Anthony Rausch, Hirosaki University [About | Email ]
Volume 25, Issue 2 (Discussion Paper 4 in 2025). First published in ejcjs on 18 August 2025.
This is the second volume of Notes from Northern Japan. As outlined in the preface to the first volume, it is my hope that the contents will fit into the multi-disciplinary objective of ejcjs in a manner that is less research than a means of offering news and happenings from rural Japan. I hope that Notes from Northern Japan will both offer themes of interest to those interested in Japan as well as pointing to potential areas of research for researchers. The content will be provided by Anthony Rausch, contributor to ejcjs and professor at Hirosaki University.
Keywords:Northern Japan, local news, current events, regional newspapers.
It is common knowledge that Japan is near the top in longevity / life expectancy rates globally. According to the Website worldometer, Japan is now number two in rank, behind Hong Kong, for overall Life Expectancy (both sexes), as well as for both Female and Male Life Expectancy separately [1]. The data show global life expectancy as 73.5 years for both sexes combined, and 76.2 for females and 70.9 for males. As for country rankings, Hong Kong is at the top for all three categories, with Japan second for all three, at 85 combined, 88.03 for females and 81.99 for males.
What does long life expectancy mean for elderly life in Japan? For a group of enthusiastic baseball fanatics over the age of 75 in Aomori, it means Prefectural Super-Easy Baseball (県スーパーエイジ野球). The Prefectural Super-Easy Baseball League began for the seventh straight year on May 12 in Noheji City and runs through the fall. Participating this year are six teams and 150 players from throughout the prefecture. The oldest player: a 91-year-old on the Mutsu Tomahawks. A quote from the youthful and spry 79 year old league president reported on in the May 17, 2025東奥日報 newspaper article alluded to ambitions by players young and old across the league of baseball glory into their 100s
Image 1: Toonippo (Too Daily News), May 17, 2025. (Source: Anthony Rausch).
As Japan’s population continues to age, cracks in the systems that provide service to the elderly are not just starting to appear, they are beginning to widen noticeably. Here is an article (東奥日報 newspaper, May 20, 2025) reporting that 55 percent of ‘Home Visit Nursing Care Providers’ responding to a Japan Federation of Labor survey reported a decrease in revenues in 2024, with 73 percent of those that did pointing to insufficient staff to respond to service requests as the reason for the revenue decline. According to the website Joint 介護ニューズ [2], there were 35,468 ‘Home Visit Nursing Care Providers’ in Japan as of spring 2024, with the average wage for a full-time caregiver reported by the レバウエル介護site [3] at just a bit over 310,000 yen per month. The article concludes with data showing that regardless of whether staff shortages affected facility revenues or not, just under 80 percent of care providers reported staff shortages.
Image 2: Toonippo (Too Daily News), May 20, 2025. (Source: Anthony Rausch).
A May 21東奥日報 article headline screams ‘90 Percent Not Wearing Helmets.’ The start of the article informs that of the 1,400-plus bicycle-related accident injury and/or deaths that occurred over the five-year period from 2020 to 2024, 1,267 riders were not wearing helmets. An informal check by the reporter in a bicycle-heavy area of Aomori City found that just five of 55 school-aged bicycle riders interviewed about bicycle helmet practices were indeed, wearing helmets. Reasons given for ‘helmet reluctance’ included lack of a specific school rule, embarrassment, and the fact that a helmet ruins one’s hairstyle. According to a national survey by the National Police Agency undertaken last year, the national average for ‘helmet wearing’ was 17 percent; for Aomori prefecture, 9.1 percent.
The so-called ‘helmet law’ went into effect in April of 2023 under the term doryoku-gimu (努力義務), which would be translated as ‘mandatory effort,’ but with a bit of ‘cooperative obligation’ implied as well. Japanese are generally considered to be law-abiding citizens, with explanations ranging from cultural values prioritizing harmony, social norms that dictate socially-acceptable individual behavior and effective law enforcement keeping an eye on everything. Refusing to comply with the dictate of mandatory effort and cooperative obligation regarding the wearing of bicycle helmets may change that image… or already has way up north in Aomori.
Image 3: Toonippo (Too Daily News), May 21, 2025. (Source: Anthony Rausch).
Spring… the long spring from when the temperatures start to rise through to the cherry blossoms and onto the completion of putting the rice seedlings in… brings a lot of visual beauty to rural Japan. One area I particularly enjoy is the changing patterns of snow on the mountain as the temperatures rise, the sun gets stronger, and the emerging and fading patterns of snow evolve through several stages.
Referred to as 雪形 (yukigata) and defined as ‘a shape formed by the disappearance of snow of a hillside’ (see research paper referred to below), the phenomena occurs wherever there is snow on mountains and four seasons. But the thing about yukigata is that each mountain yields its own unique patterns and those patterns change week by week through the warming spring. Some local areas capitalise on it: see the Omachi, Nagano Tourism Guide Website for example (https://kanko-omachi.gr.jp/global/en/nature/snowshape). It has also generated research taking up its distribution, evaluation criteria, and contribution to the industrial and cultural characteristics of a place (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jscejj/79/4/79_D1-0112/_pdf/-char/ja).
Anyway, I look out at ‘my mountain’ up here in western Aomori prefecture every morning and… from the first hints of spring green on the lower parts of Mt. Iwaki all the way through to a mountain bare of snow (even in the tight and winding gullies hidden from the sun)… I notice what comes and goes. And for the past week, the cow on the (from my position) southern flank—a late-emerging pattern – has been as clear as… well, snow.
Image 4: From the Omachi, Nagano, Tourism Guide Website, 2025. (https://kanko-omachi.gr.jp/global/en/nature/snowshape).
1. Worldometer: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
2. Joint 介護ニューズ: https://www.joint-kaigo.com/articles/28919/
3. レバウエル介護: https://job.kiracare.jp/note/article/7199/#:~:text= をもらえるの?-,訪問介護事業所の介護職員の平均給与,あくまで参考としてご覧ください%E3%80%82
Anthony Rausch is professor at Hirosaki University, Japan. He obtained his PhD from Monash University and has published on issues relevant to rural Japan. He is author of Japan’s Local Newspapers: Chihoshi and Revitalisation Journalism (Routledge), Japanese Journalism and the Japanese Newspaper: A Supplemental Reader (Teneo Press), and co-editor of Japan’s Shrinking Regions: 21st Century Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline (Cambria Press).
Article copyright Anthony Rausch.
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