Toward a community-based model for ageing in place in Japan

Japan is the country with the highest ageing rate in the world. Faced with the issues that this situation presents, the Japanese government is looking for solutions that will enable seniors to continue living in their own homes. Building on a tradition of mutual aid supported by the public authorities, informal home care practices are encouraged. Since the enactment in 2000 of the Long-Term Care Insurance Law, local forms of support for the elderly have been promoted. This is how the system of community-based integrated care came into being. Local governments have until 2025 to institutionalize neighborhood-wide support networks. The measures put in place therefore depend on the willingness of local governments and territorial resources (local stakeholders, financing capacity, and so on). We propose to study the case of the Bunkyō and Adachi wards of the city of Tokyo, drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted between 2019 and 2020 with city hall employees and local social workers. Although it is a source of innovation, we will see that the system of community-based integrated care raises many questions for observers and actors in the system as to its concrete implementation.