On Sept. 15, the country "celebrated" Respect for the Aged Day, when we honor our elders, who pass their wisdom and experience down to us so that our lives and those of our children will be happier and more fulfilling. Of course, nothing is farther from the truth. We in the industrialized world seem to be allergic to the elderly. We talk about how we have to take care of them and how they are a wasted resource but, generally speaking, we would prefer they stay at home knitting or playing checkers and not remind us of our own impending mortality.
It's difficult to say whether the media's aversion to old people is a reflection of this tendency or the cause of it. Everything is aimed at youth and boomers, supposedly because that is where the money is, but actually that isn't where the money is. One of the few genuine uses of Respect for the Aged Day is that every year on Sept. 15 the government releases scads of statistics about our "rapidly aging society." Presently, we just learned, 54 percent of Japan's huge reserve of personal savings is held by people 60 years of age and older.
It has become a broken-record theme of this column that the recession would have been over as soon as it started if both the public and private sectors had figured out a way of easing the citizenry's grip on this socked-away money. Last week, a commentator on TV Asahi's "Sunday Project" said that corporate facilities investments have improved impressively, but without a concomitant increase in consumer spending "it's like flying an airplane with only one engine."