CARING FOR THE ELDERLY IN JAPAN AND THE U.S.: Practices and Policies, edited by Susan Orpett Long. Routledge: London, 2000. 358 pp., $100.

By the year 2025, some 26 percent of Japan's population will be over 65 years old, meaning that society and families will need to cope with the various needs of 32 million aged people. Since I plan to join that group by then, it is encouraging that there are strong advocates of better preparation and improved care for the elderly and a government that appears willing to innovate and make this a priority in social policy.

This book presents an array of papers on a broad range of elderly-care issues ranging from government policies, cultural constraints and care provision to dealing with dementia on an individual level. One can only hope that the progressive perspectives espoused here are incorporated into formulating and implementing elderly-care initiatives over the coming decades.

The implementation of the Kaigo Hoken (Long Term Care Insurance Law, 1997) is welcomed by most of these contributors as a significant advance in the way Japan has approached the problems of dealing with elderly care. These papers were written before its implementation in April, 2000 and the postponement of premium collection forced by then Liberal Democratic Party executive Shizuka Kamei in late 1999. Here the new law is assessed in terms of its departure from previous government policies and its innovativeness on an international level. Rather than following the Scandinavian social-welfare model, the Kaigo Hoken scheme is more of a market-based social-insurance policy that minimizes bureaucratic interference and provides vouchers for the purchase of health-care-related services.