Charities worried as cash-strapped Japanese abandon elderly parents
In feudal Japan it was referred to as ubasute, or ‘‘granny dumping’’, the custom of abandoning elderly relatives on lonely mountaintops in times of hardship and famine. Now it has been revived in a new form as desperate Japanese find themselves unable to look after elderly, sick and senile family members.
Welfare organisations are reporting cases of dementia patients who cannot speak or identify themselves being left at clinics or hospitals.
Some charities have even established a service called ‘‘senior citizen postbox’’, an office where hard-pressed families can deposit elderly parents, who are then assigned to an old people’s home.
‘‘This is the equivalent of granny dumping,’’ said Takanori Fujita, a social worker in the city of Ageo, north of Tokyo, whose welfare organisation offers one of these ‘‘postboxes’’.
‘‘There are a lot of people who have a certain amount of income but who still live in poverty and struggle terribly with relatives who can’t look after themselves.
‘‘They are reluctant to ask for help because they feel it’s shameful.’’
Typical of such cases is that of a well-dressed man in his 70s who was found outside a hospital in Saitama prefecture, where Fujita works. He wore a waist pouch with a little money in it but had no identification and was suffering from severe dementia, which left him unable to speak.
‘‘The sad thing is that he’d been well taken care of and well fed,’’ said Fujita.
‘‘Someone looked after him as well as they could and then couldn’t go on any more.’’
Care home staff dubbed him Taro Yamada, the Japanese equivalent of John Brown.
As many as 50 people a year are taken into care by Fujita’s charity. One case involved a single woman in her 50s who gave up work to look after her widowed and senile 88-year-old father. He could not wash or go to the toilet by himself, and was prone to hitting and even sexually assaulting his daughter.
The woman was suicidally depressed and feared that she might kill her father before she brought him to the charity.
A quarter of Japan’s 127 million people are over 65, and an estimated 15 per cent of them suffer from some kind of dementia.
Economists predict a crisis in government finances, with a shrinking number of young working taxpayers left to support a growing proportion of pensioners. There is expected to be an explosion of need around 2025, when Japan’s postwar baby boomers will reach their mid-70s.
Wages in Japan have not risen significantly for years, making it hard to save in middle age. More and more people are entering their last years facing genuine poverty.