The bulletin board on the first floor of the small local community center was full. On a Saturday morning, the few classrooms available to rent by the center are all filled in with activities like "International Exchange," "Basic English," "Singing," "Calligraphy," among others. Various activity groups have their little posters pasted on the nearby walls, advertising in pictures and words their membership, meeting times, and the reason others should join. From the first look of the place, it seemed as if the community center is really a meeting place for all members of the community.
Yet, the community center, nestled in the midst of several high-rise condominiums where people of different age groups should all be present, attracts a particular kind of clientele. Even on a Saturday morning, when everyone should be out of work or school, the center is filled with only the elderly, mixed in with a few middle-aged staff members and activity organizers. No young people are in sight, except kids rushing through their way elsewhere, and a few babies that the elderly are probably babysitting while the parents are away.
As a country plagued by an aging population and ever-fewer children, the fact that a local community center has a disproportionate number of elderly should not be surprising, but the fact that they almost exclusively use the center's facilities still begs questions. After all, the classrooms are open to all and free to reserve, so anyone seeking to meet up with people for activities can book them. And considering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting early closures of cafes and restaurants, young people should turn toward public facilities like those in these community centers as alternative social spaces.
Some quick conversations with the elderly users of the facilities reveal the social cleavage that comes with using these community centers. A female retiree spoke of how the community center has become her only place for socialization, as her own children, who live not so far away, barely visit or talk to her. As such, she is much more inclined to not bother them by going to the community centers for socialization. While it is difficult to gauge how representative her sentiment is, if many elderly users do think like her, then it is very much possible that the younger members of the community are avoiding the community center just to avoid their elderly family members.
Of course, this is not to say that younger people are exclusively at fault for deliberately avoiding the elderly and leave them socially isolated in the community center. Rather, the young face not only guilt from not satisfying the demands of their elderly family members to contact them more but also prodding and even stipulation by government policies for them to spend more time with the elderly. In Asian societies, where the Confucian idea of filial piety remains a social virtue, governments have undertaken measures to keep it alive and relevant when the youths fail to display proper adherence.
The social aspect of filial piety intertwines with economic realities in a country like Japan. Given strict limitations on unskilled immigration, hiring a maid or a helper to look after the elderly is not an economically viable option for the vast majority of the country's population. For many young people who are from more rural areas, making a good living also means leaving behind their childhood homes and aging parents for the bright lights of Tokyo and other major cities. For community centers in those rural areas, the facilities are populated by the elderly because the elderly are practically the only residents in the area.
In a country in which the young are both socially and economically inclined to avoid their elderly family members, simply asking them to spend more time together is not realistic, and perhaps counterintuitive. As such, community centers, perhaps originally designed as places where community members of all age groups can mingle freely, are still a positive presence in that they encourage the elderly to provide mutual support to one another with minimal participation of younger people. By giving people purpose (in running activity groups and learning together), the community centers ensure the upkeep of mental health among attendees.
Thought this way, perhaps the fact that only the elderly are found at the community center is not a problem. Rather than being somewhat dejected by the lack of communication with their younger family members, the elderly should recognize that separate social circles for people in different age groups is an unchangeable reality and enjoy the community centers as exclusive spaces for the elderly. And the government, rather than compelling or guilt-tripping young people to hang out with the old, should spend more effort encouraging more elderly to use the community centers as their home away from home.
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