Abstract
This research defined the concept of ‘end-of-life care’ which is still unfamiliar to Japan by comparing it with the terms ‘terminal care’ and ‘palliative care.’ In addition, it clarified some policy issues as seen from aging and securing places for deathwatch in Japan, comparing them with those of Europe and North America in terms of their policy trends. From these perspectives, I claim that it is necessary to develop end-of-life care in Japan not only through health-care providers' and medical professions' decision making on ethical, clinical care of patients but also through supports for people's decisions on their ways of life and attitudes towards them on which the comprehensive health-care system in the communities is based and through the transformation to the support-based medical care on the basis of people's livelihood culture. For this purpose, it is particularly important for respective persons to consider their respective own lives and deaths, to tackle the issue of what their own dignity means in terms of social relationships in which they are embedded and to establish ‘inclusions’ which construct social relationships for giving people opportunities and places of thinking about how they ought to live through their entire lives. In these ways, I pointed out that the approach of end-of-life care requires us to consider how to establish social relations and to suggest their models.
