Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

This paper explores the role of communication in Japanese elderly care facilities in an attempt to understand not only what constitutes as communication itself, but also how such communication will influence the growing number of elderly services in Japan, a nation where one out of every four people will be over the age of 65 by the year 2040. Based on three months of interviews and participant-observation fieldwork conducted in three elderly care facilities in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, this paper presents a brief ethnographic look at the methods employed by a group of rural caregivers who must compensate for the declining level of care in Japanese facilities, brought on by factors such as an overall lack of staff, low wages, a reliance on overtime, and a trend towards younger caregivers as older, more experienced caregivers slowly transfer to new occupations. Using some of the only methods left to them, this group of rural caregivers uses direct and indirect communication as a way to provide a high level of care despite the growing ‘generational gap’ between caregiver and patient, and the tendency of older Japanese patients to refrain from voluntarily communicating with caregivers. I hope to show how communication between caregivers and patients is undergoing changes that point to innovative and humanistic developments in Japanese attitudes towards elderly care.