Inauguration as Dean of the Graduate School of Health Management and My Back Pages | Yasuo Takagi (Dean, Graduate School of Health Management)

2009.10.29

While drawing a diagram of Rowntree's "life cycle and poverty line" in a lecture on the principles of social welfare, I keenly felt that if I had been a citizen of York in 1899, I would be falling below the primary poverty line due to the loss of my ability to work as I approach my 60th birthday (next year, to be precise). Of course, in modern times, the extension of the mandatory retirement age and the pension system prevent people from immediately falling into poverty, but there is no doubt that this is an age for me to look back on my own "back pages."

I started my career in 1973, the "first year of welfare," as a journalist for a specialized magazine assigned to the Ministry of Health and Welfare. At the age of 40, I changed jobs to one of the Ministry's affiliated Research Centers and Institutes and embarked on the path of a researcher. As someone who has followed this path, the public's expectations and frustrations surrounding today's healthcare, welfare, and pension systems feel worlds apart from that time. During the period when the social security system was established and enhanced based on the fruits of high economic growth, everyone believed that tomorrow would be richer than today and that the social security system would also be improved. However, in 1996, the Research Centers and Institutes where I worked was abolished as part of administrative reform. After that, I worked as a university faculty member in Sendai, Nagoya, and Hakata, and around 2005, when I began working at the Juku to establish this graduate school, issues like the missing pension records and the collapse of the healthcare system became major social problems.

We must properly clarify the structure and mechanisms of this change, asking why this situation has come about and whether social security and healthcare are no longer needed. It is true that the system design during the gung-ho period of high economic growth tended to be lax. A readjustment of rights and obligations may also be necessary, but the fundamental question is where to find the driving force for enhancing social security and healthcare. With the discovery of new forms of poverty in an affluent society and the need to resolve them, there has never been a time when "solidarity" is more called for.

It is often said that we have material wealth but poverty of the spirit, but achieving a wholesome and cultured life of a minimum standard, including the mental aspect, was a major goal of the post-war reconstruction. It is not pointless to look back and ask whether that goal has been achieved. As symbolized by the change in government, it seems that the direction of society in the 21st century has begun to shift. This is an excellent time for us to learn together as pioneers of the era.

(Posted on: 2009/10/29)