If society ages too much, the solution may be the suicide. This is the idea of a Yale University professor for Japan told to the New York Times, given that the state is dealing with increasingly elderly residents, with rising health and social security costs and with all the other related problems.
The observations come from Professor Yusuke Narita, of Japanese origins. And now that they are spreading, the teacher corrects the shot, says that we need to consider them in context.
But strong words remain. Moreover, Japanese society is well aware of ritual suicide: it is called «seppuku», also known as «harakiri», and it was allowed in ancient times to the samurai, a mortal wound that is practiced by piercing and cutting the belly, considered the seat of the soul.
A aging population it can lead to decreasing productivity and estimates of economic expansion over time. According to the latest data for 2020, people over 65 in Japan are continuously increasing, reaching almost 30 percent of the total residents.
Japan retires at 100: “I realized that life is short”
The Japanese-American teacher even spoke of the possibility of making the elderly commit suicide mandatory in the future. The debate that has arisen, both in the US but above all in Japan, is very heated. And it touches an open knot, not only for the Asian country, but also for everyone, given that the discussions on society, on people’s productivity, on rights, are a topic that affects everyone.
In Japan, the problem of the increasingly elderly population is also at the center of political attention, given that above all the connected costs would jeopardize, within a few years, the stability of the system itself, with fewer and fewer workers and more and more pensioners, that probably over the years may need treatment and assistance.