2017 Volume 18 Issue 1 Pages 159-172
This paper is about a group of elderly male Japanese retirement migrants and their affective experience in Malaysia. When I asked Japanese male retirees about their experience of ageing in Malaysia, they often emphasised that they felt rejuvented (wakagaeru) in Malaysia. They then redirected the conversation to praise Malaysia for its vibrant (genki ga aru) economy. The conversation often then turned to criticisms of the changes they saw in Japan. Many of them lamented Japan’s stagnant economy. I treat their affective experiences of the Malaysian environment as diagnostics of particular sociocultural histories – both of an individual retiree as well as that of the capitalist Japanese state to which the former no longer belonged as productive wage labour. I argue that by moving to Malaysia, the male former salarymen resisted becoming a surplus in the aftermath of productive life in Japan Inc. However, in transforming themselves into “upper-class seniors with a bad boy charm” in Malaysia, they are subjected to the new neoliberal discourse of the ageing society.
