Living national treasure – arts and older
people in Japan
By David Cutler

Cover photograph: Richard II – Gold Theatre of Saitama. Photo © Maiko Miyagawa

About the Baring Foundation
The Baring Foundation was established in 1969 as an independent funder. It
tackles discrimination and disadvantage through strengthening civil society in the
UK and abroad. The arts are one of the Foundation’s three funding strands. Since2010 this has focused on arts and older people. A brief account of this work up to2015 can be found on our website – ‘Getting On’.

About the author
David Cutler is the Director of the Baring Foundation.

Acknowledgements
The author is deeply grateful to the British Council team in Japan for their brilliant
organisation of the study tour on which this article has been based. They are:Jeff Streeter, Director
Manami Yuasa, Head of Arts
Chika Sudo, Projects Manager (Arts)
Nanami Akimoto, Projects Manager (Arts)
Minori Chikamatsu, Projects Officer (Arts)Purpose and Summary
The aim of this short account is to give a flavour of a small selection of art workwith older people today in Japan. It is largely based on what I was privileged
to experience on a study tour in April 2015 organised by the British Council andco-funded by the Baring Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation– UK Branch. It is a personal sketch, based on limited information, designed toshed light on some inspiring practice, very little of which is currently available
to the reader in English. After looking at the context of the world’s first superageing society and its approach to the arts, the paper gives examples of workin different primary artistic disciplines (though it should be acknowledged thatmuch of the work is multi-art form). I make some closing observations about thework overall.
Richard II – Gold Theatre of Saitama. Photo © Maiko Miyagawa

1Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets – Gold Theatre of Saitama. Photo © Maiko Miyagawa
2

Context – a Super Ageing, Super Creative Society
Japan has the enviable position of offering its citizens the longest average lifespans in the world (excluding Monaco!) at almost 85. One in four of the country
is over 65 as compared to around one in six in the UK. Japan’s population isa little under double that of the UK. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labourand Welfare estimates that the total population will decline from almost 128
million in 2005 to 95 million in 2050. The ageing of the population is caused by
a combination of low fertility and immigration along with high life expectancy.
The proportion of the population over 65 in 2055 is estimated to rise to 38.8%.
These predictions have inevitably caused intense public debate as to what
proportion of the population in the future will be in work versus retired.
Demographic changes tend to be relatively predictable and the Japanese
government has taken planning for the issue seriously. Their attention goesback to the 1960s when more nursing homes and homes helps were establishedfollowed by retirement’s benefits doubling in the 1970s and almost free healthcare. A ‘Gold Plan’ was introduced in 1989 to expand long term care services.
Since 2000, care in Japan is paid through a compulsory insurance system where
the individual makes a contribution from the age of 40, along with a generous
50% from the State. Even so, this system is under severe financial strain. Like in
the UK, there is a strong emphasis on older people living in their own homes foras long as possible. Day care centres and provision are much more important thanin the UK and probably the highest in the world. (400 schools are closed downeach year, some of which to become day care facilities). There are significant
waiting lists for people wanting to go into residential care.
It is always difficult to comment on social attitudes as an outsider, thoughrespect for seniority (either in age or status) is apparent. Many Japanese would
argue that this is declining. There is a view that loneliness is becoming a greater
problem in Japan and there was great concern that so many of those who diedas a result of the terrible tsunami in 2011 were isolated older people. Older
Japanese have lived through profound changes from the Pacific War to American
Occupation, the Economic Miracle of the 60’s onwards, followed by the Bubble
Economy and stagnation.
The incidence of dementia correlates strongly with older age, so Japan has
the world’s highest proportion of people living with dementia, estimated ataround 4.6 million people. The UK has made treatment and support for people
living with dementia a priority for the G7, so this is an area of common interest
and cooperation between the UK and Japan. Both countries raise awarenessthrough training Dementia Friends or Supporters (a staggering 6 million people
have undertaken the training in Japan) and are trying to organise cross-sectoral3

support through Dementia Friendly Communities. For instance in Fujinomiya City,
10,000 people have become Dementia Supporters and dementia friendly tourism
is being promoted. In the UK it is recognised that such work benefits greatly fromthe involvement of arts and cultural institutions.
The administration of the arts is rather different in Japan from the UK, with noequivalent of the national Arts Councils organised on an arms’ length principle
but with a greater role for central Government. Local authorities are also verysignificant. Budgets are tight in arts institutions and under increasing pressure.
Arts organisations are often heavily reliant on state funding.
The state plays a greater role in approving cultural value, such as in the system
of official recognition of ‘National Treasures’ (objects and heritage) and so called‘Living National Treasures’ (who actually labour under a much more bureaucratic
title), state venerated (older) artists who have achieved mastery in traditional
disciplines such as Noh theatre. State emphasis on traditional art forms isgreater than in the UK, and likewise the practice of community or participativearts (sometimes called ‘workshops’ in Japan) less supported. Japan will host the
Olympics in 2020 and London’s 2012 Games is in many ways seen as a model,
including for the involvement of the arts.

Drama
The Mount Fuji of arts and older people work in Japan is the Gold Theatre of
Saitama, which must be one of the supreme examples of work in the world.
The Saitama Arts Theatre is a major modern complex with four auditoriums
as well as 12 rehearsal halls and studios. On appointment, its founding artistic
director, Yukio Ninagawa, was by then already one of the most esteemed theatre
directors in the world. In 2006 something extraordinary happened for older
people’s art. Then aged 70, Ninagawa announced that he wanted to ‘create
a new form of theatre’. He wrote, ‘By harnessing the energy of people with a
lot of life experience, I thought we could create experimental works that push
the boundaries of what a performance could be. The performers themselves
are afflicted by numerous problems that face our ageing society, from physicaldecline to mental issues, so putting on a show involves hard work, but at thesame time, the performers have their own remarkable acting style that differsfrom that of professional actors and produces many poignant moments.’
Ninagawa personally auditioned over 1200 applicants, all 55 or over who had
not worked as actors. From these he selected 48 members aged 55 – 80 (no newmembers have since been appointed to the company). He then spent a year
training them. They worked for four hours a day, five days a week. The actors are4

Sokerissa! Led by Yuki Aoki. Photo © Hideaki Takamatsu
5

paid a modest wage. No actors have retired from the company.
This led to the Gold Theatre’s first official production the following year. Since
then it has staged over ten works. These have included Western classics, suchas Shakespeare and Chekhov, modern Japanese drama and pieces speciallycommissioned from Japanese writers. Unforgettably, our study tour was
privileged to see its rehearsal for Richard II and was welcomed by Ninagawa. This
production is also involving, for the first time, Saitama Art Theatre’s company foryoung actors called, ’Next Theatre.’
Being a member of the Gold Theatre has often been a genuinely life-changing
experience for its members. We heard one actor, now aged 76, retell how she
had left her husband to move to another part of the country to join. Anotheraged 88 describe how acting had motivated him to recover from serious paralysis.
He also said,’ In a recent performance, ‘Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets’, for somereason I found it hard to say my lines. Looking back over my life, I rememberedwitnessing the burnt-out landscape after the Great Tokyo Air Raid when I was 18.
This destruction reminded me of a scene in the play, and once I remembered
that, my lines came out smoothly. I realised that this was what Mr Ninagawa had
meant about making use of our own experiences.’ Then to prove his continued
powers he recited from memory ‘the medicine seller’s speech’, a traditional
actor’s exercise!
Oi Bokke Shi

6On a much smaller scale, but no less fascinating, is Oi Bokke Shi (Ageing
Dementia Death). Founded last year in Okayama Prefecture, it explores theconnections between care and drama. Work takes place in community settings. It
delivers workshops for care workers and seeks to rehabilitate older people using
drama. Its founder, Naoki Sugawara, is both an actor and care worker. He speaks
with profundity on the connections between the two and how they re-enforce
each other. ‘Being an actor has made me a better care worker and being a care
worker has made me a better actor. Older people have great presence’. Thishas clearly been a source of artistic inspiration for Sugawara who has created anumber of exercises around dementia. In a participatory piece he created, theaudience and actors searched a shopping street for someone with dementia
who had become lost. The piece blurred the line between fiction and real life byusing local shopkeepers and an actor whose wife has dementia. Sugawara argues
that drama can help a care worker ‘be in the moment’ with someone living withdementia, rather than challenging and correcting mistaken perceptions, what hecalls ‘blessing the moment they are living in.’
Setagaya Public Theatre is an arts complex in one of Tokyo’s wards. One ofits producers Minako Eshi works on its outreach programme. Workshops arerequested by local organisations who describe a problem or issue they face to see
how it can be tackled through performance. For the last six years the theatre has
been working in care homes. An original production is created over a two week
Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets – Gold Theatre of Saitama. Photo © Maiko Miyagawa

7

ARDA Workshop. Photo © Shinya Ochida

period and performed twelve times throughout the year involving care home
staff as well as professional actors.
A director and workshop facilitator who has used his participative approachin working with older people is Akira Kashiwagi, working in Ezuko, Miyagi
Prefecture and running what he calls a ‘theatre store’. He has worked withthe local community for ten years. He began with a fun theatre group for over
60s to which a music group has been added. A performance held annually. A
recent piece with older people has been a ‘skit’ where they make a song of theirdiseases which has since been performed to medical staff.

Music and Dance
Yuki Aoki, a dancer and choreographer is known in Japan for his pioneering
work with homeless people. (Some of these are older men who worked inconstruction during the Japanese building boom of the 1960s and 70s). He has
founded a not for profit group, though, while in search of funding, remains its
sole member at the moment. Convinced that all bodies express the life they aregoing through and anyone can be a dancer, he began working in a day care8

Gallery Talk by Arts Alive. Photo courtesy of Yoko Hayashi

centre in Shizouka in 2012, beginning with 13 workshops. He observed how little
energy the residents had but by using exercises such as simply responding to a
red rose, noticed a new sparkle in their eyes. He has also involved children in ajoint workshop.
As well as traditional dance forms such as Butoh, ballroom dancing is popular,
particularly among older people. For instance in Akashi, the Mini Mini Dance
Circle, is just one of several groups for older people. The group is self-supporting,though given a free hall by the local authority and members pay a modest sum
for weekly classes with a professional and perform three times per year.
Satsuki Yoshino has been running joint composition workshops with older
people for fifteen years. This led to a collaboration with Makoto Nomura
to produce an artistic response to the 2011 tsunami. A ‘documentary opera’
was created in collaboration with older Japanese who had experienced thePacific War. Makoto felt ‘the clue to how to revive from this disaster seemed
to lie in how they revived from the war. Then we visited old people’s homes tohave an interview with them. We collected their words, facial expressions andgestures, in which we tried to discover their unconscious messages. Throughvideo and photos we created poems, elders and dance.’ The result is a beautiful
performance piece called Dango for the Revival.
9

Workshop by Arts Alive. Photo courtesy of Yoko Hayashi
10Galleries, Museums and the Visual Arts
Matsumoto has a stunning contemporary museum. It honours its off-spring Yayoi
Kusama both with her own gallery and an enormous sculpture by her outside.
Still working at 86, Kusama last year was the most popular artist in the world(measured by ticket sales to exhibitions). The same museum for over a decade has
held biennial exhibitions of new work by artists aged 70 and over.
Kitanagoya-shi Historical Museum is sometimes called the Showa Era
Lifestyle Museum. (The Showa Era is the name given to the reign of Emperor
Hirohito from 1926 to 1989). Its Director, Yoshinori Ichihashi, described how
its reminiscence work draws on the example of the Age Exchange Theatre in
London and has been the first museum in Japan to take this approach. It is amuseum ‘where it is difficult for the visitor to remain silent’ as everyday objects
prompt excited memories. The museum created the ‘Shikatsu ReminiscenceCentre’ in 2002 using the Old Kato House, a registered National Treasure. Thishas been done in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
It works with older people both in the community and in residential care andinvolves children. The Reminiscence School takes place once a week for eightweeks. Participants become friends and want to continue after the course has
finished, so they become volunteers at the museum for events that introduce
children to the exhibits. The museum has also produced reminiscence kits on
various themes that are lent out. Demand has resulted in long waiting lists.
Unusually, the museum is seeking to validate the effects of its work with people
with dementia (including reduced use of medication and improvements inmemory) through scientific research.
Many museums and art galleries around the world have become interested inengaging people living with dementia. This interest owes a lot to the Museumof Modern Art in New York and its Meet Me at MoMA initiative. One exampleof this work in Japan is monthly meetings for people living with dementia at
the prestigious National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo which is led by Arts
Alive described below. (Though it was remarked that the Japanese tendency toeschew seating in galleries doesn’t help make them age-friendly).
Since 1999 (the International Year of the Older Person) a major strand ofactivity for Art Resources Development Association (ARDA) founded by Emiko
Namikawa and based in Tokyo has been work in care homes. ARDA has organisedover 100 workshops since then. This has primarily been visual work, though otherart forms are also used. Each project begins with a class for the carers, in which
they have an opportunity to experience the role of art, followed by a workshop
for older people and time for reflection. Some of this work has been sponsoredby Pfizer, including an art lecture series. In order to make the work sustainable,11

training is given to care workers, an approach familiar in the UK, as are concernsthat care homes have no budgets for this work. The exercises used, such as using‘chair dancing’ and residents drawing round their hands and using this to createa life story are identical to approaches taken in the West. It is proving difficult to
expand the reach of this work as care homes still tend to see art as ancillary andare reluctant to fund.
Arts Alive led by Yoko Hayashi, a visual artist and academic, works across art
forms with disadvantaged groups in a participative style which has much incommon with work in the UK. (Indeed the work in part stems from an Arts in
Health conference in Manchester in 1999). Its Mission Statement is ‘Creating
Changes in the Reality of Health Care and Social Welfare through the Powerof Art.’ Collaborations take place with some of Japan’s most prestigious art
collections, such as the National Museum of Western Art and the Bridgestone
Museum of Art. Hayashi’s work is often site specific and this has found a newenvironment in care settings. The first project was in a care home located in a
traditional Japanese house, which it was decided to decorate with Shoji paper
screens dividing the rooms. These were illustrated with stories told to themby the residents, including about local festivals from their childhoods. Projects
emphasise the enjoyment of creating work together. Other projects include a
travelling art exhibition that goes around care homes for around six months at atime and the Art Communication Project takes people living with dementia andtheir carers to galleries and brings art to those who can’t leave care homes.
Japan is famous for the excellence of its design and Kobe City has been declareda City of Design in the UNESCO network. It has a focus on disaster recovery. A
90 year old former raw silk testing centre has been transformed into the homeof the innovative Design and Creative Centre Kobe (KIIT+O) which seeks to use
design to solve social issues and has undertaken a number of projects with older
people (‘Elderly People + Creative’). The first of these was the redesign of anewsletter for a social welfare association into a magazine called Omusubi. It is
now edited by a team of older people and students, written in a livelier way, as
well as being easier to read. The widespread concern over isolated older people
has led to a project to change an existing cafe used exclusively by older people
into an intergenerational ‘Fureai Open Cafe’ where children serve (meaning that
their mothers come too) and items such as beautifully designed table cloths arerented out to help sustainability. This initiative has spread. Another project has
been around ‘New Towns’ begun forty years ago which are now mainly occupied
by older people. New festivals and exhibitions involving children are being used
to regenerate towns.
Yumiko Fujiwara is an individual artist working in the medium of traditional
Japanese painting. She began holding art classes for older people at a day
care facility after the doctor who ran it cared for her dying father. A series of
12Workshop by Arts Alive. Photo courtesy of Yoko Hayashi

Omusubi – KIIT+O
13

progressive and themed workshops led to work which the participants could
take home. There were also special workshops for family members to understandthe processes used and to help use the work to deepen their relationships with
their elderly relatives. Fujiwara has reflected deeply on her practice and has
distilled this into observations about practice with older people which would bevery resonant for artists in this field in the UK. She also redecorated the centre
which was located in a traditional building to create a nostalgic and welcoming
atmosphere that was also stimulating.

14

Kitanagoya – Historical Museum exhibition15

Some Observations
Looking at the demographics of Japan is peering into the future of Britain in 30
years time. We have significant cultural and societal differences, for instance inour patterns of migration and our traditional attitudes towards older people.
There are deep, as well as subtle, differences between Japan and Britain in our
approach to the arts and their role in society. A powerful aesthetic style is visible
everywhere in Japan, both in the everyday use of the visually pleasing as well as
its in dynamic modernity, exemplified by Manga and youth culture. The division
between ‘high arts’ and community/participative arts and crafts feels more
pronounced than in Britain.
Having said that, and despite the considerable barrier of language, much of thework I saw in Japan feels entirely relevant, deeply inspiring and, sometimes, very
familiar.
In terms of quality, it is undeniable that Japan is the home to some unrivalledpractice in arts and older people. In terms of quantity and scale, though,it has been impossible to make an assessment and no one I spoke to was
willing to hazard a guess. There was a concern among some Japanese thatthey had not been able to assemble enough evidence of the impact of theirwork, in comparison to the UK. (Much of that evidence, in my view though, istransferable). Artists and researchers rarely seem to collaborate. It did appear
to me, though, that arts and older people work in Japan took place in greater
isolation than in the UK and that Japanese artists in the field strongly wished tohave better networks and a greater sense of a common enterprise.
Finally, as in the UK, Japan has always had its celebrated older artists. One of theworks in the newly re-opened Museum in the beautiful town of Obuse is one of
Hokusai’s last pieces, probably painted aged 90 in 1849. Called ‘Dragon of Smoke
Ascending over Mount Fuji’ some take it to be an allegorical self-portrait of theartist in old age, still aspiring to mastery over his art. The developing field of artsand older people work in Japan holds the promise that creative ageing can be
the aspiration of anyone.

16

Omusubi
Fureai Open Cafe – KIIT+O. Photo © Natsumi Morimoto

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June 2015
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