シャカイ カイキュウ ニ ヨル コウレイシャ ノ シュカンテキ コウフクカン ノ ソウイ ニ ツイテ ジンセイレキ オ トオシテ

人生暦を通して, 就業中に得た社会階級と定年退職後の主観的幸福感との関係を明らかにするために, 異なる2グループの高齢者15名を対象にテーマ「自分自身の今までの人生暦をふり返りどのように思うか, その理由は何か」についてグループインタビューを行った. 結果, 社会階級のあり様が高齢者の主観的幸福感に影響をあたえるのではなく, 経済的安定がありかつ生きがいある活動を通じて, 社会との関係を持つことが主観的幸福感につながることが明らかになった. また, 本研究を通じて高齢者自身が自分自身の人生暦を振り返ることにより, 人生を肯定的に捉え主観的幸福感を増大させる可能性が示唆された.In order to understand the relationship between the social statuses acquired thorough employment in the life history and a feeling of subjective well-being after mandatory retirement, We had interviews with two different groups of 15 elderly people concerning the theme "what do you think when you look back on your whole life? And why do you think so?" As a result, it was revealed that the acquired social statuses do not affect their feeling of subjective well-being but that ensuring financial stability and maintaining relationships with society through worthwhile activities lead to their feeling of subjective well-being. The elderly people themselves looked back on and talked about their lives and what they felt at the time, which became an opportunity for them to look at their lives in positive light and led to a feeling of subjective well-being

In Search of the Everyday Life of Older People in Japan: Reflections Based on Scholarly Literature

The main objective of this paper is to critically examine discourses about old age in Japan, a country with perspectives that are culturally different from the European and American perspectives that tend to dominate the scholarly discourse on ageing. We focus our inquiry on the scientific discourse as representative of a system of knowledge that has a crucial role in determining ways of thinking and perceiving old age. Our literature review is based on a study of academic articles, within the field of gerontology, about the everyday life of older people in Japan that were published in the 10-year period between 1999 and 2009. We apply a Foucauldian gerontology perspective as our analytical tool. The results of our study indicate that there is insufficient knowledge about the everyday life of older people in Japan in gerontological research. We identify a number of discursive practices applied in various research projects that present a one-sided story of old age in Japan. In the conclusion of this paper, we identify a need for interdisciplinary and qualitative studies of old age in Japan that would include voices of older people