Ageing with Smartphones in Japan / Ageing with Smartphones (ePub)

Older adults in Japan, one of the most ageing populations in the world, are starting to adopt the smartphone. What does this mean for friendship, gendered labour, multigenerational living, internal migration, health and indeed purpose in life (ikigai)? Based on 16-months of ethnographic research in urban Kyoto and in rural Kochi Prefecture, Ageing with Smartphones in Japan follows people as they navigate social and personal shifts post-retirement.

Examining how older women and men negotiate oppressive structures within society, the smartphone emerges as both challenging and perpetuating gender-based norms around care. In witnessing the response of older adults to the wider context of societal ageing and the various forms of precarity that it can engender, this book observes how people creatively navigate the challenges and opportunities of later life to define their own experience of ageing.

The rise of digital visual communication among people in their 50s and older opens new possibilities for sociality and proximity among friends and family. It also presents a methodological challenge for researchers. This book responds with a series of graphic methodological experimentations, including co-created comics, participant drawings, and the author's own fieldwork sketches and imaginative illustrations, to explore this fundamental shift in communication towards digital images.