In an editorial deploring Japan’s disgraceful world ranking with respect to gender equality — 120th among 156 countries, according to the Swiss-based think tank World Economic Forum — the Asahi Shimbun on April 1 wondered why Japan is unable to change. Could it be, it speculated, that voters are indifferent, resigned?

If that is the explanation, it in turn demands one. Present circumstances, domestic and global, concerning this particular issue and many others besides, press so urgently on every side, clamor so insistently for attention and commitment, that indifference or resignation seems hardly compatible with living and breathing. The world is in ferment. Japan alone, it sometimes seems, is inert.

The April 3 edition of Shukan Gendai magazine considers inertia from a purely personal standpoint, challenging its aging readers to fling it off at last. For some months now it has been running a series on life at the end of life. People in their 60s, 70s and beyond should get their affairs in order — sort out their finances, settle their bequests, prepare for life alone before (not after) death claims a wife or husband. Husbands should learn housework, wives asset management. Many are the poignant tales of widowers who can’t cook themselves a decent meal (or even operate the washing machine!), and widows who know nothing of what’s owned and what’s owed.