Addressing the Aging Challenge in Europe and Japan - Insights from the INNOVCARE Project

For any queries please contact Brieuc Monfort (Sophia University)

The European Institute of Sophia University, in conjunction with the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ Tokyo) and the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), is organizing a workshop on the aging challenge in Japan. The afternoon part of the workshop is open to students, faculty and staff members, and the general public. The day will be concluded by a keynote speech translated into Japanese.

Presentation

Economies in Europe and Asia are facing a “slow crisis” with a dual demographic shift: their population is expected to start contracting by 2050; the proportion of older adults is expected to surpass 30% by the same date. Japan is at the forefront of this change, having experienced already a decade of population decline while the share of the elderly is projected to reach 40%.  Particularly challenging is the situation of the “oldest old” who are losing autonomy.

If technologies (especially robotics, AI, digital technologies) can help the autonomy of older adults (OA), they also have limitations (difficulties of use, disconnection between design and real needs, ethical issues that may not be taken into consideration etc.) identified by field actors and in the scientific literature. The objective of French-German-Japanese INNOVCARE project (“Care-led innovation: the case of eldercare in France and in Japan”) is to try to overcome these limitations by working on a better synthesis of social and individual needs and the contributions of technologies. More precisely, it proposes “care-led innovation” as a novel approach to reconcile social needs and technological dynamics.

Reference

Lechevalier, S., Tamaki Welply, Y., Humbert, C., Shimohara, K., & Robine, J. M. (2025). “Care-led innovation: the case of eldercare in France and in Japan”. International Journal of Care and Caring, 1-8 (open access).

Organization

14:00 – 17:15 Workshop (open to the public)

Session 1 “Technology and care-led innovation for eldercare”

With Katsunori Shimohara (Doshisha University), Shuang Gai (Doshisha University), Takamasa Iio (Doshisha University), Tom Shibata (Kyushu Institute of Technology)

Session 2: “Disabilities and ageing, multidisciplinary and comparative approaches”

With Hitomi Nagano (Sophia University), Brieuc Monfort (Sophia University), Toshiyuki Ojima (Hamamatsu University School of Medicine)

17:20 – 19:00 Keynote lecture “Care-led innovation, a new paradigm and an application in the Japanese context of ageing Society 5.0” by S. Lechevalier

The event will be concluded by a keynote speech introduced by Miki Sugimura (President, Sophia University) and Didier Marty-Dessus (scientific counsellor, French Embassy). The keynote speaker is Sébastien Lechevalier (professor at EHESS & visiting researcher at the DIJ). Discussants will be Kaori Karasawa (The University of Tokyo) & Tadashi Kobayashi (Osaka University & JST)

Keynote speaker

Sébastien Lechevalier is an economist, professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and visiting research fellow at the DIJ. He is a specialist of the study of Asian Capitalisms, focusing on relations between technologies and societies. He is the founder and the president of the Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS (FFJ, French-Japanese Foundation). He is the principal investigator of the INNOVCARE project(2024-2028): “Care-led innovation: the case of eldercare in France and in Japan” (Funded by “PPR Autonomie, France 2030”).

Website: https://sebastienlechevalier.wordpress.com/