Figures released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on 18th September, prior to Respect for the Aged Day, show another record in the number of over-65s. The figures reveal there are 25.56 million people in Japan over 65, or 20% of the population.

This is an increase of 710,000 from the year before, and the proportion to the total population is the highest of any developed country.

By gender, 22.5% (14.75 million) of all women in Japan are over 65, with 17.4% (10.81 million) for men.

The proportion of over-65s in 1950 was 4.9%, and had risen to 10.3% in 1985. It is now expected that in 2015, less than ten years away, fully 26% of the population will be over 65.

Despite their advancing years, 19.4% of elderly people in Japan were employed in 2004, contrasting with 13.9% in the USA, and only 5.9% in Britain and 1.2% in France.

The proportion of elderly people in other developed countries includes 19.2% in Italy, 18.0% in Germany, 16.2% in France, 16.0% in the UK and 12.4% in the USA.

Centenarians

Earlier in the month, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced that there would be 25,606 centenarians by the end of September 2005, another record. This is an increase of 2,568 from 2004, and one in 5,000 is now a centenarian in Japan.

Women make up the vast majority of these super-elderly, more than 20,000 for the first time, or 85% of the total. By region, it is again the island prefecture of Okinawa that claims the highest concentration of centenarians with 54.43 per 100,000.

When government records were first kept on centenarians in 1963, there were 153. This rose to over 1,000 by 1981, and soared to over 10,000 in 1998. The rate is now increasing by more than 10% per year, and UN figures predict that by 2050 there will be one million people over 100 in Japan, the highest number in the world.