Many Japanese who go into a blue funk over the rapid aging of society may see a silver lining with the Lower House's approval May 22 of key social-welfare bills.
But while they welcome the passage of the set of three bills, which will clear the way for the establishment of a public nursing care insurance system for ailing elderly people, social welfare experts say that a heap of problems need to be resolved before the system can become as effective as expected.
Yuzo Okamoto, a professor of geriatrics and health science at the Kobe City College of Nursing, said passage of the bills by the House of Representatives is "epoch-making" in Japan's history of social welfare. "It showed that the ailing elderly should be taken care of by society and not just by individual households, as is traditionally done in this country," Okamoto said.