Abstract
This paper aims to examine the publicness having been mentioned through discourses over health from a genealogical point of view. After World War II, health was commonly considered as being without illness. Since the last half of 1970s, concerns about environmental disruption made the health a significant value for those who reflected on and made head against dominant ideologies in modern industrial society. Subsequently, the word health had been stated as a utilitarian idea applauding preferable lifestyles in older age throughout 1980s.
In 1990s, experts from gerontology, kinesiology and public health started considering health as a means improving of the quality of life in older age, and developing techniques to prevent elderly from becoming bedridden. They justified training strategies to reduce risks of fall accidents among elderly in favor of reducing social security expenses. This was enabled by a logic that physical independence of body can achieve the society’s vitality, efficient finance of nursing care insurance in short, accompanying a concept Kenko Jumyo (healthy life expectancy). Consequently, the idea of independence as a right to self-determination used to be a basic principle over elderly care system has replaced with the another concept of independence in Activities of Daily Living and furthered prevention-oriented care systems.
We presented these changes as a part of critical transformation of publicness in Japanese society crystallized by social insurance system to a neo-liberal political scheme that gives insures and the assured incentives or financial penalties depending on health-conscious behaviors.
