exercise and attend classes for continuing education depart from the image of a man who “at seventy . . . dog-­like loves at home to dwell” (Achenbaum and Kusnerz 1982, 71; see figures 6 and 7 in chapter 6). Furthermore, support groups reflect not only people’s changing needs in contemporary society but also the awareness of and accommodation for such needs. In short, the name change and diversification of programs at

FIG. 8.   Celebrating the sixty-­fifth anniversary of Lake District Senior Center (photo by

William C. Ghiorse)

Changes and Continuities over Thirty Years of Research   •  169

Lake District Senior Center project the image of elders who remain healthy, active, creative, and socially engaged. Throughout all this rebranding, two constants remained: the Center’s efforts to secure financial resources and its mission of enhancing elders’ lives. Lake District Senior Center acquires one-­third of its income from a variety of outside sources. But procuring such funds has never been easy and is harder than ever today. Therefore, the Center has streamlined their operations as much as feasible by reducing staff and using volunteers wherever possible. Also important is fundraising from donations, membership dues,24 and special events such as annual gala celebrations. Participation in Center activities, which was free during my initial fieldwork, requires a small fee.25 In 2016, the Center sold one of the two buildings it owned to obtain necessary cash and increase its endowment. As a result, the gift shop was closed after sixty years of operation to yield space for an office. Some of these changes—­charging fees for activities, for instance—­were the outcome of hard decisions. But they allowed Lake District Senior Center to continue its mission of enhancing the lives of older people. In 2017, the Center celebrated its sixty-fifth anniversary (see figure 8). Although its long history is dotted with many changes and woes, it has remained a quintessential American voluntary association, in the Tocquevillian sense, by accommodating social needs that are not met by public sectors (Tocqueville 1945).

Conclusion Challenges and Hopes in the New Frontier of Aging Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor who unified China in 221 BCE, is known not only for his mammoth mausoleum guarded by an army of terracotta soldiers but also for his fruitless search for a secret elixir for immortality. A few thousand years later, even though we are well aware of the futility of the ancient emperor’s efforts, we still wish for successful aging and seek “a permanent personhood” (Lamb 2014, 44). Andy Rooney1 aptly summarizes the paradox of a long life: “The idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone” (quoted in Jenkins 2016, 1). Though aging has always been an integral part of the human experience, with today’s extended longevity, this paradox has become a reality for many Americans. Nevertheless, most younger Americans are not familiar with the reality of senescence due to the relative invisibility of older people and the general infrequency of intergenerational interactions in American society. Young children’s innocent ignorance of old age is apparent in questions such as “Grandma, does your wrinkle hurt?” and “How do you get old, Granny?” In addition, the view of old age as the antithesis of cultural ideals creates negative stereotypes, giving younger Americans little incentive to learn about aging and even causing them to dread it. Old age in America is a largely unknown terrain even for elders themselves. In Coming into Eighty, May Sarton writes, “I am a foreigner in the land of old age and have tried to learn its language” (1994, 11).

170

Conclusion  •  171

In 1987, I started my fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center with two major, closely intertwined questions on aging in America. The first was ethnographic. My exposure to Americans’ strongly negative view of old age made me wonder how older Americans actually lived in their later years and how they dealt with the gap between the “ought” (e.g., independence) and the “is” (e.g., diminishing self-­sufficiency) of old age. The second question was theoretical. I considered the role that culture played in older Americans’ lives and their responses to culture in order to refute two suggested solutions of aging problems that seem to contradict each other: (1) to deal with senescence outside the cultural realm and (2) to follow the successful aging discourse. The first approach involves disengagement (Cumming and Henry 1961), deculturation (Anderson 1972), and segregation of elders, while the second strives for maintaining American ideals by encouraging individuals to remain healthy, active, and independent as a means to eradicate “old” age itself.

Research Discoveries: Living Old Age and Playing with Cultural Recipes Three things struck me as most outstanding during my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988. First, there was a remarkable difference between the actual experiences of Senior Center participants and the negative stereotypes of old age prevailing in American society. I was relieved to observe that, despite the considerable challenges of aging, their lives were far from the dismal picture of senescence I had learned from younger Americans and some of the literature. Second, I was impressed by Center participants’ ingenuity in adopting various strategies to negotiate the gap between the “is” and the “ought” of old age. While some of their strategies emerged spontaneously, unplanned, many others were the results of deliberate decisions. In adopting these strategies, many elders did not deny their declines and limitations by saying, “You can’t be a sissy to be old” or “I’m a tough old bird!” I found such attitudes remarkable in a culture that would fear and deny aging and demand “permanent personhood” (Lamb 2014) via good health, activities, and independence. Third, I was captivated by Center participants’ vigorous efforts to maintain their independence, even when their advanced age made it hard to achieve this cherished American value. By the time I started my fieldwork, I had been living in America for a decade. Despite my familiarity with dominant American values and keen awareness of how they differed from those in Japan, elders’ quest for independence still made a powerful impression on me. The loss of an occupational role, identity, and community after retirement often leads to social isolation, loneliness, and a sense of worthlessness. A good remedy is getting integrated into new social groups. This was one of the

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reasons many people went to Lake District Senior Center. At the Center, they met new people, had fun together, learned something new, received recognition, and discovered hitherto unknown talents or unseen meanings of life. Many also found a second “career” through leisure activities, volunteer work, or paid part-­time or even full-­time employment. Undoubtedly, going to the Center, as many Center people fondly called it, kept them active and socially engaged, which they regarded as important elements for a good old age. Mutual support was phenomenal among Center participants because it offered them a viable means for maintaining autonomy despite diminishing self-­sufficiency. The most important rule of peer support was to “make a return” (Mauss 1967) so that they could remain equal partners. To achieve this goal, Center people made their exchanges “affordable” by complementing each other’s missing resources and expanding the range of acceptable “currencies.” Due to the lack of well-­defined cultural models for aging in America, a broad range of variations existed in Center people’s planning for retirement, peer relationships, ties with the family, housing choices, and living arrangements. Similarly, the way they dealt with the “tyranny of the clock” (Smith 1961a) varied widely. Yet behind these variations lie their shared aspirations to maintain independence, choice, freedom, and control. In other words, Center people were guided by American culture and made efforts to conform to its norms and ideals. Thus my research invalidated the proposition of some previous studies, which argued for solving aging problems outside the realm of American culture. Instead, it confirmed that older Americans were simultaneously guided and constrained by their culture. My study also revealed a flaw in the successful aging paradigm that imposed certain cultural ideals on elders without taking inevitable declines and death into consideration. Moreover, my research shed light on the complexity of cultural systems and culture-­human relationships. While culture may show rigidity, coherence, clarity, constraint, and continuity, it is also imbued with contradictions, inconsistencies, ambiguities, multiplicity, flexibility, and changes. In other words, culture is not “unvarying rules” but rather “flexibly adaptive understanding” (Strauss and Quinn 1997, 45). Hence the apotheosis of independence in American culture does not preclude its accommodation of dependence. In older Americans’ support networks, we have seen how egalitarianism or being an equal partner in exchange made the cultural taboo of dependence acceptable as a means of achieving the cultural ideal of independence. In this way, the very culture that detests dependence offers guidance on how to be dependent. Meika Loe also observed, in her study of thirty older Americans between 85 and 102, that “even the most stalwart independents emphasize the benefits of embracing an amalgam of autonomy and dependency” (2011, 129). Opposed though independence and dependence may appear as ideal

Conclusion  •  173

and taboo, respectively, they are not mutually exclusive. Instead, these values “interpenetrate within the same culture” (Lamb 2000, 40). I have learned that (1) not having well-­defined cultural models, as in the case of senescence in America, does not indicate the absence of cultural guidance, and (2) no matter how rigid the culture may seem, there is room for individual negotiation. This is because culture, “flexibly adaptive understanding” (Strauss and Quinn 1997, 45), is not just a “recipe” people blindly follow but something that provides both the “recipe” and a wide range of knowledge that enables people to follow it (Geertz 1973). While the recipe and the knowledge, as well as the “dish” they aim to create, may vary cross-­culturally, this dual nature of culture requires people, regardless of their particular cultural setting, to do more than just following the recipe to make the dish. Whether consciously or unconsciously, people need to acquire a body of knowledge and decide on what knowledge is most appropriate for each specific situation they are in. In addition, because culture does not always offer an explicit, detailed recipe (as in the case of how American culture treats old age), making the dish (a good old age) inevitably requires people’s active—­albeit unconscious—­involvement. Furthermore, culture may offer more than one recipe to make the same dish—­there may be multiple ways to conform to the same cultural ideal. Two good examples of this are the random and varied ways that older Americans form support networks and choose postretirement housing in order to prolong their independence. The process of making the dish is complicated even further by the fact that both acquisition and application of the relevant knowledge are subject to myriad other variables: social, economic, political, historical, demographic, geographical, environmental, psychological, physical/ biological, and personal.2 This means that the impact of culture is not total but partial (D’Andrade 2000). Hence humans are not automatons who passively accept what cultural norms and ideals dictate (Shweder 2001, 438). Rather, people actively interact with their cultural ideals despite often taking their own culture for granted and not being aware of it. The complexity of the cultural system demands people’s active and subjective, albeit unconscious, interpretation of it and makes their negotiation with culture possible or even necessary. As a result, choices are available to resist potentially oppressive or rigid cultural expectations. People may substitute some of the “ingredients” and make a considerably different dish from the original recipe. They may choose one recipe over others or may even decide not to make the dish at all (Tsuji 2006a). At Lake District Senior Center, independence, freedom of choice, and egalitarian exchange of mutual dependence are on the participants’ plates. But at this stage of life, their plates very seldom carry competitiveness and achievement-­orientedness, two other important values in American culture. People are indeed “canny consumers

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of culture” (Matthews 1996, 211) and respond to it in a rich variety of ways. Hostile though their culture may appear to aging, as “canny consumers of culture,” the participants of Lake District Senior Center negotiated the gap between the “ought” and the “is” rather than helplessly falling into it. Paradoxically, it was the grit and resourcefulness of their culture that guided them in their negotiations.3

Culture, People, and Changes My study of aging in the United States over three decades also enabled me to witness that the culture of aging had changed over time and certain practices (e.g., extrafamilial eldercare) have come to have different meanings. Additionally, my research and long residence in America have revealed the malleability of culture-­people relationships. In the introduction, I compared culture to a chronic disease (Cerroni-­Long 1998, 155) because it is very hard to unlearn—­to get rid of—­one’s own culture. I experienced this myself living in America. Over the past four decades, I have grown accustomed to its lifestyle and have acquired the necessary knowledge to deal with the nitty-­gritty of everyday life and various bureaucratic requirements, such as filing U.S. income tax returns and handling financial and legal matters. I have also come to obtain deeper understandings of American cultural values and their differences from Japanese values. America has become my home, and I have become its citizen. Despite these facts, however, I continue to feel that culturally I am still deeply rooted in Japan. I find the undeniable influence of Japanese culture in my basic orientation to the world and my gut reactions to it. When I introduce myself in Japan, I often say, “I am still Japanese at heart.” Many of my Japanese friends who, like me, moved to the United States as adults in their twenties or thirties share this feeling, as well as some Western Europeans with similar experiences.4 Such a sentiment is expressed in the following waka (a thirty-­one-­syllable Japanese poem), written by a Japanese man who lives in the United States as a citizen: “When I visit Japan after my naturalization, my body ‘goes’ but my heart ‘returns’” (Ōtake 2018).5 Hence I oppose being called bicultural, though being labeled bilingual does not provoke the same objection. However, this experience of mine and others by no means indicates that the culture we internalize and use as guidance—­either consciously or unconsciously—­is unchanging. On the contrary, it does change (just as the bacteria and viruses that cause chronic diseases mutate) even though the pivotal part of culture (like the core genetic makeup of the disease-­causing microbes) may remain intact. People experience such cultural “mutation” during their lifetimes even within their own cultures. A good example of this is the shift from familial to extrafamilial eldercare in America in the last quarter of the twentieth century and more recently in Japan.

Conclusion  •  175

Cultural mutation also occurs to a person, like me, who grew up in one culture and moved to another as an adult. Three episodes of my own experience illustrate this point. When I married an American man who assumed all the responsibilities of providing meals (shopping, cooking, and cleaning), I had a tinge of feeling that he was invading the kitchen—­the women’s (i.e., my) territory according to Japanese tradition—­and depriving me of my role as the family cook. Japanese women of my generation and older were brought up to become ryōsai kenbo, or a good wife and wise mother. Though neither my mother nor I totally followed this cultural path because she worked as a full-­ time teacher and I pursued further study in America, I was incubated with and infected by Japanese norms about women’s roles and the gendered division of labor: men as breadwinners and women as caretakers of the home. My reaction to my husband’s daily meal preparation indicated that this “infection” was chronic and had stayed with me even after having lived in America for eight years prior to marriage. Shortly after marriage, however, this cultural bug from Japan mutated. With delicious food on the table every day, it was not hard to accept my husband’s role as a cook, and my feeling of territorial invasion and role deprivation quickly vanished. We established our nonconventional division of labor; he did food preparations, I did house cleaning and yard work,6 and we shared the remaining chores. In the second episode, the American cultural bug had a strong impact on the mutation of the Japanese one. In the summer of 2005, I taught a course in Japan for American students. At our lodging on our overnight field trip, I had a private bedroom but shared a bathroom7 with students and other instructors. I had no problems with the toilet because a locked booth gave me privacy. However, the Japanese custom of cobathing (S. Clark 1994), in which naked people (normally of the same sex except for young children) bathe together, presented a cultural hurdle I found hard to clear. I took a very quick shower and was relieved that nobody came into the bathroom before I was done.8 Japanese children grow up bathing with parents, grandparents, and other adults in their lives.9 Adults also bathe together at home (if the family bathroom is big enough) and go to the public bath or a hot spring resort to enjoy soaking in a large tub filled with warm water. Bath time is also an occasion to socialize by talking, singing, or washing each other’s back. Such interactions while bathing are called sukin shippu, a term that borrows from the English word “skin” and part of “friendship.” Sukin shippu is believed to enhance familiarity and closeness among bathers, especially between parents and children. Before moving to the United States, I took this custom for granted. Bathing with my girlfriends and strangers at hot spring resorts did not make me feel shy or anxious. Obviously, after moving to America, my Japanese cultural bug had mutated.

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A third episode in 2012 confirmed that. During my biannual visit to see my mother, I joined a small group of women to spend a night at a hotel in a nearby city, which offered a large bathroom—­popular at hot spring resorts—­where guests of the same sex bathed together. In the group was an old girlfriend of mine with whom I often traveled and cobathed in my youth. Though I enjoyed sharing a room with her and chatted the night away, I again found it hard to be naked in the presence of other bathers. So I excused myself from joining her and the other women and took a shower alone in our room. During my long residence in America, I must have been infected by the American cultural bug, as I had come to regard bathing as a strictly private act rather than a possibly social occasion. Interestingly, some Americans who visited Japan experience this in reverse: their cultural bug mutated such that they came to prefer Japanese-­style baths to showers and enjoy cobathing. When it comes to bathing, they are as Japanized as I am Americanized. The aim of writing about my reactions to my husband’s cooking and cobathing in Japan is to underscore that the metaphor of culture as a chronic disease (Cerroni-­Long 1998, 155) rejects neither the malleability of culture nor our adaptive, flexible, and modifiable responses both to our own culture and to others with which we have a prolonged contact. It is noteworthy that exposure to other cultures gives us a new lens through which to observe our own culture, enabling us to see what we have previously taken for granted. My three anecdotes also suggest that our cultural learning is continuous whether we live in our motherland or in a foreign country because life always involves adaptations to the world around us. Continuous cultural learning is particularly important in senescence, which is a dynamic period filled with life-­changing events, contrary to the stereotypical view of old age as uniformly static.

Pioneering in the New Frontier of Aging My research has shown that old age is not a purgatory for people who have nothing to do but to wait for death, nor is it a golden age for carefree retirees. Rather, it is the last phase of human life, with its own joys, sorrows, changes, challenges, and rewards. Today, it may last for more than a few decades.10 Older Americans experience, adjust to, and enact myriad changes on both personal and societal levels during this potentially long period of life. In the twenty-­first century, these changes occur rapidly and frequently, creating a new frontier where elders have to face more challenges, often without a clear map for guidance. Among these is the penetration of new technology in people’s daily lives, which simultaneously creates conveniences and problems. The dearth of financial resources,11 loneliness,12 and opioid addiction13 add further challenges. Death, “the supreme and final crisis of life” (Malinowski 1948, 47), presents yet another challenge. The good death my informants wished for (e.g.,

Conclusion  •  177

dying at home being surrounded by the family) has become harder because (1) the majority of Americans die in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices and (2) the dispersal of the family and the difficulty of predicting the exact time of death do not guarantee the presence of family members at one’s deathbed. The journey to death may also involve hardships that call for planning and difficult decisions, not to mention the suffering of the dying person. In the last days of my husband’s life in hospice, not only did his pain intensify, but he also lost his ability to swallow water, which nurses and I had given him by putting it into his mouth with a syringe. Because he could no longer speak, his doctor asked me to decide whether to intravenously hydrate him to prolong his life. Though my husband had designated me as his health care proxy and prepared a living will, the latter mentioned only no resuscitation, no tube-­feeding, and no artificial respiration. With hesitation and ambivalence, I made the painful decision to refuse intravenous hydration and asked his doctor to increase his morphine dosage to ease his pain. My husband died several days later. As modern medicine prolongs the lives of the terminally ill and the ominously frail (Kaufman 2015), the journey to death may also involve “living” in a vegetative state—­being attached to life-­sustaining machines. To prevent this situation, elders must prepare health care proxies and living wills. In contemporary America, a private citizen’s death has become a social, medical, legal, political, and existential issue (Kaufman 2005). On this contentious subject, George Will argues, “Medicine has advanced . . . to the center of American politics” (2017a). Nonetheless, death and dying are not integrated into American models of aging because the dominant successful aging discourse fails to consider the inevitability of decline and eventual death ( Jacoby 2011; Lamb 2014, 2017). This creates “deathless models of aging” (Cosco, Stephan, and Brayne 2013), making dying the last frontier for older Americans to explore. Death is also a shadow territory that is feared and hidden in American society even though it is the final destination of everyone (Becker 1973; Doughty 2014, ix). A less known fact that adds to the hardships of dying is that when all the treatments are exhausted to cure an illness or improve the symptoms, the terminally ill have to leave the hospital. This happened to my husband during his last hospitalization. Though he was still eating some food, his acute pain and declining mobility, as well as lack of vacancy at the local hospice, left only two choices: going to a nursing home or coming home and hiring around-­the-­ clock caregivers. His doctor recommended the latter. I started making the necessary arrangements to bring my husband home—­renting a hospital bed and contacting homecare agencies—­when a room became available at the hospice. He passed away at this hospice three and a half weeks later. Postmortem affairs generate additional difficulties. After my husband’s death, it took me much time and many phone calls to tackle the pile of medical

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bills and insurance statements. This was also a long-­term venture because some bills came more than six months after his death and insurance companies often demanded more medical information before they agreed to pay. One of his doctors did not send some required information to the insurance company despite my repeated requests, which generated multiple phone calls from a collection agency. I contacted our lawyer, and her letter explaining the situation terminated these calls. My sister and I had a totally different experience after my mother died. Thanks to the one-­payer national health insurance system in Japan, all we needed to do was to stop at the hospital cashier and make a small payment for the use of a private room and some incidentals.14 Paying medical bills for the deceased may also become a financial burden for the bereaved family when they have limited financial resources and the deceased did not have good supplementary insurance to his or her Medicare. After his wife died, Mr.  Billingham, my elderly friend from Indiana, had to continue paying her hospital bills in installments because her death occurred before Medicare became available in 1965. On my visit to Indiana in 1974, he happily showed me a letter from the hospital that said they would write off the remaining balance because of his faithful monthly payments of many years. Negative views of senescence, which continue to prevail in American society, also present a major challenge. Despite tremendous social change, old age remains the antithesis of American ideals. The dominance of the successful aging discourse, which ignores the transience of health and ability in the human life course, further widens a gap between the “ought” and the “is” of old age. Furthermore, increasing disparities and “social regression” (Will 1917b) have negative impacts on American elders, causing poverty and poor health. Like their American counterparts, elderly Japanese have trod into a new frontier of aging, where traditional family-­based eldercare is no longer viable and jiko sekinin, or self-­responsibility, plays a significant role. In 2015, more than 50 percent of older Japanese lived either alone or only with a spouse (Statistics Bureau 2018). This is a tremendous departure from the tradition that existed only a short while ago. In the suburban neighborhood where I lived until moving to America, older people normally coresided with the eldest son and his family, and none lived alone. Today, there are only a few multigeneration households. Although the national long-­term care insurance of 2000 marked a paradigmatic shift from family-­centered eldercare to the extrafamilial kind, the current system has many problems, such as an acute shortage of care workers and facilities. Moreover, many elders living on meager pensions forego the benefits of medical and long-­term care insurance because of their inability to make the copayments (T. Fujita 2015; NHK Special Report Team 2015, 70–­72).15 Recent changes in national long-­term care insurance have increased elders’ out-­of-­pocket expenses even further. The transition into extrafamilial eldercare in Japan has not been smooth.

Conclusion  •  179

Social isolation is another territory along the new frontier of aging for Japanese elders. The kin, communal, and occupational ties that once knitted people together are weakening today. Contemporary Japan is often called muen shakai, or a relationless society, in which many people have no ibasho, or place to belong to (Allison 2013; NHK “Muen Shakai Purojekuto” Shuzaihan 2010). Kodoku, or loneliness/solitude, has become both “the sad reality”16 and a preoccupation of many Japanese, including older people. The journey to death today is also unfamiliar for the Japanese. Living in the medically induced limbo between life and death presents one serious concern. Another is finding a place for those with terminal illnesses and acute frailty to live because, like in America, regular hospitals cannot keep patients whom they can no longer treat. Due to a serious shortage of nursing homes and hospices, these elders are placed in geriatric hospitals. During my mother’s last hospitalization, my sister and I were told to find such a hospital for her. We visited one and made appointments at a few more. Before choosing a hospital, however, my mother’s condition worsened and she died at the hospital where she had spent the last three weeks of her life. Unlike the American nursing home where my interlocutors, Diane and Dorothy, had spent many years before they died, geriatric hospitals in Japan do not provide long-­term residence. These hospitals allow elderly patients to stay only for three months at a time.17 Hence every three months, the patients need to move to another geriatric hospital. It is not unusual for some Japanese elders to move among multiple hospitals before they die. In the relationless society of contemporary Japan, kodokushi, or a solitary death, often happens even to those who have a family. In 2016, one occurred in the neighborhood where I grew up and where most families have lived for generations. The deceased was the head of a prominent family who lived alone after his children left home and his wife died. His death was not discovered until a neighbor noticed piled newspapers outside and notified one of his children. Some cases of kodokushi are only found after the stench of their decayed remains alarms people. Each year, over thirty-­two thousand Japanese die such a death (Allison 2013; NHK “Muen Shakai Purojekuto” Shuzaihan 2010). This phenomenon gave birth to a new industry that cleans up the aftermath and disposes of the deceased’s possessions (Takaesu 2010; Yoshida 2006). Facing the new frontier of aging, a Japanese retiree felicitously expresses his own experience in a poem: “The journey in senescence is a continuum of new undertakings. I keep taking tests without the help of textbooks” (Nishida 2011).18 The unconventional experiences of older Japanese today include care by robots (Robertson 2018a, 2018b) or by foreign workers whom the government recruits from Asian countries (e.g., the Philippines, Indonesia, and China) to ease the grave shortage of eldercare workers (Świtek 2016).

180  •  Through Japanese Eyes

Both older Americans and older Japanese live in a rapidly changing world and need to venture into a new frontier of aging. Reflecting cultural differences, the challenges they encounter may not necessarily be the same. But for both, growing old today involves traveling into a new territory without accurate maps.

Reasons for Hope Finding ways forward in the new frontier of aging may be a formidable task. But the picture is not as dreadful as it may seem. For instance, Barbara Myerhoff draws our attention to the positive side of “cultural vagueness” with regard to aging in multiple cultures. She argues, “If culture is conceived as a cognitive map, the inconsistencies and incomplete areas are not merely the unknowns; they are also contingencies—­invitations to culture making and innovation—­and in this light the relative normlessness surrounding the aged and old age holds promise as well as penalties” (1984, 308–­309). Sarah Lamb’s research on older members of the Indian diaspora supports this statement. She argues that even though elders are “emblematic of ‘tradition,’” they “are at the same time very often actively involved in fashioning new modes of life for themselves and their descendants” (2009, 17; italics in original). She criticizes the narrow focus on “youth as instigators of change” (17). Similarly, my own informants displayed their ability and willingness to “[fashion] new modes of life.” A good example of this is their plunge into the high-­tech world of computers, tablets, and smartphones. Elders’ “culture making” and “innovation” (Myerhoff 1984, 308) were observed in their efforts to prolong autonomy in the face of diminishing self-­sufficiency. Varied though their methods of cultural conformity may be, the common denominator is interdependence. I believe that finding—­and establishing—­culturally acceptable ways for being interdependent (i.e., being equal partners in exchange) provides another source for hope. My research, as well as that of other scholars (e.g., Buch 2015; Loe 2017; Portacolone 2013), clearly demonstrates that receiving a little assistance in a reciprocal exchange makes elders’ lives tenable even with considerable physical, cognitive, and financial limitations. The notable expansion of elder assistance and the increasing visibility of older adults in American society make the “cultural wasteland” of senescence (Myerhoff 1984, 312) notably less desolate. Moreover, a wide range of information available today illuminates some paths for elders to follow. Social media also helps older people remain connected. A Facebook group for elders without any family enables them to share experiences and to support each other online, just like my informants did in person a few decades earlier.19 Furthermore, a bold challenge to the widespread negative views of aging has appeared. Allure, a women’s fashion and beauty magazine, declared in its August 2017

Conclusion  •  181

issue that they would stop using the term antiaging because it implies not only that aging is unacceptable and therefore has to be fought against but also that only the young can be beautiful (Asahi Shimbun 2017c).20 All these sources of hope indicate that there are ways to “conquer” the new frontier of aging. Older people’s ingenuity and resilience may enable them to adapt to this new territory and create new paths and new maps of it, just like elders at Lake District Senior Center negotiated the wide gap between the “ought” and the “is” of senescence and managed to live meaningful lives in a culture that did not provide them with workable models of aging.

Final Thoughts Three decades ago, I launched my initial fieldwork at Lake District Senior Center. Being in my thirties, I did not experience any overt signs of aging. People in the sewing group frequently asked me to thread a needle for them, since I could easily accomplish this chore without reading glasses. With the passage of time, my physical strength has begun to wane. Doing many tasks, even simple ones, such as planting flowers and putting trash out, takes longer than before. My memory is not as good as it used to be. I have occasional “senior moments” when I cannot remember the names of people and places or cannot quickly find the right word to communicate my thoughts. With gray cells in my brain diminishing, I also need more time to do arithmetic. Needless to say, reading glasses are now indispensable. I have reached the stage of life that Joan, a Center participant, was speaking of when she said, “We start losing our abilities one by one.” These losses are the normal manifestation of aging, which people, regardless of culture, do not welcome. Nonetheless, they are inevitable changes in the course of human life. Undergoing some of them myself makes me look at my interlocutors’ experiences in a different light. For one thing, the declining abilities of old age are no longer abstract concepts. They are real and personal. I can truly understand now why Pauline, who shared my love of gardening, had her flower beds covered with a lawn for easier maintenance upon reaching age eighty.21 Although I am currently healthy and able-­bodied, experiencing various signs of aging myself has compelled me to think about further declines of my abilities in the future. Someday, I may have to give up driving. Arthritis may make it hard to button my blouse or tie shoelaces. I may use a wheelchair or, like Mabel after her stroke, lose my speech. This realization draws me closer to the dilemma that my informants faced when their ability for self-­sufficiency was declining and the gap widened between reality and the cultural ideal. However, my research has revealed much more than the loss of abilities and resources and the need for care in old age. It has enabled me to recognize the

182  •  Through Japanese Eyes

positive side of aging—­not the so-­called successful aging discourse for retaining youthfulness but the various gains that are made possible by time, experience, and earned wisdom. Many years after my initial research at Lake District Senior Center, I encountered the following anonymous waka: Oi de naku

Not by its old body but

toki o tashikana chikara to shi

by the unmistakable power of time

taiju wa sosogu ware ni seiki o

an old tree invigorates me

The poem reminded me of an enormous old beech at a nursing home not very far from Lake District Senior Center. As if showing the true power of old age, it stood high and erect and spread long, strong branches in all directions. Old age may involve hardships. But it may also be a time of harvest in which one can enjoy what was planted earlier in life. The paradox of growing old is that it involves both losses and gains and could simultaneously be a liability and an asset on personal as well as societal levels. On senescence as a social asset, Marc Freedman writes, “Older Americans may well be our only increasing natural resource” (1999, 17; italics in original). A proverb also says, “When an elderly person dies, it’s like losing a library” (Schneider 2018). By getting to know many older Americans, I had the opportunity to “study” at multiple libraries that had a wide range of rich resources and thus became a beneficiary of elders’ knowledge and wisdom. Center people were also my teachers regarding many different aspects of American culture. These unexpected gifts of my fieldwork were particularly helpful during my husband’s long battle with cancer and, after his death, my adjustments to widowhood. My longitudinal research has turned out to be my personal journey as well. May Sarton finds that lack of knowledge of old age brings her into a “foreign” land and makes the aging experience more challenging (1994, 11). While Sarton refers to senescence in America, her metaphor is becoming increasingly applicable to other countries as well—­including Japan, where until recently, older people were well integrated in society and thought to deserve respect and care. I would find it most rewarding if the readers of this book, regardless of age and cultural background, use it to enhance their understanding of old age—­especially its gains—­and come to make the most of their own senescence when it arrives. After all, most of us will be old someday.

Acknowledgments The Japanese often say ikasareteiru, or one lives by the grace of others. This by no means indicates their passive attitude toward life. Rather, it expresses their thankfulness toward others and acknowledges the unmitigated need they have for these people to carry on with life. In writing the acknowledgments of this book, the notion of ikasareteiru hovers over my head. Indeed, my longitudinal research on aging in America would not have been possible without many “others” in my life. First of all, I owe a great debt to the many older Americans whom I came to know during my research at “Lake District Senior Center” or met elsewhere. They welcomed me into their social circles and generously shared with me their experiences and the wisdom they had accumulated in their long lives. We laughed together and cried together as our lives unfolded with all their problems, frustrations, losses, and joys. My initial research at the Senior Center would have been impossible without Marilyn Kinner, the executive director at the time. She accommodated my desire to do fieldwork even though we were not formally introduced by someone influential (which is a must in Japan). I very much appreciate her trust in me. My gratitude also goes to other workers at the Center and subsequent executive directors, particularly the current director, Lucia Sacco. Working with the dedicated board president and directors, Lucia rescued the Center from a financial crisis and is adeptly managing it with a team of superb staff. My research and the writing of this book were made possible because of my education in America. I thank Cornell University for their financial support when I was a foreign student and was not qualified for other sources of funding. Without their generosity, I could not have pursued my graduate studies. My appreciation also goes to PEO, a women’s philanthropic, educational organization, for awarding me an International Peace Scholarship. 183

184  • Acknowledgments

At the two American schools I attended, the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Cornell University, I was blessed with excellent teachers. I am especially fortunate to have been mentored by Roy G. D’Andrade at UCSD and Robert J. Smith at Cornell. Both of them remained my teachers, mentors, and friends until close to their deaths in 2016. They are my onshi, or teachers to whom one is deeply indebted, in the true sense of the term. I wish they could have seen the fruit of their teaching in this book. My onshi at UCSD also included Frederick G. Bailey and Melford E. Spiro, both of whom are deceased now. These two mentors and Roy wrote reference letters on my behalf when I applied for Cornell. They had strong impacts on my academic career as well as on my personal life, because it was at Cornell that I met my husband. Carol Greenhouse and David Holmberg, together with Bob, served on my committee at Cornell. Their guidance often rescued me from the maze of dissertation writing. I also had other good teachers: at UCSD, David K. Jordan, Joyce Justice, Michael Meeker, Gananath Obeyesekere, Edward Reynolds, Theodore Schwartz, and the late Robert Levy, Donald T. Tuzin, and Mark Swartz; at Cornell, James Boon, Kathryn March, P. Steven Sangren, and the late Bernd Lambert and Milton Barnett. My heartfelt thanks go to all these teachers and scholars of distinction. I am lucky to have professional colleagues who offered me not only intellectual stimulation but also advice and support. There are so many of them that I must apologize for not being able to list them all. I especially treasure the collegiality and friendship of Antonius Robben. The late Naomi Quinn taught me a great deal through her published works and in person. I am thankful to Guven P. Witteveen, a Japan specialist, who read some of the chapters and gave me valuable feedback. I am also indebted to other Japan anthropologists who enabled me to see my own culture objectively and opened my eyes to aspects of Japan I had not known. They include Anne Allison, Harumi Befu, Theodore Bestor, Sébastien Penmellen Boret, L. Keith Brown, Peter Cave, Katarzyna Cwiertka, Jason Danely, Susanne Formanek, Tom Gill, Roger Goodman, Joy Hendry, Iza Kavedžija, Satsuki Kawano, William W. Kelly, Sepp Linhart, Susan Orpett Long, Gordon Mathews, Laura Miller, Emiko Ohnuki-­Tierney, David Plath, Glenda Roberts, Jennifer Robert­son, Joshua Roth, Mitch Sedgwick, Brigitte Steger, Hikaru Suzuki, Leng Leng Thang, John Traphagan, Christine Yano, and the late Takie Lebra and Jan Van Bremen. In addition, I would like to acknowledge my colleagues at Cornell for creating an exciting intellectual community. Particularly, I benefitted from the advice and assistance of Magnus Fiskesjô, Frederic W. Gleach, Sandra E. Green, Billie Jean Isbell, Paul Nadasdy, Nerissa Russel, Vilma Santiago-­ Irizarry, Adam Smith, and Andrew C. Wilford. Beyond Cornell, I appreciate

Acknowledgments  •  185

the collegial support of Sherylyn Briller, Ernestine McHugh, James Peacock, Andrea Sankar, Joel Savishinsky, Jay Sokolovsky, Maria Vesperi, and the late Philip DeVita. I am grateful to my anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that helped me with the revisions. My gratitude also goes to Kimberly Guinta, editorial director of Rutgers University Press, and Sarah Lamb, the editor of its Global Perspectives on Aging series. Their enthusiasm and support sustained me through the long publication process. Invaluable advice from Sarah also added more objective, critical, and expanded perspectives to my work. This book would not have materialized without the vital assistance from many behind-­the-­scene facilitators at Rutgers University Press and elsewhere, including Jasper Chang, J. Naomi Linzer, Sam Martin, William Racich, Elvis Ramirez, and Alissa Zarro, as well as others whose names I did not even get to know. I deeply appreciate their professionalism and willingness to assist me. I am indebted to Daniel J. McKee for his assistance with library research and Gregory Tremblay, Mike Competillo, and Matthew Ivancie for dealing with computer issues. Another important source of support over the last three decades has been the office staff of the Anthropology Department at Cornell. They include the current staff, Bruce Roebal, Margaret Rolfe, Elizabeth Kirk, and Laura Sabatini. I highly appreciate Bruce’s assistance with digitizing images and will never forget the kindness of Margaret and the late Joan Oltz during my husband’s long battle with cancer and after his death. During my long-­term research, I have remained healthy thanks to my medical providers. I would like to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Ann Costello, my primary physician, along with Dr.  Terence Devine, Dr.  Steven Gelber, Dr. Sami Husseini, Dr. David McCune, Dr. Mary Ellen Smoolca, and Dr. Larry Wallace. I am indebted to my lawyers, Anna Holmberg and the late Laura Holmberg, who enabled me to stay afloat in America’s highly legalized society, especially after my husband’s death. I am also thankful to Jakuchō Setouchi and Aiko Satō, two Japanese writers who continue to publish novels and essays despite their advanced age. Though I have never met these nonagenarian women, reading their recent works gave me the courage to move forward when I was overwhelmed by the writing of this book or frustrated by its slow pace. To be ikasareteiru, friends are indispensable. Though I have many, the limited space compels me to mention only three. Judith V. Reppy was always willing to extend generous assistance. Her Sunday dinners nourished not only my body but also my mind and soul. Her husband, John D. Reppy, always selected wonderful wine. William C. Ghiorse read the entire manuscript, chapter by chapter, whenever a draft was ready. Not only did I learn much from his copyediting, but his questions from a nonanthropological perspective helped

186  • Acknowledgments

me clarify my arguments. Moreover, walking his late poodle, Suzi, gave me a much-­needed distraction from my work. Thank you so much, Judith, John, and Bill. I owe a lot to my family as well. My parents, Yukie and Hisaaki Tsuji, allowed my departure from tradition to study in America and marry an American. I feel deep parental love in their acceptance of this deviation. My grandmother, Hisa Tsuji, raised me. It was her idea of a good old age that provided me with the very first spark of inspiration to study senescence in America. My sister, Yūko Mori, and her family took on extra responsibilities to compensate for my absence from Japan. My husband’s nieces and nephew—­Karen Amodeo, Gary Kirsch, Susan Clark, and Lori Cairnduff—­and their families saved me from becoming an “orphan” in the United States, where I have neither husband nor blood relatives. Three deceased people were also an important part of my American family: my husband’s brother and his wife, Henry and Marion Kirsch, and their eldest son, Reverend David Kirsch. I am also grateful for the two Thai families, the Tungasmitas and the Saendawibadhanas, who “adopted” my husband during his first fieldwork in the kingdom, for including me in their kin groups, as well as for the late Keawta Kanawan for making Thailand my second home through her unfaltering support and friendship until her death in 2008. Last but not the least, I must remember my husband, A. Thomas Kirsch. He was my soulmate and best teacher in life, who showed me how to live and die with courage, resilience, and optimism.

Notes Introduction 1 These things were a departure from life in Japan in the mid-­1970s. There, I wore more formal clothes, and taking off shoes before entering the house was, and still is, a must. Due to the excellent public transportation system, I also did not need to drive in Japan. 2 As I eventually learned, motherhood is shaped by culture and various other situational factors (e.g., Scheper-­Hughes 1985, 1993). When I became more familiar with American culture, I realized that these two women’s responses to motherhood reflect the differences in dominant cultural values in America and Japan (e.g., independence versus interdependence), which have strong impacts on conceptions of personhood and interpersonal relationships (Tsuji 2016). 3 Thai food was not well known in America at that time. Before going to Thailand, I had eaten Thai food only once in Long Beach, California. 4 Born in 1894, Mr. Billingham was a World War I navy veteran who had been stationed in San Diego. I met him in Kyoto in 1970 when he joined a tour to see Japan. We remained pen pals until close to his death in 1984. I also visited him in Indiana three times. 5 Anthropology was late in taking up gerontological research although it was often the elders of a society who provided researchers with significant historical context and specialized information. Before the 1970s, only two major publications were noted: The Role of the Aged in Primitive Society (Simmons 1945) and Culture and Aging: An Anthropological Study of Older Americans (Clark and Anderson 1967). In addition, Part III of Culture against Man by Jules Henry (1963) depicted grim life in three old people’s homes in the United States. Then after a lapse of a decade appeared Old People, New Lives (Keith 1977) and Number Our Days (Myerhoff 1978). This was followed by a surge of anthropological studies of aging in the 1980s, which included Amoss and Harrell (1981), Fry (1980, 1981), Fry and Keith (1986), Kaufman (1986), Kertzer and Keith (1984), Shield (1988), Sokolovsky (1987), and Vesperi (1985). Nonetheless, I felt that there was more to learn about aging in America, especially what was revealed from a foreigner’s point of view.

187

188  •  Notes to Pages 4–9

6 All the names in this book are pseudonyms. Some nonessential details of elders in my study may be altered to protect their privacy. 7 On refers to indebtedness between people in a hierarchical relationship and is owed by the subordinate (e.g., children, students) to the superior (e.g., parents, teachers). Filial piety requires that children obey and respect parents, take care of them in old age, and worship their spirits after death. See Befu (1971, 166–­168) for further explanation regarding these two important normative concepts in Japanese culture. 8 While my grandmother was alive, I went back to Japan at least once a year, normally for the New Year’s holiday, and saw her continue to do these things. 9 This statement refers to the images of senescence instilled in me based on my own experience in childhood and youth in Japan. Needless to say, old age was viewed both positively and negatively in Japan’s past (e.g., Plath 1972; Tsuji 1997a). For instance, the ambivalence toward the aged is reflected in the legend of obasute, or “abandoning Granny.” While there is no evidence that such geronticide was practiced, the legend exists throughout Japan, and there is a mountain called Obasute in central Japan. For the legend, see Fukazawa (1957), Plath (1972), Aoyagi (2004), and Danely (2014). 10 American individualism does not mean indifference to others, as some foreigners assume. I was impressed by the good citizenship shown by Americans, who extended kindness and generosity even to strangers. 11 In Clifford Geertz’s (1973) terms, culture provides both models for reality and models of reality. 12 The manifestations of culture that are visible are exemplified in cultural objects and culture-­specific gestures. 13 As culture is a vexed concept in anthropology and “anthropologists have never had a single concept of culture upon which they agreed” (Fox and King 2002b, 1), my description here refers to just one possible definition. See Fox and King (2002a) for the various ways the concept of culture may be defined and applied. 14 Having these different dominant cultural values does not preclude the many others I share with Americans. 15 Such culture-­specific meanings of motherhood, mother-­child relationships, and personhood reveal that the story of Madam Butterfly was written by a non-­ Japanese. If the author had been Japanese, Madam Butterfly would have killed her child before killing herself. 16 Mothers who survive boshi shinjū are charged with murder, but they receive a lenient sentence with probation and do not normally serve a prison term. In 1985, when a Japanese mother drowned her two young children in the ocean off Santa Monica and was rescued while floating unconscious, the local Japanese community showed considerable sympathy and support toward her, appealing to the district attorney to consider cultural differences in dealing with her crime. Though she committed double murder, which could be punishable with the death penalty in California, her sentence was amazingly light: five years of probation and one year in county jail, which she had already served during the trial. Be that as it may, it is important to note that boshi shinjū is still a deviant act and many Japanese mothers in hardship choose to live for the sake of their children. It is also noteworthy that while boshi shinjū still occurs, albeit much less frequently, child abuse is rapidly on the rise in Japan. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, the number of child abuse cases reported to child guidance offices nationwide exceeded 100,000 for the first time in 2015. This is a huge increase

Notes to Pages 9–13  •  189

17 18

19

20 21

22

23 24 25 26 27

from the comparable number of 1,101 in 1990 (Tetsu Nishizawa, “Kyūzō suru jidō gyakutai: Sono shakaiteki-­na haikei o saguru” [Rapidly increasing cases of child abuse: Searching causes in social context], nippon​.com, January 10, 2017, accessed February 27, 2018, https://​www​.nippon​.com/​ja/​currents/​d00260/). Some Japanese kill themselves to show a sincere apology when they have failed to perform their jobs. This type of suicide is called sekinin jisatsu, or responsibility suicide. Even sounds may be viewed as symbolic and as having culture-­specific meanings or meaninglessness. For instance, native speakers of Japanese cannot distinguish l from r because the difference between these two sounds is meaningless in Japanese. As a result, lice and rice sound the same to them. In a similar vein, native speakers of English cannot hear the difference in the long and short vowels in Japanese and mix up, for instance, soshiki (organization) and sōshiki (funeral). The difference in the length of vowel is essential in Japanese but not in English. Our mother tongue, a vital part of culture, sensitizes our hearing to the sounds meaningful in that language but desensitizes it to the sounds that are not important. The autobiography of Helen Keller describes the day when she—­a blind, deaf, and mute child—­acquired the ability to communicate symbolically and liberated herself from an angry, bitter existence to become a person capable of love. Miss Sullivan, her teacher, placed her pupil’s hand under the gushing cold water pumped from a well. At that moment, Helen realized that the words her teacher had been spelling on her palm and that she had been imitating on her teacher’s palm symbolized something. She came to understand the arbitrarily agreed-­upon meaning between the signifier (i.e., water spelled on her palm) and the signified (i.e., the cold liquid flowing on her hands; Keller 2003, 18–­20). In those days, what I had in mind was rules, norms, customs, and tradition, not exactly the anthropological concept of culture that I would learn later. In 2000, while the overall suicide rate in Japan was 24.1 per 100,000, the figures were 40.7 for those between eighty and eighty-­four, 47.1 for those between eighty-­five and eighty-­nine, and 47.8 for those over ninety (Traphagan 2004, 316). The Winston County Senior Citizens Council was established to operate Lake District Senior Center and some other programs for seniors. In this book, I will use these names interchangeably, as Center participants did. For the organizational structure of the council, see chapter 1 of Tsuji (1991). According to Taietz (1976), another type of senior center is the social agency model, which, like America’s first senior center, offers programs for the poor and the disengaged. Because white elders are the majority of the Center participants, I will refer to Center people’s religious and ethnic background only when they belong to the minority groups. Unless otherwise noted, the ages I provide for each participant were those in 1987 or 1988 when I met them. By 2009, all but eleven of them had died. As of August 2018, only one elder in my initial research was still alive; she was in her nineties and doing well. Before this home was purchased, a flood and a fire forced them to move from their first and third centers, respectively. The building where they established the second center was demolished, and they lost the fourth center when it became the target of an urban renewal project.

190  •  Notes to Pages 14–22

28 Anthropologists customarily call people they study “informants” or “interlocutors.” While the latter may better hint at the collaborative roles they play, I use the terms interchangeably in this book. 29 Many anthropologists may not be as private as I was about note-­taking. I did not openly take notes to avoid disturbing the ambiance of the elders’ activities in which I was also a participant. In addition, most people at the Center regarded me as one of them, not as an outsider or a researcher, and I intended to keep it that way. 30 Lawrence Samuel (2017) postulates an opposing view of old age in America’s past. He argues that senescence was revered in early America partly due to its rarity; negative stereotypes and fear of old age became prevalent in the early 1960s. 31 AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, was established in 1958 with the initial mission to acquire health insurance for retired teachers. Gray Panthers was founded in 1970 by Maggie Khun to fight against ageism and promote senior citizens’ rights (Sanjek 2009). 32 For instance, the unwillingness to accept aging is apparent in the book titles: Ageless Body, Timeless Mind (Chopra 1993), Aging Backwards (Esmonde-­White 2014), and Young Next Year (Crowley and Lodge 2007). 33 Such reactions to one’s fiftieth birthday make a striking contrast with the milestone birthdays celebrated in Japan, starting at age sixty (see the “Older People in My Japanese Life” section earlier in this chapter). 34 Anthropological studies on aging in other cultures include Aulino (2019), Cohen (1998), Danely (2014), Kavedžija (2019), Kinoshita and Kiefer (1992), Lamb (2000, 2009), Sha (2017), Thang (2001), and Traphagan (2000). For edited volumes on old age in different cultures and anthropological perspectives on aging studies, see Alber and Drotbohm (2015), Albert and Cattell (1994), Graham and Stephenson (2010), Hoffman and Pype (2016), Kertzer and Keith (1984), Lynch and Danely (2013), Matsumoto (2011), and Sokolovsky (2009). 35 Responding to the positive feedback from his readers, including those outside academia, and their interest in learning even more about elder’s wisdom, Pillemer wrote a sequel, 30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage, in 2015. 36 Being active continues to be regarded as vital for a good old age, not only by gerontologists, eldercare professionals, and policy makers but also by elders themselves, as this book illustrates. See Katz (2000) for various interpretations of “activity” in senescence (e.g., as a form of moral regulation and a neoliberal political tool). 37 Activity theory and disengagement theory, which are regarded as “the two most consequential” of “gerontology’s first social science theories” (Katz 2000, 138), “polarize[d] gerontological thinking into two camps” (Fry 1980, 126) with their completely opposed theses. However, those heated controversies belong to the past; many now view both theories as oversimplified answers to complex questions (Fry 1980, 126; Hochschild 1975). 38 The solutions based on alternative values often involve the segregation of elders from the rest of the population, such as physical separation in older people’s homes. 39 This taken-­for-­granted aspects of culture surface when we encounter “other” cultures, which awakens us to see how significant culture is and how it pervades our lives. If I had not experienced the invisibility of older people in America, I might not have noticed, in comparison, how well integrated older people were in my life in Japan.

Notes to Pages 23–36  •  191

40 Due to World War II, Benedict could not go to Japan. The internment camps for Japanese Americans served as the primary sites of her fieldwork. 41 The title of Benedict’s book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, indicates the contradictions in Japanese patterns of character, which were symbolized by the elegance of the flower and the violence of the sword. 42 While doing my prefieldwork review of literature in 1986, I first came up with this view of old age and elders in America independently from Philip Silverman (1988), who published his The Elderly as Modern Pioneers during my fieldwork. In her memoir written at age eighty, British writer Penelope Lively also said, “Our experience is one unknown to most of humanity, over time. We are the pioneers” (2013, 12).

Chapter 1  Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center 1 Meals on Wheels is a program to ensure senior citizens have nutritious meals. Volunteer drivers deliver meals to homebound elders and offer them a contact with the outside world. In Winston County, they also provide lunch sites where elders gather to have hot lunch together. In 2016, they provided over 160,000 meals. In 2018, in partnership with Meals on Wheels, Lake District Senior Center started a pilot program to serve weekly hot lunches at the Center. 2 Haim Hazan also observes that elders in a London day center preferred activities that did not require “competition and testing out of achievements” (1986, 317). 3 When her doctor ordered her to start wearing orthopedic shoes, Eleanor transformed the white shoes by painting each side different, multiple bright colors. This pair of shoes became her trademark at the Center. 4 Beth became a nonagenarian and the sole survivor among my original informants after Deborah, another survivor, died at age ninety-­two in August 2018. 5 Subsequently, Lake District Senior Center stopped sponsoring this program because similar services became available at several human service agencies. 6 Drew Desilver, “More Older Americans Are Working, and Working More, Than They Used To,” Fact Tank, June 20, 2016, accessed July 13, 2018, http://​www​ .pewresearch​.org/​fact​-tank/​2016/​06/​20/​more​-older​-americans​-are​-working​-and​ -working​-more​-than​-they​-used​-to/. 7 Teri Morisi, “Why More People Ages 55+ Are Working,” U.S. Department of Labor (blog), November 18, 2016, accessed July 13, 2018, https://​blog​.dol​.gov/​2016/​11/​18/​ why​-more​-people​-ages​-55​-are​-working. 8 Ceylan Yeginsu, “U.K. Appoints a Minister for Loneliness,” New York Times, January 17, 2018, accessed July 13, 2018, https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2018/​01/​17/​world/​ europe/​uk​-britain​-loneliness​.html. 9 A pilot program was launched to see whether voice-­activated technology would help elders deal with loneliness (Ianzito 2018). For robots in eldercare, see chapter 7. 10 For Japanese men’s afterwork activities, see Allison (1994) and Linhart (1998). 11 In twenty-­first-­century Japan, many women work after marriage and motherhood. Yet the traditional gendered division of labor is still prevalent, making it hard for women to pursue their own careers and contributing to the very low birth rate in Japan. 12 In most municipalities in Japan, nonrecyclable trash is divided into two categories: regular and bulky. The latter refers to big items, such as old furniture and appliances.

192  •  Notes to Pages 36–47

13 Japanese men of younger generations may be more willing to offer help at home than those in their fathers’ generation. But their long work hours still keep them away from home. 14 A quilt made by a Center participant is seen in the showcase in figure 2. Similar displays are regularly made at the lifecare retirement community, which was built years after my initial fieldwork and where some of my informants lived before their deaths. 15 The Founders group was the first peer group at the Center, formed soon after its establishment in 1952. Other groups included those for retired teachers and machinists, as well as “units” that were based on the geographical locations within Winston County. 16 RSVP is federally funded. It provides grants to qualified organizations, such as Lake District Senior Center, to engage older Americans in volunteer services. 17 Independent Sector is a nonpartisan coalition of approximately six hundred organizations for the nonprofit and philanthropic community. In order to quantify the enormous value of volunteer contributions, nonprofit organizations, such as Lake District Senior Center, use the dollar value of volunteer time estimated by Independent Sector. For instance, its estimate in 2015 was $23.07 per hour for the national average (“Value of Volunteer Time,” Independent Sector, accessed November 2, 2015, https://​www​.independentsector​.org/​volunteer​_time). For retirees’ potential for social contribution, see Freedman (1999). 18 Nylon was invented in 1935. In the early days, nylon products, such as stockings, were expensive luxury items. 19 Before interstate highways were built, oranges coming from Florida and California were expensive and were not a part of the regular diet among people living in a cold climate. 20 As mentioned in the introduction, Lake District Senior Center is one of the programs operated by the Senior Citizens Council. 21 For many years, the programs at Lake District Senior Center were free except for some special events, such as annual meeting luncheons and travel programs. But in the mid-­1990s, due to a budget crunch, the Center began to ask for donations (a few dollars) each time people participated in a class. Although the new policy made clear that no one would be rejected due to his or her inability to make monetary contributions, some seniors stopped coming to the Center after this change. 22 Cost-­minimizing to enhance participation has been a central concern throughout the history of Lake District Senior Center. For example, in 1957, when the price of lunch served at the Center went up to fifty cents and the city bus fare to twenty cents (and thus forty cents for a round trip), the board of directors decided to subsidize the lunch and reduce the price to twenty-­five cents. The records say, “[These price hikes] meant a day at the Center could cost ninety-­cents—­a prohibitive amount for some members” (Gabriel 1972, 65). 23 Although senior centers and retirement communities are often labeled as agehomogeneous communities, the ages of their participants and residents vary widely. During my initial fieldwork, the oldest Center participant was ninety-­seven. The youngest few were in their late fifties—­younger than the former’s children. 24 Gold is a color frequently associated with old age in America (e.g., movie titles like On Golden Pond), as is gray (e.g., Gray Panthers), referencing hair that has “turned gray” with age. In Japan, silver is the color that represents old age (e.g., silver seats

Notes to Pages 47–56  •  193

25 26 27 28

29

30

31

32

reserved for the elderly and the handicapped on public transportation), and in Japanese, “gray” hair is called shiraga, or white hair. The idea of “the best is yet to be” originates in Robert Browning’s poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” (Poetry Foundation, accessed June 19, 2020, https://​www​.poetryfoundation​ .org/​poems/​43775/​rabbi​-ben​-ezra). For the ambivalence some retirement community residents feel toward the regulated activity programs planned by the facility, see Katz (2000, 144–­146). In recent years, senior apartments with programmed activities have become available in Japan. They advertise for active retirement. In its inaugural semester, Senior Circuit offered fifteen classes and seven presentations, covering subjects such as history, anthropology, archaeology, geology, foreign languages, art, music, movies, and writing, in addition to twenty-­one computer courses. Taught by volunteers, this program has continued to grow under its new name, Lifelong Learning, and has become a sizable source of the Center’s revenue. The classes listed in the course schedule for Spring 2017 semester included “The Life and Music of Sergei Prokofiev” (in the arts and films section), “Financing Long Term Care” (in the finance section), “Getting Started with Vegetable Gardening” (in the gardening and outdoors section), “The Immigrant Experience in America” (in the humanities section), “A New York Constitutional Convention” (in the political issues section), and “Microbes in the News” (in the science section). These included exercise classes, a nutrition class, a glaucoma clinic, and a flu clinic, as well as programs that involved physical activities (e.g., walking) or offered information for enhancing health and alleviating age-­related issues (e.g., how to prevent falls; Gabriel 1972). Jichikai literally means “self-­governing association.” The word, however, may be misleading because it does not “self-­govern” the community. Jichikai assumes the responsibilities of conducting certain tasks for the neighborhood community. Some of these tasks are assigned by the municipal government (e.g., collecting municipal water fees, changing light bulbs of the streetlamps). Others are locally initiated (e.g., planning community events, planting flowers, or cleaning streets and parks). As communal ties weaken, it is becoming hard to maintain traditional festivals and events, even those well-­known ones with a long history. In 2017, sixty of them in twenty prefectures were discontinued because there were not enough young adults in the shrinking population (“Mukei minzoku bunkazai no dentō gyōji, nijūken de rokujūken kyūhaishi” [Sixty traditional events designated as intangible folk culture treasure either canceled or discontinued at twenty prefectures], January 3, 2017, accessed January 10, 2019, https://​www​.nikkei​.com/​article/​DGXLASDG03H2D​ _T00C17A1000000/).

Chapter 2  Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves 1 Another major difference between Lake District Senior Center and Merrill Court is the heterogeneity of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds of the former and the homogeneity of the latter. 2 In addition to the avoidance of illness and death, lack of protocols for dealing with them may also explain this phenomenon among Americans. This makes a striking contrast with the well-­established tradition of dealing with illness and death among the Japanese (Rupp 2003; Tsuji 2006a).

194  •  Notes to Pages 61–74

3 The Senior Center where I did my initial fieldwork had a driveway that allowed only two cars to be parked (the Center later moved to a new location). Hence most participants, as well as the Center staff, parked on the street. Since parking spots on the block where the Center was located were frequently taken, people usually walked at least a block or two to reach the door. 4 During my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, laser surgery for cataract removal was not very common, though more than a dozen Center people had had cataract operations. All of them were out of circulation for a long time because they were instructed to avoid downward eye movements for at least three weeks. 5 Frequently, the Japanese also use kigane and kizukai, the noun forms of ki o tsukau. 6 This does not mean the absence of mutual help among individual Americans that was refuted by this chapter. For support between spouses and among family members, see chapter 5. Also note that in contemporary Japan, the family as a unit of self-­ sufficiency is being undermined, not only because most families do not consist of three-­generations of kin but of a married couple or a single person but also because jiko sekinin or self-­responsibility is becoming more emphasized (see chapter 7). 7 Kintore is abbreviated from kin-­niku (muscles) torēningu (training).

Chapter 3  Networking at Lake District Senior Center 1 Before my initial fieldwork, Martha regularly attended various activities at the Center, including the Founders group. After her daughter’s cancer worsened, she very seldom came to the Center. 2 Martha’s son-­in-­law did not participate in the Center programs, but it was not unusual for Center people to know and share information about relatives of participants. 3 To minimize expenses, some Center participants did not subscribe to the local newspaper or purchased it only once a week, on Saturdays, when the paper had a weekly television schedule. This might have increased elders’ chances of missing obituaries. (Though the daily paper was available at the Center, not everyone came to the Center every day.) 4 Cost may be one reason for not having an obituary in the newspaper. When my husband passed away in 1999, his obituary in the local newspaper cost about three hundred dollars. Writing an obituary also involves a lot of thought and time, not to mention profound sadness. 5 In addition to the online newsletter and emails, nondigital methods continued to be used to spread the information. Senior Circle, a quarterly newsletter, was still mailed to older adults in Winston County. Printed class schedules of the current and following weeks were available at the Center. When people signed up for Lifelong Learning classes, they would receive a reminder phone call from a Center volunteer several days before the first class met. 6 See Ohnuki-­Tierney (1984) for cultural differences in relation to illness in Japan. 7 This is not always the case in America. After my husband’s death, I was notified of the deaths of some of his first cousins but found out those of other cousins much later. This inconsistency also occurred while my husband was alive partly because he had forty-­nine paternal cousins and partly because we were not living in his hometown. He primarily learned of a death in the clan from relatives, but unlike their Japanese counterparts, they were not bound by a rule stipulating that a certain category of people must be notified.

Notes to Pages 74–83  •  195

8 The responsibility of tsuki-­tōban falls on a household, which is a unit of participation in the neighborhood association. 9 Major illness has similar functions. A get-­well gift is reciprocated by a celebration-­of-­recovery gift; if an illness occurs subsequently in the family of the giver, the receiver is obliged to send a reciprocal get-­well gift. Tied into the institution of gift exchange, illness in Japan, like death, is not totally a private matter. See Befu (1968) and Rupp (2003) for gift exchange in Japan generally and Tsuji (2006a) for those involved in Japanese funerals. 1 0 In recent decades, many changes have been occurring to Japanese mortuary practices, such as declining kōden and making modifications to traditional funerals (Allison 2018; Tsuji 2018). In addition, each year over thirty-­t wo thousand people die alone, and their deaths are discovered accidentally or only after the stench of their decayed remains alarms people (NHK “Muen Shakai Purojekuto” Shuzaihan 2010). Nonetheless, this does not necessarily indicate a defiance of tradition or changes in dominant Japanese values. Rather, it is the adaptation to or the outcome of rapidly changing social milieu in which traditional mortuary rituals are no longer viable (Tsuji 2018). Hence notification of death remains important, and the news still travels more promptly and widely in Japan than in America. 11 Falling like this is not uncommon among older people. I heard scores of cases during my three decades of research. But other victims were not as lucky as Diane. Jennifer, for instance, inched her way to the phone in pain and finally called for help more than seven hours later. To avoid such a predicament, the County Office for Aging offers a small alarm device to wear around the neck and to press in case of an emergency, which is called a PERS (personal emergency response system). 12 Many Japanese World War II veterans do not talk about their experiences. Witnessing the atrocity of the war and many deaths—­both of their fellow soldiers and of enemies—­silenced them. Unlike Alice’s case, however, other people in their social circle normally know that they are war veterans and where they fought. 13 After her carpal tunnel surgery did not restore the functional use of her right hand, Helen moved to a room in the nursing home where Diane had already lived for two years. So the two friends were able to enjoy living in close proximity again until Helen’s death. 14 Two years later, Marcia extended the same assistance to Helen when she sold her house to move to the nursing home. 15 While individual choices were important for older Americans, according to one study, they preferred choice significantly less than younger adults (Reed, Mikels, and Simon 2014). 16 This exchange is also bound by the principle of reciprocity even though the repayment of the original “gift” is made much later. 17 Mary Catherine Bateson draws our attention to the different connotations of dependency and dependence listed in the dictionary. The former “carries the connotation of subordination” and the latter that of “reliance or trust” (2011, 18). While I use these two terms interchangeably in this book, what Americans abhor and avoid is the connotation carried in the former. 18 The inmates of Auschwitz seemed to be deprived of everything they had possessed. But they used their meager rations of daily bread and soup and tattered shirts to exchange for such necessities as spoons and grease for shoes that their German subjugators did not provide (Levi 1996).

196  •  Notes to Pages 84–92

19 During my initial research in 1987–­1988, a representative from the local Social Security Office came to the Senior Center once a week for individual consultations with retirees and those who planned to retire. The figures mentioned in this chapter were obtained from this representative during my interview with him. 20 During a fundraising campaign for Lake District Senior Center in 1988, I joined older volunteers to call those who had made donations in the previous year and asked for their continued support. Most people pledged either five dollars or ten dollars, while some elders apologetically said that they were unable to make a new donation. 21 In 2017, for instance, elders’ donations constituted 28 percent of the Center revenue, whereas program fees were 31 percent and grants from outside sources 39 percent. 22 Strong emphasis on balanced exchange among older Americans makes a striking contrast with social exchange in Japan, where one of its primary functions is to solidify the relationships (Tsuji 2016). Hence to ensure the ongoing relationship between the giver and the receiver, the gift is not returned completely, leaving both parties continuously in debt to one another (Rupp 2003, 79). 23 Buch (2015, 2017, 2018) made a similar discovery in her study of older Chicagoans. 24 This is also applicable to Japanese culture. Despite the emphasis on interdependence, individual autonomy is important for the Japanese in order not to impose on others. Some scholars also argue that an autonomous, rather than relational, sense of the Japanese self is found away from society, in the individual’s inner self (Lebra 2004; Smith 1983).

Chapter 4  Postretirement Housing and Living Arrangements 1 When there was no male heir, mukoyōshi was taken to continue the ie, or the patrilineal family, and in some cases, the family business. Due to the descent rule that designated the eldest son the heir, younger sons married into their wives’ family as adopted sons-­in-­law and eventually became the heads of the wives’ families. Though the ie was legally abolished after World War II, mukoyōshi marriage still exists today in a much smaller number. 2 However, single-­person and conjugal households are on the rise in Japan as well (see the next chapter). 3 Cruise ships also serve as residences for some American retirees. 4 My initial research involved more than eighty people whose housing history is discussed in this chapter; I came to be familiar with more than a couple of hundred elders. 5 The follow-­up data covered sixty-­five people from 1989 to 2009. However, my discussion here refers to the housing of sixty-­one elders by excluding four people—­three who lived in their children’s homes and one in hospice—­because it was ambiguous whether private homes and hospice were age-­homogenous or age-­heterogeneous. 6 During my initial fieldwork, some elderly couples lived together without getting married so that the widowed women continued to get their late husbands’ social security benefits. However, all the couples in the housing data in this chapter were married. Since then, federal regulations have changed, and widowed spouses can get their deceased spouses’ social security benefits if they remarry after age sixty. 7 Although all twenty-­one nursing home residents in this sample lived alone prior to their move, I encountered a few exceptions among my “new” informants, whom

Notes to Pages 92–102  •  197

8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16

17 18 19

I met after my initial fieldwork. In one case, a married couple lived together in an assisted living facility until the husband became nonambulatory and moved to a nursing home. His wife did not move, and their separation lasted for several years until the husband’s death. The second case involved a married couple who lived together in the assisted living section of a lifecare retirement community. When the husband needed skilled nursing care, both moved to the nursing home section. The wife moved back to the assisted living section after her husband’s death and stayed there until her death. “Profile of Older Americans 2010,” Administration for Community Living, 2010, accessed October 23, 2018, https://​acl​.gov/​aging​-and​-disability​-in​-america/​data​ -and​-research/​profile​-older​-americans. Longer life may increase the chance of widowhood as well as that of living alone, but it also contributes to more years of marriage and living with a spouse. When people live longer, widowhood tends to occur later. See Buch (2015) for the ambivalence older Chicagoans feel and their ingenious devices to enhance their sense of independence. Although Esther’s home sharing was privately arranged, there was an agency that arranged home sharing between seniors and younger Americans when I conducted my initial fieldwork. Retirees included those who did not work at all, who worked part time, and who had a full-­time job or single or multiple part-­time jobs. Most elders in my study belonged to the first category. Postretirement moves in this chapter refer to the changes of residence my informants made after they retired from the occupation they had held for most of their lives. Only one of these seven elders was still alive as of August 2018. The other six passed away between 2010 and August 2018. During my longitudinal research, the circle of my informants grew much bigger than those I had met during my initial fieldwork. My “new” interlocutors constituted an important part of my research, not only because most of my “original” informants had passed away but also because the “new” interlocutors shed light on notable changes in the culture of aging. Be that as it may, my discussion in this chapter primarily focuses on the original seventy-­five people in my initial fieldwork in order to follow their housing arrangements over the two decades. Americans’ keen awareness of the need to downsize may account for the popularity of Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-­Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (2014). Sometimes, age-­heterogeneous housing facilities have many older residents, creating naturally occurring retirement communities. During my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, there were three such communities in Winston County: two apartment complexes downtown and another apartment complex about a mile away on the public bus line. All seven of them were white, middle-­class elders. Only one was a male. Among these seven, only two actively participated in the decision to leave Winston County. The rest, being in poor health, followed their children’s decision to relocate near them or live with them. All the examples in this paragraph refer to the experiences of the “new” interlocutors whom I met after my initial research in 1987–­1988. Hence they are not included in this chapter’s statistical data.

198  •  Notes to Pages 103–107

20 Murphy was also a “new” informant whose case is not in this chapter’s statistical data. 21 Most nonmovers in my 1987–­1988 data lived in their own house where they had raised their family. 22 Various assistance and subsidies are available for low-­income older homeowners. 23 During my initial fieldwork in 1987–­1988, pets were not allowed at senior housing. Some nursing homes had cats and, less commonly, small dogs that belonged to the home, although residents could not have their own pets. There were also pet-­visiting programs for nursing homes (Savishinsky 1985). In recent years, however, many senior housing facilities have come to allow cats and small dogs, including apartments for seniors and a lifecare retirement community in Winston County. 24 A lifecare retirement community at Winston County had a nursery school for workers’ children. It was located in the main building on the other side of the courtyard from the assisted living section. Therefore, some residents in this section could see these children from their rooms. The children ate lunch at the cafeteria for the residents of the independent living section. 25 The Village Movement started in Beacon Hill, Massachusetts, in 2001. 26 A lifecare retirement community, also known as a continuing care retirement community, offers a continuous long-­term care contract for independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing care all at one location. Hence it is not necessary for residents to move to a different facility when their health deteriorates and they need more care. 27 John assumed a leadership role in the long, pioneering work of establishing senior housing in Winston County, which became a reality in the 1970s. 28 When I attended university in Japan, it was not common to live away from home to go to college except for students who were from provincial towns where they had a few or no choices of schools. Because I grew up near three major cities (Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe), there were many universities nearby. Therefore, like most of my high school classmates, I lived at home and commuted. 29 The average life expectancy of Japanese women in 2017 was 87.14, and it was 80.98 for men. In 1947, these figures were 53.96 for women and 50.06 for men and have kept increasing since then at an amazing pace (Asahi Shimbun 2017b). 30 “Chapter IX: Household and Housing Status,” Statistics Bureau of Japan, accessed December 10, 2018, http://​www​.stat​.go​.jp/​english/​data/​kokusei/​2010/​poj/​pdf/​ 2010ch09​.pdf. 31 “Dai go-­shō: Kōreisha no iru shotai” [Chapter 5: Households with older people], Statistics Bureau of Japan, accessed December 10, 2018, https://​www​.stat​.go​.jp/​ data/​jyutaku/​2013/​pdf/​kgiy05​.pdf. 32 At group homes, a small number of older people live with the help and care by the staff members. 33 “Kaigo rōjin fukushi shisetsu (sankō shiryō)” [Nursing care facilities for elders (reference materials)], Social Security Council (Care Benefit Subcommittee), 2017, accessed December 10, 2018, https://​www​.mhlw​.go​.jp/​file/​05​-Shingikai​-12601000​ -Seisakutoukatsukan​-Sanjikanshitsu​_Shakaihoshoutantou/​0000171814​.pdf. 34 In 2016, this number dropped by 30 percent to 366,139. But this was not the result of an increasing number of facilities or a diminishing number of applicants but of tightening regulations for admission. Currently, only those whose need for care is assessed above “level 3” can apply, while previously elders of care levels 1 to 5 were admitted (“Tokuyō taikisha sanjūrokuman-­rokusen nin: Zenkai chōsa kara

Notes to Pages 107–112  •  199

sanwari-­gen” [Three hundred sixty thousand and six thousand people on the waiting list for tokuyō nursing homes: Thirty percent lower than the previous study], Mainichi Shimbun [Mainichi newspaper], March 28, 2017, accessed December 10, 2018, https://​mainichi​.jp/​articles/​20170328/​k00/​00m/​040/​100000c). 35 While skilled nursing care is provided at both tokuyō and rōken, distinctive differences exist between them. The residents of tokuyō spend the rest of their lives in these institutions, which a Japanese sociologist, Chizuko Ueno, compares to “deguchi no nai ie,” or a house without an exit. The residents of rōken receive rehabilitation and other treatments with the expectation that they will later go home, as Mrs. Satō did. 36 “Sankō shiryō” [Reference data], Chūō shakaihoken iryō kyōgikai [Central council for social and medical insurances], July 19, 2017, accessed January 3, 2019, https://​ www​.mhlw​.go​.jp/​stf/​shingi/​2r985200000105vx​-att/​2r98520000010l2r​.pdf.

Chapter 5  Who Supports Older Americans? 1 However, when Japanese baby boomers married, the majority of them established a separate household from that of their parents. In addition, people from rural areas often moved to metropolitan areas for college or work. Consequently, many of their children and grandchildren grew up without having daily interactions with their grandparents. See Thang (2001) for this generational separation in Japan. 2 When older Americans have a long life, they sometimes have adult grandchildren who help them as well. When elders are predeceased by their children, grand­ children’s assistance becomes more important, as in the case of two widowed Center people, Dorothy and Opal. The widowed spouses of elders’ deceased children also may provide support. For instance, Dorothy’s son-­in-­law regularly visited her from Michigan after her daughter’s death. 3 When her mother had a series of major medical problems, Marjorie, a divorcée, had been retired. In addition, her two sons had already left home. Unlike Marjorie, many caregivers, predominantly women, assume both occupational and domestic responsibilities, which may impede their career development. See, for instance, the negative impacts of caregiving on anthropological careers (Nikky Greer, K. Jill Fleuriet, Rebecca Galemba, and Sallie Han, “How Caregiving Impacts Anthropology Careers,” Anthropology News, October 26, 2018, accessed December 17, 2018, http://​ www​.anthropology​-news​.org/​index​.php/​2018/​10/​26/​how​-caregiving​-impacts​ -anthropology​-careers/). 4 Though daughters/wives more commonly serve as caregivers, it is not unusual for men to look after their aging parents/spouses. At supermarkets, I often see elderly men loading their cart with groceries and a pile of adult diapers. However, during my research, I did not encounter any cases in which husbands took care of their wives. This might be due to the fact that (1) more women than men were regular participants at the Senior Center and (2) generally, women were younger and lived longer than their husbands. 5 This does not exclude the possibility that adult children also participate in the decision-­making. It is not unusual that adult children are designated as health proxies. 6 By contrast, the traditional multigenerational Japanese family is a corporate unit that includes both married couples and their children.

200  •  Notes to Pages 113–120

7 This is how the social worker entered the house and found Mabel paralyzed in bed when she subsequently had a massive stroke. 8 The idealization of self-­reliant individuals does not derive from elders’ wishes for independence alone. It involves various other factors: cultural, socioeconomic, political, demographic, and so on. See the discussions on the successful aging discourse in chapter 7. 9 In her study of older Chicagoans, Buch offers a different perspective on the inequality between elders and their paid caregivers. Neither an elder’s vision of an independent life, which caregivers make possible, nor policy discourses that encourage independence in senescence recognize “the vital contributions poor women of color [caregivers] made” to help achieve this goal. She concludes, “Ideologies of independence may thus be intrinsically bound up with social inequality” (2017, 96). 10 Dorothy moved to the nursing home where, as mentioned in chapter 4, Diane had already lived for several years. Dorothy was a longtime volunteer at the gift shop at the Center, and both women belonged to the Founders group. 11 Cynthia—­a well-­educated, well-­traveled former journalist in her eighties—­entered a nursing home on Medicaid due to lack of financial resources. As a Medicaid recipient, she had an allowance of fifty dollars a month out of her social security benefits and pension. While her basic needs (e.g., room and board and nursing care) were taken care of, this amount was barely enough to cover incidentals such as birthday cards for her family, postage to send them, and snacks from the vending machine. She was quite philosophical about this situation and made it known that she would like to receive grape tomatoes in summertime and chocolate in colder weather to snack on. Luckily, visitors did not mind her requests because the octogenarian, who retained her keen mind and deep interest in life, reciprocated by telling fascinating stories. 12 The frequency and the length of these visits depend on the degree of elders’ physical and mental deterioration and are determined by the care manager. Nurses may also visit those who have medical issues. 13 See note 7 in the introduction. 14 Pokkuri, which indicates a sudden and unexpected occurrence, also denotes a quick, painless demise. 15 This individual choice and personal preference that characterize intergenerational relationships in America seem to diminish the chance that a friendship with a parent will extend to include their children. During my initial research, I met a good number of Center participants’ adult children and came to know some of them well—­and even better during their parents’ illnesses and funerals or memorial services. But sometime after my interlocutors’ deaths, my relationships with elders’ relatives came to an end. This has not always been the case with some anthropologists who studied other cultures. For instance, for more than four decades, my husband had kept in touch with two Thai families who “adopted” him during his first fieldwork in the early 1960s. I came to know both families well during my first sojourn in Thailand in 1985–­1986 and continued to maintain close ties with members in the younger generations after my husband’s death (Tsuji 2010). 16 However, according to a survey on family estrangement by Karl Pillemer, 22 percent of people in his “nationally representative sample” said they had no contact with one of the members of their immediate family: a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or sister (Dickinson 2018).

Notes to Pages 121–132  •  201

17 D’vera Cohn and Jeffrey S. Passel, “A Record 64 Million Americans Live in Multigenerational Households,” Pew Research Center, April 5, 2018, accessed January 3, 2019, http://​www​.pewresearch​.org/​fact​-tank/​2018/​04/​05/​a​-record​-64​-million​ -americans​-live​-in​-multigenerational​-households/. 18 Almost 75 percent of baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 are white, while 56 percent of millennials born between 1981 and 1995 are white (Will 2019). 19 Well-­known people who brought their aging parent to live with them are Joe Biden (the former vice president), Hillary Clinton (the former secretary of state), and A. Barry Rand (the former chief executive officer of AARP; Cook and Remick 2007; Hansen 2009). Michelle Obama’s mother lived with the First Family at the White House during Barack Obama’s presidency. 20 Cohn and Passel, “Americans in Multigenerational Households.” 21 However, as discussed, in most cases, it was the eldest son’s wife who assumed the care of elderly family members. 22 Because parents more often live with the daughter’s family rather than the son’s, it is not unusual to see a single residence displaying two name plates at the front door or gate with two different family names: one with the surname of the daughter’s husband and the other with that of the parent.

Chapter 6  Temporal Complexity in Older Americans’ Lives This chapter is based on my (2005) article “Time Is Not Up: Temporal Complexity of Older Americans’ Lives,” from the Journal of Cross-­cultural Gerontology. I have since added information based on further research, a review of literature, and comparison with Japanese temporality. I appreciate the permission granted by the copyright holder, Springer Nature, for allowing me to include the reworked article. 1 As culture is imbued with contradictions and complexities, the positive views of old age in Japan have coexisted with negative views throughout history (Tsuji 1997a). A hanging scroll from the Muromachi period (1338–­1573) depicts oi no saka, or a slope of aging, similar to the steps of life in figures 6 and 7, with an ascent peaked in midlife and a steady descent thereafter to the debility of old age and death (Formanek 1992, 242–­243). Jason Danely proposes a different interpretation of oi no saka in the Kumano Mandala (a visual and spiritual representation of the universe), in which an elderly woman represents “a picture not of decline at all, but of completion, perfection” (2014, 65). 2 Interestingly, while the phrase keeping busy is frequently used for older Americans, preretirement Americans are more likely to be described as being busy or being too busy. In Japan, isogashii, or being busy, is used for both. 3 By contrast, Mariko Fujita found the continuity of the work ethic in older Americans’ volunteer service, in which responsibility, commitment, and determination played an important role as in their preretirement jobs (2004, 203–­205). 4 One month before her death, I visited Diane and found her as lucid as she had been before her rapid decline had forced her to withdraw from activities and stay glued to her room. Some Center participants said such rebounding before death was not unusual among elders. 5 This statement seems to contradict Mariko Fujita’s (2004) observation that elderly Japanese do not regard their activities as work like older Americans do (see chapter 1). However, in Traphagan’s (2000) book, the term “a form of work” refers

202  •  Notes to Pages 132–142

6 7

8

9 10

11 12

13

14

to his analysis of the situation. It does not necessarily mean that his informants regard their activities as work. The use of activities as a form of therapy and as a means of self-­fulfillment and self-­expression also apply to Japanese elders. The difference is the much greater importance of activities as a means of social integration in Japan than in America. This approach to time is not unusual in Japan, not only because the boundary between one’s time and others’ time is often blurred but also because there is a hierarchy in time ownership, and who has the first claim on one’s time is influenced by his or her relationships with others and position within the group (Tsuji 2006b). Another example is “ill-­derly” and “well-­derly” (Moody 2009, 68). Lamb, Robbins-­ Ruszkowski, and Corwin argue that such binary divisions of elders are “expressions of the . . . ageist culture, . . . signifying that it is not okay to be old” (2017, 13). The Japanese government uses chronological age to dichotomize elders: those aged seventy-­five and older are kōki kōreisha, or elders in the latter phase of senescence, and are distinguished from those under seventy-­five. The bathroom in the lobby of a senior apartment in Winston County had a basket of condoms with a sign that read, “I Love [heart symbol] Safe Sex.” The regulation change since then allows widows and widowers to receive their late spouses’ social security benefits if their remarriage occurs after age sixty. But according to Klinenberg, “A startlingly low 2 percent of elderly widows and 20 percent of elderly widowers ever remarry.” He attributes this remarkable gender disparity to the availability of mates: “At ages sixty-­five and above there are about three women for every two men, and three women for every one man at ages eighty-­five and above” (2012, 162). Some women at Lake District Senior Center offered another reason. While many widows said they missed having a male companion to go to a movie, eat out, or just talk with, they were not eager to remarry because they did not want to take care of an ailing husband again and they enjoyed doing things in their own terms after making the adjustment to widowhood. During my research of three decades, I did not encounter any elders who had face lifts. But to solve an obesity problem, one of my interlocutors had bariatric surgery to have part of her stomach removed. On age and colors of clothes in Japan, Gail Lee Bernstein discovered that red and pink were inappropriate after age forty, and women in their thirties could not wear dark green rain boots because they were for grandmothers (1996, 17). But such age-­ based dress codes have been changing. It is not unusual today to see older Japanese women wearing bright-­colored clothes. Robert Butler also refutes the view of reminiscence as a sign of senility. He argues that the life review is important for older people because it may “provide a more valid picture, giving new and significant meanings to one’s life” and it “may also prepare one for death, mitigating one’s fears” (1968, 489–­490). At the same time, he notes that the outcome of the life review may not always be adaptive. To some individuals, it may increase rigidity instead of self-­awareness and flexibility (490). Kastenbaum explains it in terms of the private nature of the past: “The present moment is consensual; public; we share in it. We also have potentiality for sharing the future together.” By contrast, the past elderly people “[dwell] on” is not accessible to younger people, nor can the young to be a part of it. This private quality of the past tends to generate feelings of suspicion and resentment. In other words, talking about the past may isolate the old from the young (1966, 20). In contemporary

Notes to Pages 144–150  •  203

15

16

17

18 19 20 21 22 23

24

Japan, where many children now grow up in a nuclear household, elders face a similar issue with their children and grandchildren (e.g., Thang 2001). The relative insignificance of chronological age in older Americans’ self-­identity may reflect the lack of age-­specific models of behavior in American culture, as well as the fact that individual attributes play a more significant role than group memberships and relationships with others as in the case of Japanese identity. A large number of ordinary Japanese from all walks of life routinely write haiku or waka (thirty-­one-­syllable Japanese poem). They include retirees, elementary school pupils, prisoners, and homeless people. Some of them submit their poems to weekly haiku or waka columns in Japanese newspapers. Kikuo Sakai’s haiku quoted here was published in Asahi Shimbun. The Zen master approach means neither the avoidance of the future and its problems nor the neglect of future planning. It is a manifestation of elders’ intention to enjoy the freedom of retirement. Hence Zen masters “make room for the present” by avoiding using it as a step for the future, as well as by not “let[ting] concerns for the future control [their lives]” (Savishinsky 2000, 83). However, Zen masters do not neglect financial planning for the future. As Savishinsky writes, “The only planning issue that all retirees agreed on was to save and invest enough money during one’s working years to have financial security when they were over” (82). This may reflect two features of American culture: an emphasis on individuality and a lack of well-­defined models for aging. Because the accident, which totaled Diane’s car, was the other driver’s fault, she received a fair amount of compensation to buy a new car. Miraculously, she and Helen, who was also in the car, escaped any injury. Feng Mian came to America to go to graduate school and later became a U.S. citizen. The same determination to move forward was observed among the survivors of the 2011 tsunami in Japan who were faced with the enormity of the disaster and its losses (Gill, Steger, and Slater 2014). In such cases in Japan, Japanese banks require that the child (normally the son) cosign the mortgage. Unlike Americans, Japanese are known to be earnest savers. The 2014 government statistics show that among households of two or more members in which at least one member worked, the average amount of the household savings was 12,900,000 yen ($117,273 based on the exchange rate of $1 for 110 yen). The mean in the same year was 7,410,000 yen ($67,364; T. Fujita 2015, 115–­116). These numbers do not include the money in their pension and retirement accounts. But in recent years, saving for the future has grown harder for many Japanese, especially for the 40 percent of workforce who are on short-­term contracts without job security and benefits. In addition, poverty in old age is becoming common even among those who have worked throughout life because of enhanced longevity, more years of poor health and diminished self-­sufficiency, and changes in the family, which used to be the main source of eldercare (T. Fujita 2015). For traditional mortuary rituals in Japan and the changes they are undergoing, see Allison (2018), Kawano (2010), Suzuki (2000, 2013), Takaesu (2010), Tsuji (2006a, 2011, 2014a, 2018).

204  •  Notes to Pages 155–162

Chapter 7  Changes and Continuities over Thirty Years of Research 1 In this exchange, no one touched upon the privacy of the dying person discussed in chapter 3. 2 Susan Orpett Long notes that songenshi has varied meanings: “a decision to end one’s own life,” “an autonomous decision of a terminally ill patient to not receive treatment,” and “a process of decision making involving negotiation among family, health care workers, and the patient.” It “offers a basis for a negotiated withholding or withdrawal of treatment in the clinical setting” (2005, 115). 3 When Hirohito’s son, the former emperor Akihito, had surgery for prostate cancer in 2003, he was informed of the diagnosis. His cancer was also disclosed to the public according to his wishes (Asahi Shimbun 2019). 4 Rob Stein, “Life Expectancy in U.S. Drops for First Time in Decades, Report Finds,” NPR, December 8, 2016, accessed March 20, 2017, http://​www​.npr​.org/​ sections/​health​-shots/​2016/​12/​08/​504667607/​life​-expectancy​-in​-u​-s​-drops​-for​ -first​-time​-in​-decades​-report​-finds. 5 In addition to the dramatic increase of life expectancy and thus the older population, Jenkins says that ethnic diversification and disparities among older Americans also characterize “the new reality of aging” (2016, 22–­24). 6 Back then, the Center staff and volunteers used typewriters at the office. 7 The use of cell phones began in 1995, and the iPhone was unveiled in 2007. Facebook was launched in 2004. 8 “Get Help with Memorial Fundraising,” GoFundMe, accessed August 30, 2018, https://​www​.gofundme​.com/​start/​memorial​-fundraising. 9 There are both for-­profit and not-­for-­profit organizations that provide housing, programs, and services for seniors. Lake District Senior Center is a private nonprofit organization. So is the lifecare retirement community in Winston County. 10 A ger is a traditional, portable, and round-­shaped dwelling used by nomadic Mongolians. 11 The movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and its sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), tell the story of British retirees who move to India, where the cost of living is much lower. 12 Websites that offer such information include InternationalLiving​.com, ExpatExchange​.com, and numbeo​.com. An array of books is also available (e.g., Golson 2008, Todd 2016). 13 Robots, a relatively new addition to people’s life, have come to be accepted in Japan (Robertson 2018a). A pet robot, such as Sony’s robotic dog Aibo, become such an important part of the family that some owners hold a funeral when no repair can restore its “health” and it “dies” (Robertson 2018b, 183–­184). Eldercare by robots is believed to cause less anxiety than the kind provided by foreign workers (19, 144). 14 A long vacation is out of reach for most Japanese workers because it is hard to be away from work for an extended period, even though the law entitles them annually up to twenty days off. Most workers take their accumulated vacation leave all at once before retirement and stop reporting to work months before their last official day. Retirement makes long trips abroad finally possible for many Japanese. 15 Granny Pod (formerly called an echo house) was one of the two innovations to help elders that appeared during my initial fieldwork. Another was a reverse mortgage, a type of loan that brought a steady income to elderly homeowners by using the equity on their homes. Though both are available in Winston County today,

Notes to Pages 163–173  •  205

16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25

neither existed in the 1980s due to zoning regulations and because no banks were offering it. Chizuko Ueno, a well-­known Japanese sociologist, used this term to describe the shift. The beneficiaries of national long-­term care insurance also include those between forty and sixty-­four years of age who require long-­term care due to terminal cancer and debilitating illness, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Primogeniture means that the descent line is passed down through the eldest child, as in the case of the British monarchy. The traditional descent rule in Japan is male primogeniture, which designates the eldest son as the heir. The shift to self-­responsibility was promoted by a political crusade of the neoliberal Koizumi administration (2001–­2006) that restructured Japanese society by reducing assistance from the government and employers. See Itsuki (2017), Morotomi (2018), Shiga (2018), and Tamura (2018). Paradoxical as it may seem, the persistence of negative attitudes toward old age in America is manifested in a series of changes in the terms that denote people who are old in chronological age. When I started my research in the late 1980s, the elderly and senior citizens (or seniors) were commonly used in the media and academia, as well as among ordinary people. The term older Americans, rather than old Americans, was also used. Then in scholarly publications, elders began to appear to replace the elderly, which came to have more negative connotations. Elders originally referred to well-­respected older people—­usually men—­of wisdom and knowledge in primitive societies, but its new usage to indicate older people in general has also penetrated nonacademic circles. These changes in the use of the words may be an attempt not only to find a neutral term for the aged but also to achieve what Ros Altmann (2015) describes as “a fairer description that allows [elderly] people to be considered on their own merits, as individuals rather than social stereotypes.” Advocating for a nonjudgmental term for people over fifty, Altmann proposes “older adults.” A similar change in the terms for older people is occurring in Japan. Rōjin, or old people, has come to have negative connotations and is often replaced by kōreisha, or people of advanced age. Failure to do so was one of the major factors that led to the closure of a neighborhood senior center in New York City (Weil 2014). Throughout this book, I use Lake District Senior Center to avoid confusion. Lifelong is now the DBA (doing-­business-­as) name, but the official name of the organization that operates it remains Winston County Senior Citizens Council. The annual individual membership fee in 2017 was twenty-­five dollars, and the household membership was forty dollars. For instance, the fee for exercise programs in 2017 was five dollars for one class or thirty dollars a month to take an unlimited number of classes.

Conclusion 1 Andy Rooney was a writer who is best known for appearing at the conclusion of the CBS program 60 Minutes from 1978 until 2011 in a segment called “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.” 2 These variables may not always be compatible with each other either, which also heightens the complexity. For instance, an individual may have to abandon his or

206  •  Notes to Pages 174–176

3

4

5 6

7 8

9

10

11

her (personal) wish to give a wedding gift as the (social and personal) convention requires due to lack of (economic) resources. Old age in Japan also reflects the complexity of the cultural system and culture-­ people relationships. For instance, elders’ entitlement for care is in conflict with another Japanese norm, not to burden others (meiwaku o kakenai). The traditional three-­generation family is double-­edged, both a source of care and a source of distress (e.g., intrafamilial conflicts). Japanese culture also provides two opposing views of older people: as the weak and the vulnerable on the one hand and the wise and the powerful on the other. Hence following cultural guidance inevitably involves negotiation even if people may make this negotiation spontaneously or unconsciously. When an exposure to a foreign culture occurs in one’s early years, it may be a different story. Kikokushijo, or young Japanese who grew up in a foreign country and returned to Japan, are often called “half Japanese,” “strange Japanese,” or “half-­baked Japanese” (R. Goodman 1990, 59). The Japanese original is “Amerika ni kikaseshi nochi no hōjitsu wa mi wa ‘iku’ naredo kokoro wa ‘kaeru.’” After my marriage in 1984, I learned that yardwork was traditionally the husband’s job in America, which I did not know because the domestic sphere was the woman’s responsibility in Japan and caring for the Japanese garden in my parents’ home required the expertise of professional gardeners. When marriage brought me from a student’s apartment near campus to suburbia in the mid-­1980s, I saw men mowing lawns and trimming hedges. On the subject of not following this tradition, my husband often said he was the only man in the neighborhood who had a Japanese gardener. In Japan, furo refers to the place where people bathe and is separated from benjo, where a toilet is. Billie Jean Isbell writes about a similar experience in the public bath in Peru, where Inca women stripped to the waist while they covered their backsides with underskirts. Though Isbell understood the cultural differences in sexual mores (breasts, which are sexual in America, are not in Peru), she found she “couldn’t go into a public area with [her] breasts uncovered” (2009, 180). Bathing young children is frequently the father’s role, though mothers also undertake this task. Fathers’ cobathing with daughters continues until some years after they reach school age. While bathing together, parents or other adults wash young children and, when they grow big enough, teach them how to wash themselves. A few years after moving to America, I learned that this was not only unusual in America but abhorred by some. To wash her seven-­year-­old daughter’s hair, my American girlfriend took off her clothes and got into the bathtub with her so that getting wet would not matter. She said her neighbors reacted to this with embarrassment and disapproval. The average life expectancy of Americans in 2015 was 76.5 for men and 81.2 for women (Rob Stein, “Life Expectancy in U.S. Drops for First Time in Decades, Report Finds,” NPR, December 8, 2016, accessed March 10, 2017, http://​www​.npr​ .org/​sections/​health​-shots/​2016/​12/​08/​504667607/​life​-expectancy​-in​-u​-s​-drops​ -for​-first​-time​-in​-decades​-report​-finds). A large number of Americans have a little or no savings for retirement due to the decline in employer-­sponsored retirement plans and the increase in low-­paying jobs without fringe benefits. A survey shows that one in three Americans has saved

Notes to Pages 176–181  •  207

12 13

14 15

16 17

18 19 20

21

no money for retirement (Elissa Kirkham, “1 in 3 Americans Has Saved $0 for Retirement,” Money, March 14, 2016, accessed March 10, 2017, http://​money​.com/​ money/​4258451/​retirement​-savings​-survey). The term elder orphan epitomizes loneliness and isolation among older Americans. In 2017, drug overdoses killed 70,237 Americans (Brandus 2019). Almost 12 million Medicare patients (nearly one-­third) were prescribed opioid painkillers by their physicians in 2015 “for all different types of pain . . . that become more common in later life” (Miller 2017). Hospital gowns are not covered by insurance, so many Japanese patients bring their own sleeping ware. My mother rented hers from the hospital. Poverty among older Japanese is becoming a serious social problem. Approximately half of the nearly 6 million elders living alone have an income below the poverty level. Among them, only 700,000 receive public welfare benefits (NHK Special Report Team 2015, 1–­2). Meager retirement income and no or little savings have also generated many underclass elders, some of whom have nobody to rely on. They include people who had continuously worked and had maintained a relatively stable life until retirement (T. Fujita 2015). Ceylan Yeginsu, “U.K. Appoints a Minister for Loneliness,” New York Times, January 17, 2018, accessed June 17, 2018, https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2018/​01/​17/​world/​ europe/​uk​-britain​-loneliness​.html. A stay of six months is the maximum for many hospices in the United States. The hospice where my husband spent his last days allowed residents to stay longer if they showed signs of decline. A few residents spent almost a year there before their deaths. The Japanese original of his waka is “Hatsutaiken bakariga tsuzuku oi no michi tekisuto nashino tesuto ga tsuzuku.” “Elder Orphans,” Facebook, accessed December 18, 2018, https://​www​.facebook​ .com/​groups/​elderorphans/. Another reason for hope lies in the evolutionary advantage of human senescence. Japanese biologist Shin’ichi Fukuoka (2017) argues that humans are the only animal that can live three decades after losing reproductive functions and that “old age” plays a vital role in sustaining survival by passing the experience, knowledge, and wisdom to the next generation in a way that is different from genetics. Fukuoka’s comment was made to refute former governor of Tokyo Shintatō Ishihara’s assertion that “the most harmful thing brought by civilization is grannies. It is wasteful and criminal that women continue to live after losing their reproductive ability.” Contrary to the former governor’s belief, Fukuoka maintains that it is grandpas and grannies that made the birth of civilization possible. While Pauline’s physical decline was a major reason she gave up gardening, she also took into consideration the high likelihood that she would move to a retirement home and her realtor’s advice that making her property low maintenance would make it easier to sell.

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Index Page numbers in italics indicate figures or tables. AARP, 16–­17, 121, 162, 190n31 Achenbaum, W. Andrew, 16, 127 Ackerman, Diane, 149 activism, and American elders, 16–­17, 162, 190n31 activities, and American elders: about, 27, 27, 28, 28, 51; art classes/creativity, 29–­30, 31, 33, 37, 167, 191n3; exercise classes, 39, 48–­49, 65, 167; financial costs, 45, 192n22; gardening, 62–­63, 102, 104, 109–­110, 147, 181, 207n21; health-­and-­ wellness programs, 48–­49; open/voluntary participation, 49, 51; recognition, 28, 38–­40, 46, 83, 192nn14–­17; reminiscence, 40–­43, 46, 141, 142, 192nn18–­19, 202n14; Senior Circuit, 48, 193nn28–­29; social engagement, 28–­30, 35, 48, 191n2; successful aging paradigm, 132, 165; technology, 47–­48; “therapy,” 35–­36, 37, 132, 191n9, 202n6; thriftiness, 43–­45, 192n21; uselessness/productive elders, 30, 34–­35; “work,” 28–­29, 30–­31, 31, 32, 33, 34–­35, 191n5 activity theory, 20, 22, 27, 190nn36–­37. See also activities, and American elders age-­heterogeneous communities, 90, 101, 103, 142, 196n5, 197n16 age-­homogeneous communities, 42, 46, 90, 116, 142, 192n23, 193n1 ageism, 16–­17, 162, 190nn31–­32 ageless self, 140, 144, 145, 203n15

agency, 8, 159, 197n11 age-­related decline, and American elders: about, 59, 165–­166, 178, 181–­182, 207n21; acceptance, 140, 166; actions and activities, 193n30; core values, 163; gerontological studies, 20, 116, 158, 165; negative meaning of aging and, 21; “ought” and “is” negotiation, 10, 22, 24, 171, 174, 178, 181; solutions, 22, 171, 172 age-­related decline, and Japanese elders, 161, 163, 178 ages/longevity: American elders, 34, 46, 162, 176, 189nn24–­26, 191n4, 192n23, 206n10; Japanese elders, 106, 198n29 Akihito, Emperor Emeritus of Japan, 204n3 Allison, Anne, 122, 126, 163, 164 Alzheimer’s disease: American elders, 100, 104, 162, 167; Japanese elders, 106, 107, 125 American culture: about, 7, 17–­18, 19, 21, 173–­174, 188n14; ambivalence about aging, 46–­47; bathing and, 175, 176, 206n9; communitywide exchange, 86–­87; core values, 163, 164; cross-­ cultural differences, 1–­4, 187nn1–­2; cultural mutation, 174, 175–­176, 206nn8–­9; culture-­people relationships, 174, 206n4; egalitarianism, 45, 46, 51, 81, 82, 87; illness and, 56, 72–­73, 100, 104, 162, 167, 193n2; individualism, 7, 20–­21, 81, 188n10; interdependence, 124, 223

224 • Index

American culture (continued) 126, 164, 180; motherhood, 2, 187n2; personhood/“permanent personhood,” 2, 20, 140, 143, 165, 170, 187n2; privacy, 60, 76, 119, 123; retirement, 16, 17; self-­worth/ self-­image, 18, 21, 22, 37, 132, 202n6; social engagement, 82–­84, 87, 195n17, 196n22; social unit described, 112; suicide, 9; support systems, 79, 195nn13–­14. See also autonomy, and American culture; dependence, and American culture; family, and American culture; independence, and American culture; individual choice; negative meaning of aging, and American culture; privacy, and American culture; self-­reliance, and American culture; youth, and American culture American elders: accommodation by health-­care professionals, 57–­58; activism and, 16–­17, 162, 190n31; ages/ longevity, 34, 46, 162, 176, 189nn24–­26, 191n4, 192n23, 206n10; ambivalence about aging, 46–­47; antiaging, as term of use, 180–­181; changes in culture of aging, 161–­163, 164; changes in terms for people, 205n21; dependence and, 63–­64, 80, 81–­83, 195n17; discontinuity in lives, 50–­51; employment data, 34; extrafamilial assistance, 114, 162, 164, 174; independence and, 7, 8, 18, 20, 21, 165; individual choice and, 81, 165, 195n15; knowledge about old age, 170; loneliness, 12, 35, 176, 191n9, 207n12; as natural resource, 182; opioid addiction, 176, 207n13; “ought” and “is” negotiation, 10, 22, 24, 171, 174, 178, 181; pioneers in frontier model, 24, 170, 176–­181, 182, 191n42; postretirement togetherness, 35–­36, 37; poverty rate, 45, 178; privacy, 60, 72, 73–­74, 76, 175; self-­responsibility and, 165, 167; self-­worth/self-­image, 37; senior/senior citizen as term of use, 46–­47, 144–­145, 167; social engagement, 21, 26–­27, 67; social isolation and, 12, 35, 159, 171, 179, 207n12; social media, 48, 109, 118, 158, 159, 180; social status, 18, 21, 46; technology, 47–­48, 158–­159, 180, 204nn6–­7. See also activities, and American elders; American culture; autonomy, and American

culture; dying/death, and American elders; housing and living arrangements, and American elders; intergenerational interactions, and American elders; mutual support, and American elders; networks, and American elders; new reality of aging, and American elders; peer groups, and American elders; positive meaning of aging, and American elders; services and institutions, and American elders; successful aging paradigm, and American elders; support, and American elders; time, and American elders Anderson, Barbara, 17, 18, 21, 22, 42, 117, 142, 171 anshin (comfort), 161 anthropological studies, 1, 3, 8, 18–­19, 23, 187n5, 189n20 antiaging, as term of use, 180–­181 art classes/creativity, and American elders, 29–­30, 31, 33, 37, 167, 191n3 Aulino, Felicity, 117 auspicious birthdays, and Japanese culture: beiju (eighty-­eighth birthday), 6; events for aging, 11–­12; jibunshi (history of self ) and, 42; kanreki (sixtieth birthday), 6, 129, 190n33; kiju (seventy-­seventh birthday), 6; koki (seventieth birthday), 6, 146; sanju (eightieth birthday), 6; sotsuju (ninetieth birthday), 6 autonomy, and American culture: about, 8; housing and living arrangements, 93, 102; illness and, 73; individual autonomy, 126, 196n24; networks and, 67, 80, 81–­82, 87, 88; self-­help and, 60, 61, 63, 65, 80 baby boomers, in America: consumerism, 160; elderly population, 158, 165; financial resources for retirement, 149; population data, 201n18 baby boomers, in Japan: postretirement togetherness, 36; single-­person and conjugal households, 107, 199n1; three-­ generation/multigenerational household, 108 Bateson, Mary Catherine, 87, 98, 99, 195n17 bathing, and American culture, 175, 176, 206n9. See also co-­bathing Befu, Harumi, 83, 115, 188n7, 195n9

Index  •  225

beiju (eighty-­eighth birthday), 6 Bellah, Robert J., 18, 118 Benedict, Ruth, 5, 23, 191n40–­41 benjo (place for toilet), 206n7 Bernstein, Gail Lee, 148, 202n12 Bestor, Theodore C., 49, 74 boshi shinjū (mother-­child double suicide), 8–­9, 188n15–­16 Bourdieu, Pierre, 19, 150, 163 Browning, Robert, 193n25 Buch, Elana D., 104, 165, 200n9 Bush, George W., 37, 139 Butler, Robert N., 202n13 Cerroni-­Long, E. L., 22, 174, 176 Chinese culture, 79–­80, 81 Clark, Margaret, 17, 18, 21, 117, 142, 150 Clark, Scott, 175 Climo, Jacob, 18, 113 co-­bathing, 175, 176, 206nn7–­9 COFA (County Office for Aging), 39, 104, 195n11 Cohen, Lawrence, 116, 163, 190n34 Confucianism, and filial piety, 8, 107 consumerism, 158, 159–­160, 161, 165, 204n9, 204n13 Corwin, Anna I., 116, 124, 202n8 County Office for Aging (COFA), 39, 104, 195n11 culture: adaptive strategies and, 21, 87, 88, 172, 173, 176, 180, 205n2; Chinese culture, 79–­80, 81; core values, 163, 164; cultural mutation, 174, 175–­176, 206nn8–­9; culture-­people relationships, 23, 174, 206n4; interpersonal relationships, 10, 22, 23, 190n39; symbolic representations, 9–­10, 74, 125–­126, 189n18–­19; theories, 1, 3, 8, 18–­19, 23, 187n5, 188nn11–­14, 189n20. See also American culture; Japanese culture Cumming, Elaine, 20, 82, 171 D’Andrade, Roy, 19, 24, 140, 173 Danely, Jason, 150, 188n9, 201n1 death/dying, and American elders. See dying/death, and American elders deculturation, 22, 171 dependence, and American culture: elders and, 63–­64, 80, 81–­83, 195n17;

independence accommodation and, 87–­88, 124, 126, 172–­173 dependence/entitlement for dependency, and Japanese elders, 5, 10, 64–­65, 82, 125–­126, 195n16, 206n3 disengagement theory, 20–­21, 22, 82, 171, 190n37 Dowd, James J., 21, 82, 83 dying/death, and American elders: about, 176, 177; death notices/obituaries, 71, 194nn3–­4; dignity, 73, 156; funerals and memorial services, 154; good death, 73, 154–­156, 176–­177; hospices, 73–­74, 90, 92, 118, 177, 196n5, 207n17; hospice services, 149, 156; illness and death protocols, 56, 193n2; limbo between life and death, 156, 177; postmortem affairs, 177–­178; preparation for death, 154, 155; privacy, 73–­74, 159, 204n1; slow or sudden death, 155; take charge of death, 139–­140, 157 dying/death, and Japanese elders: disclosure of terminal illness, 112, 157, 204n3; endingu nōto (note to prepare for end of life), 156–­157; family’s role, 112, 157; funerals, 74, 75, 154; good death, 73; infōmudo konsento (informed consent), 157; kōden (incense money), 75, 195n10; limbo between life and death, 156–­157, 179; notification of death, 75, 194n7; pinpin korori [pokkuri] (quick, painless death), 156; pokkuri (sudden and unexpected occurrence, or quick, painless death), 118, 156, 200n14; protocols, 75, 154, 193n2, 195nn8–­10; solitary death, 6, 179; songenshi (death with dignity), 156, 204n2; tsuki-­tōban (resident who distributes information to community), 74, 195n8 egalitarianism, 45, 46, 51, 81, 82, 87 Ekerdt, David J., 27, 131, 134 elder orphan, 207n12 elders. See American elders; Japanese elders endingu nōto (note to prepare for end of life), 156–­157 entitlement for dependency/dependence, and Japanese elders, 5, 10, 64–­65, 82, 125–­126, 195n16, 206n3 Etō, Jun, 72 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 135, 136

226 • Index

extrafamilial assistance: about, 174; American elders, 114, 162, 164, 174; Japanese elders, 122, 124–­125, 174, 178, 179 Facebook, 159, 180. See also social media, and American elders family, and American culture: housing and living arrangements, 93, 99–­100, 197n17; support and, 109–­110, 112, 199nn2–­5 family, and Japanese culture: family as social unit, 9, 112, 157; housing and living arrangements, 6, 153; support and, 124 filial piety (oyakōkō), 5, 7, 8, 107, 122, 188n7 financial resources for retirement, and American elders: about, 176, 206n11; housing and living arrangements, 93, 122, 124; intergenerational interactions, 119; medical bills, 178; nursing homes and, 115, 200n11; plans for future and, 146, 203n17; self-­reliance and, 116; senior citizen discounts, 55, 83, 84–­85, 145, 162; social engagement and, 82; thriftiness, 44, 45 financial resources for retirement, and Japanese elders, 161 Formanek, Susanne, 201n1 Freedman, Marc, xii, 135, 182 frontier or pioneers model, 24, 170, 176–­181, 182, 191n42 Fry, Christine L., 5, 10, 82, 125, 126, 190n37 Fujita, Mariko, 30, 201n3, 201n5 Fukuoka, Shin’ichi, 207n20 furo (place for bath), 206n7 Geertz, Clifford, 8, 23, 163, 173, 188n11 giri (reciprocal obligation), 163 globalization, 158, 160, 204nn10–­11, 204n14 Gray Panthers, 16–­17, 162, 190n31, 192n24 Gubrium, Jaber, F., 83, 116, 131, 136, 146 Gullette, Margaret M., 17 Haber, Carole, 16, 120, 127 haiku (seventeen-­syllable Japanese poem), 146, 203n16 Hall, Edward T., 132 Hallowell, A. Irving, 134 Hashimoto, Akiko, 47, 65, 125 Hazan, Haim, 35, 61, 129, 152 Henry, William, 20, 82, 171

herupā (eldercare workers), 117, 200n12 Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (1901–­1989), 112, 157 Hockschild, Arlie Russell, 18, 42, 52, 190n37 housing and living arrangements, and American elders: with adult children, 91, 92, 94, 196n7; age-­heterogeneous communities/housing, 90, 101, 103, 196n5, 197n16; age-­homogeneous communities, 42, 46, 90, 116, 142, 192n23, 193n1; Alzheimer’s disease, 100; assisted living facilities, 90, 101, 104, 113, 114, 162, 196–­197n7, 198n26; autonomy, 93; consumerism, 159–­160, 204n9; data, 90, 91, 92, 92, 92–­93, 196nn4–­5; family nearby, 93, 99–­100, 197n17; Granny Pod, 162, 204n15; health and physical ability, 93, 94, 99, 100, 102, 103; homecare helpers, 77, 93, 103, 122; home sharing, 94, 197n11; home-­space adjustments, 93–­94; hospices, 90, 92, 177, 196n5; lifecare retirement communities, 104, 105, 148, 192n14, 196–­197n7, 198nn23–­24, 198n26, 204n9; maintenance of houses, 90, 95, 101, 103; neighbors and, 93, 99, 103; nursing homes, 92, 114–­116, 162, 196n7, 200nn9–­11; personal emergency response system (PERS), 93; places of residence, 90, 91, 196n3; senior housing, 93, 94, 99, 101, 104, 197n16, 198nn26–­27; single-­ person and conjugal households, 90, 92, 93, 94, 196n6, 196n7, 197n9; telecare, 77, 78, 93, 136. See also housing and living arrangements, and American mobility; housing and living arrangements, and American mobility data housing and living arrangements, and American mobility: about, 98, 99; age-­heterogeneous housing, 101, 103; autonomy, 102; climate, 100–­101; downsizing possessions, 98–­99, 197n15; family nearby, 99–­100, 197n17; geographical relocation, 97, 97, 99; health and physical ability, 100, 102, 103, 197n18; homecare helpers, 103, 104; independence, 102, 104, 107; individual choice, 103, 104–­105, 107; lifecare retirement communities, 104, 105, 198nn23–­24, 198n26; maintenance of houses, 95,

Index  •  227

101, 102; multiple moves, 95, 97–­98, 98; new houses, 102, 103; nonmovers, 98, 103–­104, 198nn21–­25; nursing homes, 101–­102, 103; senior housing, 99, 101, 104, 114, 198nn26–­27; village movement, 104, 198n25. See also housing and living arrangements, and American elders housing and living arrangements, and American mobility data: about, 94, 103, 197nn13–­14, 197n19, 198n20; movers, 94, 95, 96, 97, 97–­98, 98, 101, 197n12, 197n18; nonmovers, 94, 95, 97, 100–­101. See also housing and living arrangements, and American mobility housing and living arrangements, and Japanese culture: family nearby, 6, 153; single-­ person and conjugal households, 49, 106, 125, 126, 153, 164, 178. See also three-­ generation/multigenerational household, and Japanese elders housing and living arrangements, and Japanese elders: group homes, 106, 198n32; homecare helpers, 122–­123, 124–­125; institutions, 122, 125; interdependence, 107; intergenerational dependency, 107; kaigo rōjin hoken shisetsu [rōken] (elder care facility for rehabilitation), 107, 199n35; keihi rōjin hōmu (old people’s homes with small fee), 47, 106–­107; rōrō kaigo (older people taking care of older people), 106, 107, 122; sābisu tsuki kōreisha muke jūtaku [sakōjū] (senior apartments with care services), 106–­107; senior housing, 122, 124–­125, 193n27; single-­person and conjugal households, 49, 90, 105, 106, 157, 164, 196n2; tokubetsu yōgo rōjin hōmu [tokuyō] (public nursing homes), 106, 107, 198n34, 199n35; yūryō rōjin hōmu (retirement homes with substantial fee), 47, 106–­107. See also three-­g eneration/multigenerational household, and Japanese elders Housing and Urban Development Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 162 ibasho (place one belongs to), 179 ie (three-­generation household): corporate unit, 123, 196n1; rules and changes, 124, 196n1. See also three-­generation/

multigenerational household, and Japanese elders illness, and American culture, 56, 72–­73, 100, 104, 162, 167, 193n2 illness, and Japanese culture: Alzheimer’s disease, 106, 107, 125; disclosure of diagnosis, 112, 157, 204n3; norms and protocols, 72, 193n2, 195nn8–­9 independence, and American culture: about, 4, 7; dependence accommodation, 87–­88, 124, 126, 172–­173; elders and, 7, 8, 18, 20, 21, 165; housing and living arrangements, 46, 102, 104, 107; networks, 81–­82; postretirement togetherness and, 36; self-­help, 60–­62, 63–­64, 65, 194n3; self-­reliance, 65, 163; successful aging paradigm and, 165, 171; support and, 114, 115–­117, 123–­124, 126 individual autonomy, and Japanese culture, 126, 196n24 individual choice, and American culture: about, 51; elders and, 81, 165, 195n15; housing and living arrangements, 46, 104–­105, 107; intergenerational autonomy and, 118, 137; networks and, 80–­81, 84, 87, 120; successful aging paradigm and, 165; support and, 118, 119, 200n15 infōmudo konsento (informed consent), 157 interdependence, and American culture, 124, 126, 164, 180 interdependence, and Japanese culture: about, 4, 7, 8, 20, 75; delayed reciprocity, 5, 65, 124, 125; housing and living arrangements for elders, 107; individual autonomy and, 126, 196n24 intergenerational autonomy, and American elders: about, 7, 43, 59, 116–­117; individual choice, 118, 137; support versus, 117, 118, 120; three-­generation/multigenerational household versus, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124 intergenerational dependency, and American elders, 119–­120, 124, 162 intergenerational dependency, and Japanese elders: about, 194n6; ambivalence about aging, 64; entitlement for dependency, 5, 10; housing and living arrangements, 7, 107; intergenerational interactions, 59; three-­generation/multigenerational household, 49, 106, 122, 123, 201nn21–­22

228 • Index

intergenerational interactions, and American elders: age-­homogeneous communities, 42; mutual support, 59; privacy and, 76; social media, 109; support and, 57, 113, 118–­119, 120–­121, 200n15; visibility of aging experience, 109, 170, 180 Isbell, Billie Jean, 206n8 Ishihara, Shintatō, 207n20 Ishihara, Yūjirō, 157 Itō, Hiromi, 117 Japanese culture: about, 19, 188n14; ambivalence about aging, 47, 58–­59, 64–­65, 129, 201n1, 207n20; co-­bathing, 175, 176, 206n7, 206n9; core values, 163, 164; cross-­ cultural differences, 1–­4, 187nn1–­2; cultural mutation, 174, 175–­176, 206nn8–­9; culture-­people relationships, 174, 206n4; gendered division of labor, 36, 175, 191nn11–­12; housing and living arrangements, 89, 105, 196n1, 198n28; individual autonomy, 126, 196n24; intergenerational contacts, 108, 109, 199n1; jiko sekinin (self-­ responsibility), 164, 178, 194n6, 205n19; motherhood, 2, 187n2; negotiation and, 206n3; personhood, 132, 187n2, 188n15, 202n6; self-­reliance, 164; social engagement, 82, 195n16, 196n22; social unit described, 9, 112, 117, 157, 199n6; suicide, 8–­9, 10, 188n15–­16, 189n17, 189n21; support systems, 78, 80, 81, 88, 195n12; youth/ youthfulness and, 58, 64, 65, 126. See also auspicious birthdays, and Japanese culture; family, and Japanese culture; housing and living arrangements, and Japanese culture; illness, and Japanese culture; interdependence, and Japanese culture; single-­person and conjugal households, and Japanese culture Japanese elders: about, 4–­6, 182, 188nn7–­9, 207n20; activities programs, 193n27; age-­related decline and, 161, 163, 178; ages/longevity, 106, 198n29; aging in place, 106, 122–­123; Alzheimer’s disease, 106, 107, 125; changes in culture of aging, 163–­164, 205nn16–­19; consumerism, 161; dependence/entitlement for dependency, 5, 10, 64–­65, 82, 125–­126, 195n16, 206n3; events for aging, 11–­12; exercise,

65, 194n7; extrafamilial assistance, 122, 124–­125, 174, 178, 179; financial resources for retirement and, 161; integrated into society, 20, 23–­24, 50, 190n39; jiko sekinin (self-­responsibility), 164, 178; loneliness, 49, 164, 179; as natural resource, 207n20; new reality of aging and, 160–­161, 204nn13–­14; pioneers in frontier model, 178, 179, 180, 182; postretirement togetherness, 36–­37, 191nn11–­12, 192n13; poverty and, 6, 178, 207n15; self-­help/self-­reliance and, 123, 164; senior citizens groups, 4, 49–­50, 51, 193nn31–­32; social isolation, 6, 49; successful aging and, 132; suicide, 10, 189n21; technology and, 161, 179, 204n13; terms of use, 205n21; three K’s, 164. See also dying/death, and Japanese elders; housing and living arrangements, and Japanese elders; ie (three-­generation household); intergenerational dependency, and Japanese elders; Japanese culture; long-­term care insurance, and Japanese elders; services and institutions, and Japanese elders; single-­person and conjugal households, and Japanese elders; support, and Japanese elders; three-­ generation/multigenerational household, and Japanese elders; time, and Japanese elders Japanese elders, and terms of use: karyū rōjin (underclass elders), 58; kenrō shakai (society of hating elders), 58; kōki kōreisha (elders in latter phase of aging), 202n8; kōreisha (people of advanced age), 205n21; monsutā rōjin (monster elders), 58; rōjin (old people), 205n21 Jenkins, Jo Ann, 17, 19, 157, 158, 160, 204n5 jibunshi (history of self ), 42 jichikai (neighborhood association), 49, 193n31 jiko sekinin (self-­responsibility), 164, 178, 194n6 jinsei (life), 160 Jong, Erica, 17, 18 jukunen rikon (divorce among couples in long marriage), 36–­37 kaigo rishoku (quitting job to care for family members), 124

Index  •  229

kaigo rōjin hoken shisetsu [rōken] (elder care facility for rehabilitation), 107, 199n35 kakochō (book of the past), 142 kane (money), 164 kanreki (sixtieth birthday), 6, 129, 190n33 karyū rōjin (underclass elders), 58 Kastenbaum, Robert, 150, 202n14 kateinai rikon (separate lives in same house without legal divorce), 37 Katz, Stephen, 131, 158, 165, 190n37, 193n26 Kaufman, Sharon R., 144, 145, 177, 187n5 keihi rōjin hōmu (old people’s homes with small fee), 47, 106–­107 Keith, Jennie, 18, 46, 69, 137, 154, 187n5, 190n34 Keller, Helen, 189n19 kenkō (health), 164 kenkō jumyō (life span of health and ability for normal life), 106, 126 kenrō shakai (society of hating elders), 58 Khun, Maggie, 190n31 ki (courteous sensitivities, [ki o tsukau, to use ki]), 64–­65, 126, 194n5 kiju (seventy-­seventh birthday), 6 kikoku shijo (young returnees from abroad), 206n4 kintore (muscle training), 65, 194n7 Klinenberg, Eric, 93, 119, 202n10 kōden (incense money), 75, 195n10 kodoku (loneliness/solitude), 164, 179 kodokushi (solitary death), 179 Kojima, Sugamo, 125 koki (seventieth birthday), 6, 146 kōki kōreisha (elders in latter phase of aging), 202n8 kōreisha (older people), 205n21 Krout, John A., 12, 110, 162 Lake District Senior Center: fieldwork, 4, 11–­15, 187n3, 189nn24–­25, 190nn28–­29; funds/financial resources, 13, 48, 85–­87, 169, 205nn24–­25; Lifelong, 46, 144–­145, 205n23; locations, 13, 189n27; rebranding and, 166–­167, 169, 205nn22–­23; sixty-­fifth anniversary, 168, 169; voluntary associations and, 12, 169; Winston County Senior Citizens Council, 11, 44, 60, 189n22, 192n20, 205n23

Lamb, Sarah, 17, 114, 116, 117, 124, 140, 173, 180, 202n8 Leach, Edmund, 151, 152 Lebra, Takie, 10, 64, 125, 126 Lifelong, 46, 144–­145, 205n23. See also Lake District Senior Center Lodge, David, 117 Loe, Meika, 18, 165, 166, 172 loneliness: American elders, 12, 35, 176, 191n9, 207n12; Japanese elders, 49, 164, 179 Long, Susan Orpett, 36, 125, 157, 204n2 long-­term care insurance, and Japanese elders: aging in place, 106; beneficiaries, 205n17; claim forms, 161; copayments, 178; exercise, 65; extrafamilial eldercare, 117, 122–­124, 163, 178, 205n16; family care, 10; geriatric hospitals, 179; “paradigmatic change,” 163, 178, 205n16 Lynch, Caitrin, 18, 34, 190n34 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 176 Mathews, Gordon, 173–­174 Matthews, Sarah H., 16, 18, 21, 82 Mauss, Marcel, 82, 149, 172 Mead, Margaret, 42 Meals on Wheels, 26, 191n1 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 164 meiwaku (burden on others), 65, 114, 126, 164 meiwaku o kakenai (avoid being burden to others), 107, 125, 164, 206n3 Merrill Court, 52, 194n1 monsutā rōjin (monster elders), 58 Moore, Pat, 38, 140 Moses, Mary Robertson (Grandma Moses), 130 movers, and American housing and living arrangements, 94, 95, 96, 97, 97–­98, 98, 101, 197n12, 197n18. See also nonmovers, and American housing and living arrangements muen shakai (relationless society), 179 mukoyōshi (adopted son-­in-­law), 89, 196n1 multigenerational household. See three-­ generation/multigenerational household, and American elders; three-­generation/ multigenerational household, and Japanese elders

230 • Index

Munn, Nancy D., 151 Murphy, Robert F., 83, 133, 146 mutual support, and American elders: about, 52, 66, 172, 194n6; accommodation, 56–­57; dependence and, 63–­64; illness and death protocols, 56, 193n2; initiation into group, 52–­53; moral/emotional support, 54–­56; practical matters, 54; privacy, 60; shared fate, 59–­60; sympathy, 54, 55, 56, 63; unsolicited, 62–­63, 194n4 Myerhoff, Barbara, 16, 17, 19, 21, 38, 141, 142, 143, 150, 180 negative meaning of aging, and American culture: about, 3–­4, 16–­19, 20, 164, 178, 190nn30–­33, 205n21; ageism and, 16–­17, 162, 190nn31–­32; aging paradox, 170; denial of aging, 17, 20, 21, 24, 139–­140, 164, 165; illness, 56, 72–­73; physical manifestations of aging, 58; senior/senior citizen as term of use, 46–­47, 144–­145, 167. See also age-­related decline, and American elders negative meaning of aging, and Japanese culture, 47, 58, 64, 201n1, 207n20 networks, and American elders: autonomy, 67, 80, 81–­82, 87, 88; communitywide exchange, 84–­87, 196nn19–­21; death notices/obituaries, 71, 194nn3–­4; dependence, 80, 81–­82; egalitarianism, 81, 87; independence, 81–­82; individual choice, 80–­81, 87, 120; information network, 67–­72, 194nn1–­3, 194n5; privacy, 73; social engagement, 83, 84, 87, 195n18; support systems, 75–­78, 81, 195n11, 195nn13–­14 new reality of aging, and American elders: about, 170, 182; activities, 158, 167; consumerism, 140, 158, 159–­160, 165, 204n9; demography, 158, 204n5; flaws, 171, 172, 177; globalization, 158, 160, 204nn10–­11; normal changes, 166, 172, 177; successful aging paradigm, 20, 158; technology, 158–­159, 180. See also age-­related decline, and American elders; successful aging paradigm, and American elders new reality of aging, and Japanese elders, 160–­161, 204nn13–­14. See also long-­term care insurance, and Japanese elders

ningen kokuhō (living national treasures), 129 nonmovers, and American housing and living arrangements, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100–­101, 103–­104, 198nn21–­25. See also movers, and American housing and living arrangements oi no saka (slope of aging), 201n1 Older Americans Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 162 Older Persons Employment Network (OPEN), 34, 191n5 omakase (leave decision to others), 81 on (indebtedness), 5, 117–­118, 188n7 one-­payer national health insurance system, 178, 207n14 OPEN (Older Persons Employment Network), 34, 191n5 opioid addiction, 176, 207n13 oshaberi no kai (gather to chat), 64 Ōshima, Ichiyō, 117, 124 oyakōkō (filial piety), 5, 7, 8, 107, 122, 188n7 Peerandina, Saleem, 150 peer groups, and American elders: Founders group, 38, 43, 45, 85, 192n15; retired machinists, 85, 138, 192n14; retired teachers, 50, 51, 85, 133, 192n14; support, 163, 171–­172 Perin, Constance, 76, 117, 119 personal emergency response system (PERS), 77, 93, 195n11 personhood: American culture, 2, 20, 140, 143, 165, 170, 187n2; Japanese culture, 132, 187n2, 188n15, 202n6 Pew Research Center, 121 Pillemer, Karl A., 19, 190n35, 200n16 pinpin korori [pokkuri] (quick, painless death), 156 pioneers in frontier model, 24, 170, 176–­181, 182, 191n42 Plath, David. W., 132, 188n9 pokkuri (sudden and unexpected occurrence, or quick, painless death), 118, 156, 200n14 positive meaning of aging, and American elders: about, 19–­20, 193n30; “the best is yet to be,” 47, 193n25; experience, 47, 127; “golden age” ideal, 16, 47, 127, 192n24; knowledge, 47, 127, 181–­182, 205n21;

Index  •  231

reality of aging and, 21, 23, 24; recognition versus, 46, 83; reminiscence, 40; senior citizen discounts, 55, 83, 84–­85, 145, 162; wisdom, 19, 47, 127, 181–­182, 190n35, 205n21 positive meaning of aging, and Japanese culture, 47, 58–­59, 64–­65, 127, 129, 201n1, 207n20 privacy, and American culture: about, 60, 76, 119, 123; bathing, 175, 176; dying/ death, 73–­74, 159, 204n1; elders, 60, 72, 73–­74, 76, 159, 175, 204n1 Qin Shi Huang, 170 Quinn, Naomi, 87, 88, 172, 173 recognition, and American elders, 38–­40, 46, 83, 192nn14–­17 reminiscence, and American elders, 40–­43, 46, 141, 142, 192nn18–­19, 202n14 Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), 39, 86, 131, 192nn16–­17 Robbins-­Ruszkowski, Jessica, 116, 124, 202n8 Roberts, Glenda, 107 Robertson, Jennifer, 161, 179, 204n13 rōgo hasan (bankruptcy in old age), 58 Rohlen, Thomas P., 127 rōjin (old people), 205n21 rōjin hōmu (old people’s homes), 105 rōjin kurabu (old people’s clubs), 49 Rooney, Andy, 170, 205n1 rōrō kaigo (older people taking care of older people), 106, 107, 122 RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program), 39, 86, 131, 192nn16–­17 ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother), 175 sābisu tsuki kōreisha muke jūtaku [sakōjū] (senior apartments with care services), 106–­107 Sakai, Kikuo, 146, 203n16 Samuel, Lawrence R., 17, 19, 164, 190n30 sanju (eightieth birthday), 6 Sankar, Andrea, 80, 81 Sarton, May, 80, 133, 135, 170, 182 Savinshinsky, Joel, 18, 134, 147, 154, 203n17 self-­help, and American elders: about, 13, 52, 66; autonomy and, 60, 61, 63, 65, 80; independence, 60–­62, 63–­64, 65, 194n3;

institutional help and, 64; self-­reliance and, 60, 61 self-­help, and Japanese elders, 123 self-­reliance, and American culture: independence and, 65, 163; self-­help, 60, 61; support and, 114, 116–­117, 163, 200n8 self-­reliance, and Japanese elders, 164 self-­responsibility: American elders, 165, 167; jiko sekinin (self-­responsibility), 164, 178, 194n6, 205n19 self-­worth/self-­image, and American culture, 18, 21, 22, 37, 132, 202n6 senior centers, and American elders: ages/ longevity, 34, 46, 189nn24–­26, 191n4, 192n23; egalitarianism, 45, 46, 81, 87; heterogeneous backgrounds, 12, 189n24, 193n1; homogeneous backgrounds, 193n1; independence, 45, 46; Merrill Court, 52, 194n1; models, 12, 189n23. See also activities, and American elders; Lake District Senior Center; mutual support, and American elders; peer groups, and American elders; self-­help, and American elders senior housing: American elders, 93, 94, 99, 101, 104, 197n16, 198nn26–­27; Japanese elders, 122, 124–­125, 193n27 services and institutions, and American elders: Alzheimer’s disease, 104, 162, 167; homecare helpers, 77, 93, 103, 104, 122, 163; Housing and Urban Development Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 162; long-­term care consumer goods, 162, 204n15; Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 164; Older Americans Act (1965), 12, 16, 119, 162; Social Security Act (1935), 162, 164. See also housing and living arrangements, and American elders services and institutions, and Japanese elders: Alzheimer’s disease, 106, 107; homecare helpers, 122–­123, 124–­125; one-­ payer national health insurance system, 178, 207n14. See also long-­term care insurance, and Japanese elders shōshi kōreika (low birth rate with aging population), 161 shujin zaitaku shōkōgun (husband-­at-­home syndrome), 36 Shweder, Richard A., 23, 173

232 • Index

Silverman, Philip, 191n42 single-­person and conjugal households, and American elders, 90, 92, 93, 94, 196nn6–­7, 197n9 single-­person and conjugal households, and Japanese culture: baby boomers, 107, 199n1; housing and living arrangements, and, 49, 106, 125, 126, 153, 164, 178; loneliness, 164, 179; three-­generation/multigenerational household, 124, 153 single-­person and conjugal households, and Japanese elders: housing and living arrangements, 49, 90, 105, 106, 157, 164, 196n2; support and, 106, 125, 126 Smith, Robert J., 10, 129, 130 social isolation: American elders, 12, 35, 159, 171, 179, 207n12; Japanese elders, 6, 49 social media, and American elders, 48, 109, 118, 158, 159, 180 Social Security Act (1935), 162, 164. See also Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act (1965) Sokolovsky, Jay, 19, 140, 165, 187n5, 190n34 songenshi (death with dignity), 156, 204n2 Sontag, Susan, 16, 17, 56 sotsuju (ninetieth birthday), 6 Stafford, Philip B., 18, 98 Strauss, Claudia, 87, 88, 172, 173 successful aging, and Japanese elders, 132 successful aging paradigm, and American elders, 140, 166; activities, 132, 165; basic premises, 17, 21, 165; critiques, 116; gerontological studies, 20, 21, 116, 165; hope and, 180–­181, 207n20; independence and, 165, 171; individual choice, 165; “ought” and “is” negotiation, 10, 22, 24, 171, 174, 178, 181; personhood/“permanent personhood,” 20, 140, 143, 165, 170; problems with, 140, 165–­166; solutions outside realm of dominant culture, 20–­21, 22–­23, 42, 171–­174, 190nn37–­38; solutions within realm of dominant culture, 24–­25, 87, 172, 190nn36–­37 suicide: American culture, 9; Japanese culture, 8–­9, 10, 188n15–­16, 189n17, 189n21 sukin shippu (familiarity and closeness through co-­bathing), 176 support, and American elders: balanced exchange with caregivers, 115, 116, 200n9;

estrangement and, 119, 120, 200n16; family members, 109–­110, 112, 199nn2–­5; independence and, 114, 115–­117, 123–­124, 126; individual choice, 118, 119, 200n15; informal caregivers, 110, 114; interdependence, 124, 126, 180; intergenerational autonomy, 117, 118, 120; intergenerational dependency, 119–­120, 124, 162; intergenerational interactions, 113, 118–­119, 120–­121, 200n15; intimate bodily care, 117, 118; nursing homes, 114–­116, 120–­121, 200nn9–­11; self-­help, 112–­114; self-­reliance, 114, 116–­117, 200n8; social unit described, 112; social workers, 63, 110, 113, 200n7; spouses, 111–­112, 118, 199n4; three-­generation/multigenerational household, 117, 119, 120, 121–­122, 123, 201nn18–­19. See also peer groups, and American elders; services and institutions, and American elders support, and Japanese elders: delayed reciprocity, 124, 125; dependence/entitlement for dependency, 125–­126; eldercare diversification and, 122–­123; family members, 124; homecare helpers, 122–­123, 124–­125; interdependence and, 124–­125, 126; intimate bodily care, 117–­118; self-­help, 123; single-­person households, 106, 125, 126. See also housing and living arrangements, and Japanese elders; long-­term care insurance, and Japanese elders support systems: American culture, 79, 195nn13–­14; Japanese culture, 78, 80, 81, 88, 195n12; networks, 75–­78, 81, 195n11, 195nn13–­14. See also support, and American elders; support, and Japanese elders Taietz, Philip, 12, 189n23 technology: American elders, 47–­48, 158–­159, 180, 204nn6–­7; Japanese elders, 161, 179, 204n13 Thailand, 3, 105, 117, 160, 161, 187n3, 200n15 Thang, Leng Leng, 10, 125, 132–­133, 136, 190n34, 199n1 three-­generation/multigenerational household, and American elders, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124 three-­generation/multigenerational household, and Japanese elders: about, 4–­5, 89,

Index  •  233

108, 196n1; adaptation of, 124, 201n22; changes in culture of aging and, 163, 205n18; conflicts, 119, 123, 206n3; corporate unit, 112, 123, 196n1, 199n6; data, 106; decrease, 49, 106, 157, 178; decrease/ disappearance, 49, 106, 122, 157; eldercare, 117, 122, 124, 153, 178, 206n3; intergenerational dependency, 49, 106, 122, 123, 201nn21–­22; marriage, 138, 196n1; as moral influence, 123; norm in twenty-­first century, 124; norm pre–­World War II, 89, 90, 108, 123, 196n1; norms/roles defined, 123, 138, 201n21; single-­person and conjugal households’ merger with, 124, 153 time, and American elders: about, 3–­4, 18, 129–­130, 145, 151–­152; ageless self, 140, 144, 145, 203n15; age-­specific/ neutral activities, 140; conformity to clock time, 130–­132, 133–­134, 201nn2–­4; cyclical time, 137, 138; downhill metaphor, 136–­137, 138, 139; ebbs and flows, 138–­149; fighting/hiding aging, 139–­140, 202nn11–­12; the future, 141, 146–­151, 203nn18–­19; nonconformity to clock time, 134–­136, 202n8; ownership of time, 132; the past, 141–­145, 202nn13–­14; romance in later years, 137, 202nn9–­10; senior citizen discounts, 145; senior/ senior citizen as term of use, 144–­145; “stages of life,” 127, 128, 129–­130 time, and Japanese elders: about, 130; age-­ specific norms, 140, 202n12; conformity to clock time, 132, 201n5; cyclical time, 129; the future, 146, 147, 148, 150–­151, 203n17, 203nn21–­23; hierarchy of time ownership, 202n7; nonconformity to clock time, 136; ownership of time, 132–­133; the past, 202–­203n14; positive meaning of aging and, 127, 129, 201n1

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 12, 169 tokubetsu yōgo rōjin hōmu [tokuyō] (public nursing homes), 106, 107, 198n34, 199n35 Traphagan, John W., 10, 49–­50, 132 tsuki-­tōban (resident who distributes information to community), 74, 195n8 Ueno, Chizuko, 199n35, 205n16 Vesperi, Maria D., 17–­18, 133, 137, 141, 143, 151, 187n5 Vining, Elizabeth Gray, 41, 135, 140 waka (thirty-­one syllable Japanese poem), 174, 182, 203n16, 207n18 Ward, Russell A., 46, 51 White House Conference on Aging (1981, 2015), 16, 17, 20, 165 Winston County Senior Citizens Council, 11, 44, 60, 189n22, 192n20, 205n23 Wiswell, Ella Lury, 10 youth, and American culture: about, 7, 18, 21, 22; aversion to aging, 16, 17; body imagery, 139–­140, 165, 202n11; consumerism and, 43, 140, 165; individual choice and, 195n15; instigators of change, 180; psychological time and, 144; reminiscence and, 40, 41, 42, 141; sharing with elders, 40; viewpoints, 42, 46; youthfulness, 10, 22, 139–­140, 165. See also intergenerational interactions, and American elders youth/youthfulness, and Japanese culture, 58, 64, 65, 126 yūryō rōjin hōmu (retirement homes with substantial fee), 47, 106–­107 Zen Buddhism, and unscheduled openness about future, 147, 148, 154, 203n17

About the Author YOHKO TSUJI , a native Japanese, is an adjunct associate professor of anthropology

at Cornell University. She conducted fieldwork in America, Japan, and Thailand, publishing articles on aging, death, the conception of time, and social change.