After the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, Japan's Nobel-prizewin-ning novelist Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country) said: "If it was a case of suicide, then it was better to see no notes left behind. A silent death is an endless word." When Kawabata, at 72, took his own life last month, that observation of a decade ago became his own epitaph: he left no notes.
Endless words have a way of expressing boundless guilt. No one can say whether or not the author's death was intended to be a comment on the loneliness of Japan's elderly—a subject Kawabata had written about with exactitude and tender sympathy. Nonetheless, his suicide focused attention on an alarming fact about Japan's aged citizens: fully one-third of all suicides occur among those 60 and over. Among women over 65, the rate is 45.9 per 100,-000—the highest in the world.
Fewer Children. To be sure, Japan, unlike many Western societies, has long recognized suicide as a morally permissible act, a kind of supreme statement. Not so in this case, say the sociologists. Most of the suicides among the old stem from loneliness, miserable living conditions and the worries of trying to get by on an insufficient income. Other statistics are equally grim. Of the deaths caused by fire in Japan, 40% involve the elderly. About 660,000 older people now live alone—a circumstance that was unheard of before World War II.
The plight of the elderly is a novel problem for Japan, a country where for centuries age was equated with wisdom and filial respect was a sacred responsibility. Now the young no longer seem to care. In fact, Japanese girls often sum up the qualifications of an eligible boy friend in a cynical cliché: "lye tsuki, car tsuki, baba nuki" (with a house, with a car, without an old lady). "To our old folks, all this proves shocking, depressing and downright exasperating," observes Professor Soichi Nasu, a sociologist at Tokyo's Chuo University, who specializes in the problems of old age. "Just like their ancestors, they had anticipated companionship and support from their children, only to discover that the foundation had crumbled."
What happened? The traditional Japanese family system, in which parents lived with their children, gradually broke down in the aftermath of World War II. In the rush to the cities for jobs, and the severe housing shortage that followed, many children were simply unable or unwilling to care for their elderly relatives. During the past five years, average family size has shrunk from 4.9 members to 3.7. At the same time, life expectancy has risen sharply since the war (46.9 to 69.2 for men, 49.6 to 74.7 for women). The result is fewer children to care for more and more oldsters.