Japan nappy maker shifts from babies to adults | Hacker News Reader

Japan nappy maker shifts from babies to adults

bbc.com

31 pointstestrun27 comments

The rest of the ageing world would do well to learn some lessons from Japan.

For example, providing ready access to clean public toilets ? Tick.

But also in terms of transport being prepared for the elderly. The Shinkanzen famously only makes brief stops at intermediate stations, sometimes as short as 60 seconds. And yet on multiple occasions now, I've witnessed elderly people in wheelchairs being efficiently onloaded/offloaded from the train well within that 60 second limit.

I'm sure, like all countries, Japan is not perfect. But right now, I think I'm fairly safe in saying they are ahead of the game in elderly care.

Homogeneity helps.

This is unfortunately the biggest part of building a high trust human society, we’re wired to see patterns in everything

I don't think it's the biggest part of building a high trust society. Rule of law and effective law-enforcement is always going to be number one. El Salvador and Ecuador are more homogeneous than the USA, but the USA is far more high trust.

Sounds labour intensive. Putting more and more resources into a single generation - a generation that has benefitted their entire lives and pulled up the ladder behind them - is no way to have social harmony.

The wealthy ones who gleefully pulled the ladder up will be fine; they can pay for their care. Everyone else? Not so much.

The important work is labor intensive.

In which case we should see a massive transfer of wealth from the wealthiest generation to the workers. I.E wages increasing far more than things like shares and assets. Ultimatly if two millionaires and one person capable of looking after them are on an island, that worker can charge a million for the work.

All the equity in the world won’t wipe your drool in a nursing home.

Thanks to democracy though we’ll continue to see workers subsidising the wealthy across the western world.

You cannot make any deductions from Japan. It is it's own thing. The things that works there may not work elsewhere.

We should find out what it is about Japan that makes certain things work there.

An incredibly homogenous society, for one.

But the homogeneity of race is a social construct. Sure, there's cultural differences, but there's no hard biological obstacle to a high-trust multicultural society, just ingrained ideological opposition.

If we can consciously shuck this counterproductive flailing against integration, maybe we can actually get somewhere.

Either you have a multicultural society or you have a high trust society, you can't have both. Why? Because people have an instinctual distrust of people dissimilar to them.

Japan is not a high trust society. Japanese people are highly suspicious of other people, including Japanese. Japanese people are extremely concerned about how they are viewed and judged by others; the conformity is a desire to be accepted in society, and such trust and acceptance is not freely given but instead quickly taken away. Among my friends from Japan who have left the country, this is by far the most oppressive social more that they feel compelled to follow. And among those who have moved to Japan, many feel that learning the social rules and earning that trust was a significant accomplishment, and a handful want to preserve that exclusion because of how much effort it took to make themselves part of society.

Japanese social groups are extremely exclusive- on the broadest level, foreigners are excluded from some establishments, banking and housing services are sometimes inaccessible to foreigners. And on a smaller level, there are also establishments that do not accept new customers without an introduction, local or not. Such exclusions are an integral part of the culture - the language itself is a shibboleth, you know your place and standing in the world by the language other people use when they speak to you.

I feel like it's one of those social constructs like the value of money, which is socially constructed, but which gets amplified by human instincts like greed. It would be great if we could shuck the counterproductive belief of money having value, but in practice, people are going to be led by instincts.

> We should find out what it is about Japan that makes certain things work there.

Even more so because many Western countries are at high risk of being in Japan's position within the next 20–30 years.

Japan reached peak population growth roughly five years ago. Japan was informally understood to be an ageing population before that but now they are statistically formally so.

Hence the West would do well to watch and learn from how Japan prepared and how Japan continues to manage an ageing population.

> You cannot make any deductions from Japan. It is it's own thing. The things that works there may not work elsewhere.

People said exactly the same about Japan during COVID ... "oh no, you can't possibly make deductions from Japan" they said.

What happened ? Let's take the UK as an example.

Japan, a country with:

   - Double the population of the UK
   - Living and working in significantly higher density than the UK

Japan 78,000 total deaths (602 per million) vs UK total 232,000 deaths (3,400 per million)

Japan 270,000 cumulative cases per million, UK 368,000 cumulative cases per million

Why do I cite the UK in particular ?

Because the government was well documented to be operating on a basis of British exceptionalism, i.e. the same mindset as you have, "what can we possibly learn from other countries, it won't work here because we're better/different/$insert_word_of_your_choice than them"

*shinkansen

Normally, yes, you would be correct. But in the case of the Shinkanzen, it rolls to a stop, carefully opens it doors and allows the elderly to depart, gazes at the natural beauty of Japan all around it, and ponders on the question of whether the elderly passengers really exist at all. It decides they do and, as soon as the conductors are back aboard, closes its doors and departs the station at a deliberate speed. It moves towards the next station on this line and on the wheel of dharma.

Plunging births push Japanese diaper maker to switch to adult market

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/03/26/companies/j...

But also, this is reported often in various forms as far back as July 2013:

In Rapidly Aging Japan, Adult Diaper Sales Are About to Surpass Baby Diapers

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/in-rapi...

And not isolated to Japan..

Nov 2021

Adult diaper sales in China could exceed infant diaper sales by 2025, research suggests

https://www.businessinsider.com/adult-diaper-sales-china-exc...

Nearing that phase of my life (55y) where I have to think about my old age.

My genes seems good as my parents are still healthy and living in their own home at the age of 83.

It is expensive to get old - how do Japanese do it ???. Retirement homes or folks just living with their children like in some cultures ??.

Personal responsibility is a big thing and a important duty in Japan, this includes staying active and healthy.

If I were a diaper manufacturer, I wouldn't limit myself and I would make them for all sizes.

That's why you're not a diaper manufacturer

TIL: Japan now has one of the world's oldest populations, with almost 30% of them aged 65 or older. Last year, the proportion of those aged above 80 surpassed 10% for the first time.

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