Media Mix, Jan. 31, 2021

Posted on January 31, 2021 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about a press conference given by Akio Toyoda, the president of Toyota Motors and the chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, about the government’s plan to ban gasoline-powered vehicles by the year 2050. Though Toyoda’s remarks, which mostly take the government to task for its plan, are self-serving, he is correct in saying that the government is just as responsible as automakers for making the future they envision a reality. The reason that electric vehicles are selling well in Europe and China is that their governments have already started creating an environment where they can sell, mainly by helping set up networks of charging stations through subsidies and other incentives. As one of the pundits said on the Abema News program cited in the column, consumers generally don’t care much about the EV discussion, and probably less about the environment in general, at least when it comes to cars. They will only buy a certain type of car if it’s convenient in terms of their needs. In that regard, automakers’ main responsibility is getting EVs to travel longer distances on a single charge, which they are doing, but people who are buying EVs tend to use them for short journeys and errands. There’s still some resistance to EVs for use on long trips, which may be why sales in the U.S. aren’t as brisk as they are in Europe and China. In America, people still take long car trips, and when gas prices are low they travel a great deal. But now that GM has announced that they, too, will stop making gas-powered cars in the near future, it’s obvious that the U.S. is also reckoning with a sea change in its attitude toward transportation.

But there are other problems to address besides the lack of charging facilities. Toyoda focuses on the electric power grid, saying that Japan will need to produce a lot more electricity if all the cars on the road are EVs. That’s another thing the government has to do because the automotive industry can’t. And whether the increase in power output leads to more CO2 is a matter that must be considered in line with the move to EVs. But another problem is waste. All these EVs will run on batteries that don’t last forever, and disposing of them will create another environmental hazard. So far, there has been little discussion on what to do about battery waste or recycling. Another pundit on Abema News said that Japan doesn’t have the “ability” to make these kinds of batteries now that Panasonic no longer makes them for Tesla, the world’s leading EV maker. Battery technology will become much more important in the future and thus this pundit is worried that Japan will lose part of its technological edge unless automakers start making their own batteries. And while Toyoda also fretted about the negative impact a switch to EVs would have on employment, since much fewer parts go into an EV as go into a gas-powered car or a hybrid, he didn’t say anything about software, which will become the main manufacturing concern when EVs dominate. As one pundit said, EVs will be more like smart phones than like cars, meaning they have to be constantly upgraded. The tech companies that control this software will control the industry. 

But one more consideration that probably has Toyoda worried is increased interest in ESG (environmental, social and governance) investments, which have boosted Tesla stock prices through the roof. Toyota, as a maker of gas guzzlers, does not benefit from such investments, and if it doesn’t get on the bandwagon now they could be left behind. Of course, Toyota is still working on hydrogen cell cars, but without a clear future in terms of sales no one is going to invest in such technology, no matter how “green” it seems. In fact, the pundits on Abema News said that the person who put the bug in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s ear about going all-EV was Hiromichi Mizuno, a member of the Tesla board of directors and former chief officer of Japan’s government pension investment fund. One pundit wondered if Toyoda’s rant was not simply an angry reaction to this intelligence, which, apparently, everyone in the industry knows about. 

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Review: The Personal History of David Copperfield

Posted on January 23, 2021 by philipbrasor

It’s been a while since I’ve read Dickens, but Armando Iannucci’s fast-paced version of the novelist’s warmest tale feels to me more faithful to the spirit of Dickens than the usual stuffy cinematic adaptations (almost all of which are Great Expectations, it often seems). Though the director eschews the profanity that hallmarks his work, his usual slapstick mood prevails, bringing out the sense of the absurd that Dickens’ writing so vividly conveyed about English life in the mid-19th century. In that regard, the movie’s already noted “color-blind” approach—David is played by Dev Patel, and other characters are portrayed by actors of varying ethnic persuasions that have nothing to do with “white”—doesn’t park itself in the mind as you’re watching, since the theatrical aspects of the story are so pronounced in the first place. In the opening scene, in fact, David lectures a large audience in an auditorium about his success as an author, a means of making the first-person narrative more immediate. 

But, of course, the inventive casting—another Iannucci trait—also intensifies Dickens’ theme about the struggle to escape one’s destiny as defined by birth and class. Some viewers will likely bristle at this presentation, which implies that racism has nothing to do with the oppression we see since there are Asian actors playing gentlemen and black women playing ladies, but as the movie progresses the socioeconomic particulars take on a more universal meaning: Class may not trump racial discrimination, but its destructive effects are universal. 

Iannucci’s best move is to make David’s coming-of-age as an artist dependent on his self-illumination as a humanist. Having grown up not only poor but abused, David nevertheless sees the good in everyone, no matter how small a portion of the respective personality it commands. Peter Capaldi’s debt-defeated Mr. Micawber and Ben Whishaw’s quisling Uriah Heep, two of the more pathetic characters in an over-abundant cast, are not as off-putting as you remember them from the book (or past film versions), and while purists may find that unfortunate, it jibes with Iannucci’s overall purposes, which is to make a classic entertainment that also enlightens as it delights. The problem with this approach is that the story, per Dickens’ methodology, is overstuffed and so much happens at such a breakneck pace that certain subplots get shoved around like commuters on a packed subway. I never quite got why the certifiably demented Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie) was so obsessed with the death of King Charles I, and the tragedy that befalls the impoverished inhabitants of the stranded boat where David takes up temporary residence lacks the proper measure of miserableness. 

And while Patel never comes into his own as a fully fleshed-out hero, probably because he has to compete with the likes of Tilda Swinton as his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, his cheery magnanimity is the right fit for a writer of David’s temperament. Whenever he jots down his thoughts, all of which will eventually gel into a best-selling memoir, there’s a sense of wonder at his own ability to channel those wild emotions into words. Having recently seen another liberal take on a classic novel about a writer, Martin Eden, I was struck by how much mileage Iannucci got out of just showing the act of putting pen to paper. It gave me goosebumps.

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Cinema Qualite Shinjuku (03-3352-5645).

The Personal History of David Copperfield home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2019 Dickensian Pictures LLC and Channel Four Television Corporation

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Review: The Man Standing Next

Posted on January 22, 2021 by philipbrasor

This sleek fictionalized rendering of the events leading up to the assassination of South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in 1979 is the second movie I’ve seen about the incident, whose particulars, after more than 40 years, are still being disputed by historians. The Man Standing Next takes the more conventional narrative route, while Im Song-soo’s The President’s Last Bang (2005) took a more conspiratorial, not to mention highly sarcastic, view of the bloody circumstances. Though I’m tempted to believe The Man Standing Next is closer to the truth, I prefer the version that Im came up with if only because he extrapolated from the premise that Park and his minions were basically yakuza, and thus the proper way to approach the assassination cinematically was as a gangster movie. Though The Man Standing Next is based on a novel, it has all the earmarks of an earnest biopic, in this case of the assassin, KCIA chief Kim Jae-gyu, except that his name has been changed to Kim Gyu-pyeong and he’s played by buff, handsome superstar Lee Byung-hun. 

Im’s movie was set entirely during the night of the assassination, which means Im didn’t have to elaborate on all the reasons for the assassination, boiling motive down to what was essentially a grudge match between two men with huge, deadly egos. Director Woo Min-ho has a harder time trying to unravel the various strands of intrigue that led to the fateful night, when Kim killed Park while the latter was partying with close associates and some female companions. And what’s immediately compelling about the story is the American involvement, which was hardly touched upon in Im’s movie. (Also important to consider given that The Man Standing Next is South Korea’s official submission for the foreign film Oscar in the year following Parasite‘s win for that honor and Best Picture.) Park, of course, became president after staging a coup in 1961, and had received the support of the U.S. government ever since as a staunch anti-communist, but by the late 70s and the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who prided himself on being a champion of human rights, the State Department was sick of Park’s arrogance and hubris (one diplomat calls him “a teenager”) and wanted him out, preferably through a legal election, but once they realized that he wasn’t going to go quietly other options were entertained. Former KCIA director Park Yong-gak (Kwak Do-won) basically defects to the U.S. and testifies for congress about a bribery scandal involving the South Korean government and some American lawmakers. Park is infuriated by this betrayal but also suitably nervous, because he realizes the Americans’ true motives behind the investigation. The godfather in Park would just like to just whack the former KCIA director, who is rumored to be writing a memoir, but that would likely enflame the enmity of Washington even more. As Park Yong-gak’s replacement, Kim would prefer going about the matter in a more subtle way, but since ascending to his current position he no longer has the trust of the president, who is becoming more and more unstable. More to the point, between he and Park is the burly, crude head of the presidential security detail, Kwak Sang-cheon (Lee Hee-joon), who hates his guts. Under clandestine pressure from the American side and encouraged by increasing civil unrest that is gripping the country—which he is charged by the president to eliminate—Kim eventually concludes that the only solution is to kill the president, but unlike in The President’s Last Bang the motive is not macho, self-destructive one-upmanship, but genuine patriotism: Kim is convinced that Park is taking South Korea into ruin. 

Though Woo does a pretty good job of showing how this ostensibly noble motive is hypocritical in light of how much Kim has benefited materially from Park’s dictatorship, he’s not very good at the intrigue. Much of the middle portion of the movie, which involves espionage set pieces and secret meetings on park benches and in back rooms of restaurants, feels more confusing than it needs to be. We know how the story ends because the movie, as with so many similar historical recreations, begins at the end. But if Woo is no le Carre, he’s handy with a camera and the period details are more striking than they were in Im’s version of events. As I said, this one is probably closer to the historical truth, but if that’s your bag, then I recommend watching both. Between them there’s a lot to chew on. 

In Korean and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831).

The Man Standing Next home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 Showbox, Hive Media Corp. and Gemstone Pictures

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Media Mix, Jan. 17, 2021

Posted on January 17, 2021 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the methods used by politicians to avoid responsibility for poor choices. In the column I mentioned two examples of “dinner meetings” where the official protocol for gatherings as stated by the government panel on the COVID-19 pandemic was violated. The Harbor Business article where I got most of the information listed many others, and what ties them together, in addition to the excuses that violators came up with to explain their actions, is the lack of what Harbor Business calls “a sense of crisis.” Reading through the anecdotes, you get the feeling that the people involved don’t think they did anything wrong, which means they probably don’t consider the virus that much of a big deal. This is, of course, a common sentiment, and, to a certain extent, understandable if not particularly defensible. Nevertheless, as public servants, all these people are required to at least put up the appearance that the directives they supposedly support have some kind of meaning.

In that regard, the most startling anecdote was the one involving LDP lawmaker and former cabinet minister Mitsuhiro Miyakoshi, who went on a bender at a “drinking party” with members of the local “fishing industry” on Christmas Day in Toyama, collapsed, and then had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. Though Mainichi said his injuries were minor, Harbor said he required “emergency treatment.” Miyakoshi apologized but not so much for violating the COVID restrictions. He seemed more concerned about looking like a fool. At any rate, at the time of the incident Toyama was experiencing a sharp spike in infections and medical facilities, including ambulances, were being stretched. In another case, Naoichi Takemoto, the 80-year-old IT minister, was cited for attending a party fundraiser at an Osaka hotel on December 18 that was attended by 80 people. Actually, as Harbor found out, Takemoto himself was not at the fundraiser, but rather at a “study session” in a different room of the hotel at the same time where he supposedly discussed “national politics” with whoever was in the room with him. Harbor implies that “study session” is just another term for “drinking party,” and later Takemoto and two of his aides tested positive for the virus. Then there was a party held by 30 members of the Saitama prefectural assembly on December 15 to commemorate the year’s last session. All the attendees were LDP politicians and their excuse when the press later chided them for breaking a prefectural guideline asking residents to refrain from bonenkai was that they just showed up to the restaurant, ate quickly, and left. Given that the party was at a Chinese restaurant where diners share dishes, it’s difficult to believe they didn’t party at least a little bit. But my favorite story was the one about 14 members of the Nishio city council in Aichi Prefecture attending a drinking party on December 18 at an inn for the purpose of helping the inn, which was having economic difficulties due to the pandemic. Harbor said it was a “full-scale” affair, complete with three “female companions,” meaning women expressly hired to attend to the needs of the male participants.

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Review: Just 6.5

Posted on January 16, 2021 by philipbrasor

Casual moviegoers, and perhaps even more dedicated ones—the kind who try to keep up on world trends—may harbor misunderstandings about Iranian cinema, thinking that it divides neatly between socially relevant domestic fare, like the movies of Asghar Farhadi (A Separation), banned art house outliers, and films about children. Though all of these forms exist in plenitude, they don’t explain the economic vitality of the movie business in Iran, so Just 6.5, a police thriller that, when it was first released in 2019 proved to be the biggest non-comedy box office hit in Iranian history, is extremely instructive; a potent combination of cutting social commentary and fast-paced crime actioner.

The title refers to the estimated 6.5 million drug addicts in Iran, a serious problem exacerbated, according to some of the exposition, by the country’s draconian narcotics laws. Convicted drug pushers are sentenced to death, regardless of how much they peddle, so they try to peddle as much as they can and, in the process, create as many addicts as possible. The result of these extreme circumstances is illustrated in the opening scene where a band of cops raids a warren of dilapidated factory buildings populated by homeless drug users, and then chases one breathlessly through narrow alleyways until the prey falls into a ditch at a construction site and is promptly buried alive by an unknowing bulldozer operator.

This frantic opening, as good as anything you’ll see in an American cop movie, introduces us to the main police operatives, led by the frustrated upward-climbing veteran Samad (Payman Maadi) who, like all great cinematic law enforcers, is a mixture of protector and enabler, a man who understands how to game the system in his favor, whether that be in the service of a promotion or nailing a criminal. Non-Iranians may have problems sifting through the various motivations at play, especially when Samad himself is being investigated for possible corruption (warranted, it would seem), but the implications are unmistakable: bureaucratic protocols enacted to protect the government from blame in the spiraling drug problem hamstring law enforcement operatives, thus compelling them to resort to “extraordinary” methods. 

Writer-director Saeed Roustayi makes the most of these dynamics, especially in scenes that take place within Iran’s infamous prison system, where large, filthy cells are so packed with arrested addicts that they sleep standing up. (Reportedly, Roustayi used real addicts as extras, and it looks it) Even more shocking is the velocity of the judicial procedure, which flies by so fast that it’s difficult to figure out what’s proper and what’s not, but in any case Roustayi doesn’t spare us the grisly outcome. This visceral presentation is couched in a carefully wrought story whose moral boundaries are constantly breached by our feelings for the various characters; not just the ethically compromised Saman, but also his nemesis, the obscenely rich drug dealer Nasser (Navid Mohammadzadeh), a ruthless kingpin who nonetheless has a huge extended family to support and protect and feels genuinely guilty about the lives he’s ruined in pursuit of what he calls security. More significantly, the technical aspects of this grueling film (135 minutes) are as good as anything you’ll find in Hollywood or South Korea. I hesitate to say that Just 6.5 depicts the real Iran, but what it does depict is harrowing and exciting. 

In Farsi. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku K’s Cinema (03-3352-2471).

Just 6.5 home page in Japanese

photo (c) Iranian Independents

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Review: King of Thieves

Posted on January 15, 2021 by philipbrasor

Were it not based on a true story, this heist film would have likely been derided as just another excuse for providing employment to that cohort of British male actors who have pushed past 65. In that regard, it’s quite a coup: Michael Caine, Ray Winstone (only 60, actually), Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay. They play a contentious bunch of over-the-hill career criminals who come together to rob a safe deposit vault where scads of expensive jewelry are stored. It’s obvious that the “king” of the title refers to Caine’s character, Brian Reader, who has been out of prison for a number of years and happily married. When his wife dies suddenly, a shady relative of hers, Basil (Charlie Cox), shows up at the funeral and makes him an offer he isn’t likely to refuse. Basil is a safecracker who knows the IT contractor of the bank where the jewels are stored, and he says he can get Brian into the vault. At first, Brian, who promised his wife he would never go back to crime, refuses, but at 77 he doesn’t have much to look forward to and eventually his resistance wears down in the face of Basil’s continuing entreaties. Brian quickly puts together a team of old criminal acquaintances, some of whom are still in the game and others who long to be back in it. It’s a heist movie cliche that director James Marsh initially gets right.

However, he’s less successful with the inevitable corollary to that cliche—that too many cooks spoil the broth. The thematic kernel of the true story was that, given the complexity of the caper, the thieves assumed that the police would assume that the culprits were younger and more financially resourceful, but, actually, it seems the cops caught on pretty quickly and only because the group couldn’t hold it together as a group. Much of the first half of the story involves Brian’s plan, which is, frankly, quite brilliant. But when it goes wrong in the initial stage he bolts the enterprise, leaving it to the rest of the crew to finish it, which they do, successfully. Difficulties arise when they have to fence the jewels through Billy (Gambon), who has a drinking problem. In any case, once the seed of doubt is sown, everything falls apart, and even Brian, who is no longer technically involved (but wants his share due to the fact that he owns the rights to the plan), gets fingered. 

One’s enjoyment of King of Thieves greatly depends on how much you like watching old actors take the piss, because there are some really hardboiled set pieces involving our heroes spitting f-bombs at one another in a fever of rapturous proportions. Winstone, of course, is the master of this kind of thing, but Courtenay, in the end, steals the movie with his self-pitying malevolence. But the script never quite fulfills the ad campaign’s promise to deliver the story of a robbery that reportedly shocked the UK with its ingeniousness, meandering along as if the scriptwriters themselves were suffering from iron-poor blood. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001).

King of Thieves home page in Japanese.

photo (c) 2018 Studiocanal S.A.S.

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Media Mix, Jan. 10, 2021

Posted on January 10, 2021 by philipbrasor
Internet cafe

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the government’s extension of a tax break for home buyers. Due to end-of-year deadlines, the column was written at the end of 2020, about two weeks before the current state of emergency was declared, and it will be interesting to see how this SOE will affect housing in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures. As mentioned at the top of the column, remote work situations have convinced some people that they should move out of the capital, and since part of the SOE statement encourages even more working-from-home measures so as to relieve commuting stress it’s likely the exodus will continue and may, in fact, even intensify. At the same time, economic pressures brought on by the SOE may increase unemployment or push down incomes, thus making it more difficult for some workers to make their rent or mortgage payments. The only news reports we have seen about recent foreclosures have been anecdotal and not explicitly connected to the pandemic, but in any case the government hasn’t released any statistics showing whether mortgage payment delinquencies are on the rise, but maybe it’s too soon. Reportedly, the government was planning to extend a mortgage relief measure usually implemented in the event of a disaster to cover homeowners affected by the pandemic. As mentioned in the column, the government’s rent relief program has been extended until March. In mid-December, Tokyo announced it was making about 1,000 “rooms” available for homeless people, most of them in hotels, but they would only be available for a month. If more renters are kicked out of their apartments, 1,000 rooms would seem to be hardly enough (the cost to the prefecture, according to media reports, is about ¥500 million), even if the program were extended beyond one month. Also, many part-timers and occasional workers who live in Tokyo spend their nights at places like internet cafes, whose situation during the SOE hasn’t been clearly explained. If they are closed, or their hours attenuated, then a large number of these people will be literally left out in the cold. The authorities’ general negligence when it comes to rental policy and affordable housing becomes even more of problem during a crisis like this pandemic, and as with the spread of the virus, the matter of shelter for people of less means is likely to get worse before it gets better. 

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Best Movies 2020

Posted on January 4, 2021 by philipbrasor
The Disciple

Needless to say it was a pretty bad year for movie-watching, or, at least, it was bad if you wanted to watch movies in a theater. I’m not averse to watching movies on smaller screens (I draw the line at tablets, though), and I don’t necessarily think that the whole “collective experience” is central to one’s enjoyment of the cinema. What I like about theater-going is the immersion, the idea that your entire attention is fixed on one thing. At home, whether I’m watching a movie on my computer or my TV (42-inch), there are still distractions, and, in fact, I’ve found myself doing that thing I once swore I would never do in my movie-watching activities, which is stop watching a film part-way through and come back later to finish it. 

But since March I have watched most new releases on smaller screens. Distributors stopped holding press screenings in screening rooms around that time, and though they resumed them in mid-summer, I was reluctant to go back. The screenings mandated masks and social distancing by limiting the number of attendees, but it still seemed risky, and as infection numbers in Tokyo waxed and waned it was difficult to determine if things were improving. At any rate, movie theaters reopened, with restrictions, and people got back into the habit of seeing films in theaters, as evidenced by the huge popularity of Demon Slayer, now the biggest Japan box office hit in history. However, because the release schedules, especially for foreign films, had been derailed, promotion campaigns also had to be recalibrated or abandoned altogether. In the midst of this confusion I may have been bumped from a few mailing lists, but in any case, bigger foreign films were pushed ahead or dumped in theaters without much ceremony, including press coverage. Since I no longer write for a regular publication about movies in a dedicated way, I don’t rate very high, but I know most of the publicists, and they know me and they seem to appreciate when I show up and write about their films on this website, mainly because it seems to be the only place in Japan where somebody writes in English about new releases of foreign films. There are, of course, plenty of places where you can read about new Japanese movies in English, and, as I’ve said in the past, I stopped being interested in Japanese cinema around the turn of the millennium. Actually, I think things are improving now, what with the ascendance of world class directors like Kore-eda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but I didn’t see that many Japanese films this year, anyway. The two I did see that I liked won’t be released until sometime this year: Kazuo Hara’s epic documentary Minamata Mandala and Yujiro Harumoto’s media-bashing drama A Balance, both of which I wrote about here after seeing them via the Busan International Film Festival’s press screening platform. I missed Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy, which I probably would have appreciated. Other than that I don’t really think I missed anything of particular value. 

But in terms of foreign films, I missed quite a few that did manage to open in Japan and which I had wanted to see. The main reason I missed them was because I was not invited to the press screening (if, in fact, there was a press screening) and/or when they were finally released they likely played at one or two theaters in Tokyo and I mostly stayed away from Tokyo at certain times last year. These include Claire Denis’ High Life, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man (which I think was rapid-released at the end of summer without a proper media campaign), the Brazilian award-winner Bacurau, the Irish animated film Wolfwalkers, and Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. Consequently, I didn’t really feel justified in making a best-10 list, but I think I should at least acknowledge the new releases that made a strong impression on me. And while, as I said above, I react to movies on smaller screens differently than to ones seen on larger screens, I have included streamed films because that, increasingly, will be something I have to accept if I want to continue following the latest releases, and I very much do.

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Best albums 2020

Posted on December 30, 2020 by philipbrasor

For what it’s worth, the pandemic improved my capacity for listening to new music for reasons that are all too apparent, especially to people like me who tend to be rather compulsive about hearing everything that comes out. During past “normal” years I had to struggle with this compulsion since I had other things to do and life, as they say, is short. These year-end lists are just the occasional, inevitable products of this compulsion, and so because I spent much more time at home in 2020 (and had less paid work for the same unfortunate reason), I could listen more intently and for longer periods of time to new releases. Frankly, it became something of a slog, since my conscientiousness got the better of me. I’m sure I wasted way too much time that could have been better spent gardening or finding a publisher for my book. Resorting to music in such a way is a classic procrastination gambit, unless, of course, you make a living from listening to music, which I no longer do (though I still deduct music purchases on my tax return). In any case, the one good thing that came out of all this is that it took less time to come up with the following list, since I didn’t have to revisit so many records out of forgetfulness or neglect. And for that reason, I am also fairly confident that the contents of this list won’t change in the coming months, which usually happens once I start discovering stuff on other people’s lists. (D.C. Fontaines, anyone?) And, yes, I’ve listened to both Punisher and Rough and Rowdy Ways enough times to know I like them but not that much. Though most of the records listed below were didactic, I needed music that did more than enlighten. It had to take me out of the house, even if was only in my imagination.  

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Media Mix, Dec. 27, 2020

Posted on December 27, 2020 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the difficulties faced by elderly people of limited means when it comes to health care costs. In the column, I cite a lecture given by Dr. Hiroshi Honda where he explains his own difficulties in 2018 trying to find a nursing home for his father, who had serious cognitive dysfunction. Though his father had paid into the kaigo insurance system that has been in place since 2000, there were no openings available at any facility he could find that accepted kaigo insurance. The only alternative was a private nursing home, which he said he couldn’t afford. We have been going through the same sort of situation lately with my mother-in-law, which is one of the reasons I wrote about the matter. Like Honda’s father, my mother-in-law has dementia. Though she is capable of holding a conversation, she “sees” people who aren’t present and tends to repeat herself. The main problem is that her husband, who is younger than her, has decided he doesn’t want to take care of her. Moreover, he won’t pay for anyone else to take care of her. Both he and his wife live on national pension benefits and have no savings. Fortunately, their house is paid for. In essence, the kaigo system should cover my mother-in-law’s care, since that is what it is for, but when she was examined by a kaigo official she was given a grade of 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most severe. Consequently, she isn’t eligible for anything but the most rudimentary care. In addition to her cognitive dysfunction, she also has serious mobility problems, but since she can stand up (barely) it isn’t considered that bad. In order for her to be admitted to a “special” nursing home that accepts kaigo payments, she would have to have a grade of at least 3, which means the person is for all intents and purposes bedridden. As a grade 2, my mother-in-law could access day services, either at a facility or in her home, but she would likely have to pay for part of these services herself. That is, if they were available. The problem right now is that the kaigo system, like almost all care systems in Japan, is sorely understaffed. Though she is eligible for someone to come a few times a week to look in on her, there is no one available to do that. Also, she can’t drive to a day care facility, so all the money she would save through the kaigo system would go to taxi fares. 

Since her husband (I hesitate to call him my father-in-law because Masako, who is not his biological daughter, hasn’t spoken to him in decades) refuses to care for her, she is practically living alone. She has one son who lives in the same house and who says he will take care of her, but he is unemployed and can barely feed himself. Of course, that is what the authorities want—children to adhere to the  spirit of oyakoko—since they would prefer not having to take on the burden of elderly care, even though everyone over the age of 40 is required to pay into the kaigo system every month until they die. If my mother-in-law were a grade 3, she could get into a special nursing home, and when Masako looked into the matter she found that most, like the one Honda talked about, have long waiting lists, but whereas Honda said he had to wait one year, Masako found that the wait now is more like four years. Private nursing homes typically demand a deposit of at least ¥10 million and then charge around ¥200,000 a month. There are public facilities that accept elderly people of limited means, but, of course, those are also difficult to get into. One solution would be for her to qualify for welfare, which means she could go to a facility and the government would pay much of the cost, but because she lives with her husband she doesn’t qualify for welfare. Masako suggested she get a divorce, which would automatically make her eligible for assistance, since her husband refuses to take care of her anyway, but he also won’t grant her a divorce. In any case, this is what the program does: it forces people to game the system in order to attain the care they need. For instance, her best bet would be to become substantially sicker since then she could enter a hospital and national health insurance would pay for it—or, at least, most of it. That, of course, is a nightmare scenario, but it seems to be a method that a lot of people turn to because they can’t care for their parents or grandparents at home.

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