Mandatory Retirement and Social Isolation in Japan
Updated: 23 hours ago
Meet Eddie. He joined Japan's Ministry of Finance in 1984. For decades his days ran 9 to 5, with lunch at noon. Then he turned 65, and the schedule disappeared.
Eddie is the character my team built our presentation around, and he stands in for millions of people. In Japan, forced retirement takes more than a job. Days go from structured to empty. Daily contact with colleagues turns into occasional contact. A professional identity becomes "former employee." What often follows is isolation.
The timing makes it stranger. Life expectancy has gone up by about 14 years since the 1970s, while the retirement age has moved by only 5. A 60-year-old today is roughly as healthy as a 75-year-old was back then. Meanwhile, Japan has a falling birthrate and a labor shortage, and our research put the economic cost at around 16 trillion yen a year.
We looked at what exists, from Silver Human Resource Centers to companies rehiring older employees, and focused on the 2 to 3 million retired male public-sector workers over 65.
The question we ended on is one I keep coming back to: how do we design systems for lives that are longer and healthier?
Our presentation, State of Longevity, won first place at the Global Futures Forum, awarded by the Japanese Embassy.
This project pulled me out of build-a-product mode. Some problems are about how a whole society organizes time, work and belonging.
