To ensure everyone's dignity during and after life
Sustainable self-care and decision-making and support

Social issues to be addressed

In recent years, older people are faced with more and more decisions to make regarding the fate of their lives. At the same time, there are fewer family members to help them make these decisions.

As we grow older and eventually pass away, many new events can occur that we have never experienced before. For example, our physical health may deteriorate, or changes in our lives may occur, such as hospitalization or admission to a facility.RemainsNokoMany decisions must be made, including what happens after death, such as disposing of personal belongings.

Problem-solving in old age

In Japanese society up until now, it was common for young family members to support the elderly. Families would help with daily life (medical care, nursing care, finances, housing, etc.) during the elderly's lifetime, and after their death, they would be responsible for cremation, burial, and inheritance. However, today, as the aging of the population progresses, the number of "small households" such as single-person households is increasing. There are an increasing number of cases where elderly people are unable to receive support from their families during or after their death, for reasons such as not having any family members to support them, or if they do, they live far away, or the family members themselves are aging.

In modern Japanese society, there is a lot of emphasis on self-determination, that is, making one's own decisions about one's affairs. However, making all one's own decisions up until the moment of death (and even after death) is a heavy burden and unrealistic. It is also not easy to find someone you can completely trust to make decisions for you. How can we maintain a person's dignity and realize the person they want to be at each stage of their life's closing? As connections between people and in communities become weaker, we are being asked how we can support decision-making in the future.

approach

How and to what extent should we support decisions that are necessary during life and after death? What should those around a person do when such decisions are extremely difficult? How can dignity be maintained? Death is a topic that tends to be considered socially taboo, and discussion of such questions is still insufficient. In order to discuss this, we need to verbalize our values and what we want at the end of our lives.

This project will use interdisciplinary research to grasp the full scope of the problem and share awareness of the issue with society. Specifically, we will first collect values regarding dignity during life and after death through dialogue with citizens. We will also search for clues to resolve this issue by investigating previous research and speaking with experts in various fields. We also aim to provide an opportunity for everyone in society to think about tidying up as something that concerns them personally, and to create a movement for discussion.

What this project will do

• Organizing knowledge from previous domestic and international studies (literature survey, field survey)
• Dialogue with society and academia (holding dialogues with citizens and experts)
• Disseminating information to society and raising awareness (symposiums, media coverage, etc.)