Abstract
Japan’s society is rapidly aging, and this shift comes with many associated problems, such as increasingly vacant housing in mid-sized cities and in metropolitan areas’ outer suburbs, as well as a lack of access to fresh foods, transportation services, and welfare facilities within walkable distances. Quality of life is also affected for older adults living in the areas facing these issues. Such aging and its related problems reflect a complex, long-term interrelationship among institutional, habitual, and individual circumstances. Notably, the institutional factors cannot provide a simple explanation for the rise in vacant housing in Japanese cities. In Japan, family members have traditionally provided a large part of the welfare needs (e.g., childcare, domestic work, and nursing care for older parents). In exchange, the children would then succeed the parents’ real estate. This form of “generational contract” has contributed to maintaining housing and welfare in Japan for many decades. Societal changes, however, deteriorated the interrelationship of family, housing, and welfare. This study examines how this interrelationship has changed over three generations and analyzes the changes’ underlying triggers. We conducted semi-structured vis-à-vis interviews with residents in commercial districts, suburban housing estates, and rural areas in Ryugasaki City, Ibaraki Prefecture, on the outskirts of the Tokyo metropolitan area. We analyzed the data from approximately 100 respondents.
