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Japanese are living longer and might be living better

By Anthony Faiola
The Washington Post

ANTHONY FAIOLA / THE WASHINGTON POST Keizo Miura, 100, does his exercise routine to train for a trek in the Italian Alps. In a country where the average life span has extended to 81.9 years, Japan's elderly are not only the longest-lived but statistically the healthiest seniors in the world.

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Before a hearty breakfast of seaweed and eggs, Miura races through his indoor exercises, wincing as his neck — still tender from a collarbone injury — momentarily reminds him that he was born in 1904. The man who has become a role model in graying Japan sucks it up, shaking off the pain the way he did last year when he skied down Europe's Mont Blanc at age 99. In a Tokyo minute, he is out the front door for his daily two-mile power walk.

"I still feel good," said Miura, who in 1981 became the oldest man to scale Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak, and is training for an expedition to the Italian Alps next year. "There's really nothing so amazing about me ... but my son, now he is amazing."

That would be Yuichiro Miura, 72, who in May 2003 became the oldest man to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The Miuras are among the fast-growing ranks of super-seniors — Japan's extraordinarily fit old folks. In a country where the average life span has extended to 81.9 years, Japan's elderly are not only the longest-lived but statistically the healthiest seniors in the world. The typical Japanese now enjoys at least 75 years of relatively good health, according to the World Health Organization. That exceeds by nearly six years the average for Americans — who rank 23rd — and by three years the average for the French, whose seniors are warming the benches in seventh place.

Inside Yuichiro's bustling office in hip Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood packed with spiky-haired, nose-pierced teenagers, the robust and bright-eyed climber said he and his father are not alone in this nation's astoundingly healthy class of senior citizens.

"It's about diet, it's about exercise. ... It's about making the most out of a long life," said Yuichiro.

The extraordinary number of robust seniors means that many are able to embrace their twilight years with a gusto and sense of adventure once reserved for the prime of life:

• This year, a group of 11 Japanese retirees — with an average age of 63 and a team leader clocking in at 78 — walked across China's Taklimakan Desert along the ancient Silk Road. For 73 days, they trekked about 750 miles in the steps of the 19th-century Swedish adventurer Sven Hedin, braving frosts with temperatures reaching 15 degrees below zero.

• This month, Minoru Saito, 70, set sail in hopes of becoming the oldest man to circumnavigate the world alone without stopping at a single port.

• In May 2002, Tamae Watanabe became the oldest woman to reach the top of Mount Everest at age 63. As of December 2003, two Japanese in their seventies, 22 in their sixties and 44 in their fifties had climbed 26,000-foot Himalayan mountains, according to the Japan Himalayan Association.

• A popular TV commercial features Minoru Nozoe, 68, a farmer, doing gymnastic twirls on the high bar.

• Almost half a million seniors gathered last month in Gunma prefecture for a sort of elderly Olympics where they competed in martial arts, soccer, swimming and the marathon.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency, an organization similar to the Peace Corps, has seen a sharp increase in the number of seniors volunteering overseas in the past decade.

With one in five citizens older than 65, spending by seniors — who on average have far more savings than most of their peers in the developed world — drives rising consumer demand as Japan emerges from a 13-year economic slump.

Without doubt, not all elderly Japanese are healthy, and their longevity is both a blessing and a curse. Along with the nation's low birthrate, covering medical and pension costs for seniors is widely viewed as the most significant long-term problem confronting Japan. By 2017, an estimated 27 percent of the population will be older than 65, rising to 35.7 percent by 2050, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

But government projections indicate that relatively robust seniors may at least help blunt some of those costs. Despite the high cost of living, for instance, medical costs per person for Japanese older than 65 are still slightly less than those for their American counterparts — about $6,500 per person in Japan compared with $7,055 in the United States, according to government statistics.

"Japanese seniors are not only living longer but their health is generally excellent, and as a group, they appear to be getting healthier," said Koichi Ando, assistant director of elderly affairs at the Health Ministry. "They are doing more and more exercise, while younger Japanese are spending more time sitting and scanning the Internet."

Studies indicate a multitude of reasons for the health of older people, with most citing a traditional diet heavy on fish and light on red meat, as well as the consumption of high-fiber rice. A national survey in 2000 showed that almost 63.6 percent of seniors don't overeat, 49.6 percent exercise regularly and 64.2 percent sleep well. Older Japanese additionally have lived through the hardships of World War II and its aftermath — and, in some cases, through the difficulties of World War I and the 1904-05 Japanese-Russian war. Those periods, geriatrics experts say, toughened older Japanese — and they stayed tough even as Japan evolved into the world's second-richest nation after the United States.

In rural areas, the elderly tend fields and gardens for hours a day. Urban seniors, meanwhile, live active lives in cities such as Tokyo, where getting from place to place is often easier without a car. Despite Japan's high-tech society, most subway stations do not have escalators — meaning substantial walking and stair-climbing, whether people like it or not.

"As opposed to America, seniors in Japan do not have to purposely go out and seek exercise — everyday life makes them more slim and healthy," even while they maintain very high nutrition, said Makoto Suzuki, a professor of human welfare at Okinawa International University. "It's a winning combination."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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