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Through Japanese Eyes offers an ethnography of aging in America from a cross-cultural perspective based on a lengthy period of research. It illustrates how older Americans cope with the gap between the ideal (e.g., independence) and the real (e.g., needing assistance) of growing older, and the changes the author observed over thirty years of research.
List of contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Japanese Names
Introduction: Anthropology, Cultural Values, and Aging
1 Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center
2 Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves
3 Networking at Lake District Senior Center
4 Post-Retirement Housing and Living Arrangements
5 Who Supports Older Americans?: Families, Self, and Other Sources
6 Temporal Complexity in Older Americans' Lives
7 Changes and Continuities Over Thirty Years of Research
Conclusion: Challenges and Hopes in the New Frontier of Aging
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
YOHKO TSUJI is an adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Summary
Comparing aging in America and in her native Japan, Yohko Tsuji discovers that differences in the pan-human experience of aging are rooted in cultural differences between these two countries, and that Americans have strongly negative attitudes toward aging because it represents the antithesis of cherished American values, especially independence.
