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Even though much of the Japanese gene pool originally derives from Korea, the 669,800 Koreans who live in Japan, some of whose families have been in the country for generations, are subjected to systematic discrimination. They rarely advance to the better jobs in Japanese corporations. The situation of those privately referred to as eta is worse. They are the Japanese Untouchables. Even though they are physically indistinguishable from other Japanese, the 2 million to 3 million eta are frequently relegated to ghettos and menial work. Few marry outside their caste (Japan has a class of private detectives who specialize in checking into these matters), and most are destined to spend their lives in a strange shadow. The reasons for this degradation are obscure. It may be because they are descendants of people who, centuries ago, performed what was regarded as unclean work, slaughtering animals for leather, tending graves. Eta means much filth; the word has been officially struck from the language. The polite term these days for the eta is Burakumin, hamlet people.
One major, if more subtle, Japanese problem is simply actuarial. Japan is getting very old, very fast. In the next 35 years, the country will undergo a stunning demographic transformation. By 2000, 16% of the population will be 65 years old or older, up from 9% in 1980. It will increase to 21.8% by 2020. By comparison, 11% of the U.S. population will be 65 or older in 2000,15% in 2020.
A Confucian society traditionally reveres its aged. The elderly in Japan are still treated with far greater respect than they are in most Western countries. But the burden of providing for them in the future may shake the Japanese conscience. The centuries-long custom whereby sons give their parents a home and care for them in old age is difficult to maintain in a country where housing is so crowded. The Japanese household is getting smaller, embracing two generations, or only one, instead of three. Wives are discovering the pleasures and independence of life without a mother-in-law's demanding, authoritarian presence. A loneliness and isolation, more typical of the West than of Japan, has settled in upon many of the aged. Groups of old people have staged repeated marches on the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Tokyo, demanding more services.
The middle-aged too are feeling afflicted, though somewhat less despairingly. One Japanese writer, Hitoshi Kato, recently quoted a middle-aged steel company executive who sounded rather like the American Man in the Gray Flannel
Suit of a generation ago: "We work hard, but even we don't know what we work for. Those of the war generation experienced hunger, and that spurred them to work with a passion . . . But look at us. The corporate framework is already established, and growth has its limits. The prospects for promotion are limited too. We just work to support our wives and children and meet our mortgage payments."