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

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 will be translated in Japanese and is open to students, faculty and staff members, and the general public.

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. The French-Japanese INNOVCARE consortium has introduced “care-led innovation” as a novel approach to reconcile social needs and technological dynamics.

Organization

14:00 – 17:15 Workshop

The workshop with covered ageing, disabilities, technology and care with presentations and discussions from: Beatriz Fernandez (EHESS), Yasuyuki Gondo (Osaka University), Toshiyuki Ojima (Hamatsu University School of Medecine); Yasuhiro Nakanishi (Nara Medical University); Hitomi Nagano and Brieuc Monfort (Sophia University); Shuang Gai, Takamasa Iio and Katsunori Shimohara (Doshisha University); Tom Shibata (Kyushu Institute of Technology); Sebastian Polak-Rottmann and Franz Waldenberger (Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien),  Tomoko Wakui (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontology).

17:20 – 19:00 Keynote lecture

The event will be concluded by a keynote speech introduced by Ms. 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).

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”).