The Twilight Years

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The Twilight Years, a 1972 Japanese novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, sold over a million copies in her home country and was praised by the Japan-studies community in foreign countries as a singular novel, "the closest representation of modern Japanese life" according to Donald Keene and a forthright, insightful work into the experience of modern Japanese women. The book was translated from the Japanese by Mildred Tahara and published by Peter Owen, London 1984 (ISBN 0-7206-0607-1). The work, which begins with the married protagonist's father-in-law seemingly doddering around in senility on a winter street underdressed, deals with the twin issues of Aging of Japan and role of women in Japan, who were/are de facto expected to be caretakers of elderly parents or grandparents in a household. Although the novel at times digresses into what may be characterized as a mere extended complaint about the subservient role women experience in Japan (most poignantly, as the protagonist realizes that her husband may very well forget her name as he grows dodderingly old), the work was prescient in that it foreshadowed the current demographic crisis facing Japan, i.e. a population rapidly entering old age without sufficient young workers to take care of the problems of advanced senescence. The Twilight Years examines elder care and the societal challenges associated with aging in modern Japan. The work focuses on domestic themes and everyday scenarios rather than large-scale historical events.