Journalist, Line Producer & Filmmaker based in Japan
In many Japanese cities – like here in Tokyo as on this picture – mobile supermarkets supply food to elderly citizens © Sonja Blaschke
In many Japanese cities - like here in Tokyo as on this picture - mobile supermarkets supply food to elderly citizens © Sonja Blaschke

Japan:
Our future, today

No other population is aging as rapidly as in Japan. What does this mean for a society? Explore a country where Europe’s demographic future has already arrived.

Japan as a super-aging society is getting a lot of interest from around the world with regard to how it tries to tackle the fact that its population is graying rapidly, with its share of senior citizens rapidly approaching 30 percent of the population.

Award-winning Swiss banking magazine „Bulletin“ (Credit Suisse) asked me to take a closer look at how Japan is coping with demographic change. For this reason, photographer Yasuyuki Takagi and myself travelled to the city of Toyama in the prefecture of the same name. It is seen as on the forefront in many ways – both as a place with an above-average elderly citizenship, and as a forward-thinking place with many innovative ideas.

Read the article and look at Yasuyuki Takagi’s wonderful photos here:

Bulletin (pdf)