Abstract
Backgrounds
With the aging of society there is need and also a trend of preparation for aging and death. In Japan, this trend is called SHU-KATSU coined by the media in 2009. Originally, most subjects of SHU-KATSU were about funeral and grave. Nowadays, SHU-KATSU is defined as activities in preparation for funeral, grave, inheritance, medical and nursing care, and any planning for aging and death. Stakeholders say that SHU-KATSU is not only deciding about the relevant things of death but find out what one wants to do in rest of life.
The purpose of this study is to clarify the current meaning of SHU-KATSU. In this study the main points covered by the media are compared to actual preparations of elderly people covered by researchers.
Methods
Articles by Asahi-Newspaper were analyzed the by following steps.
1) Articles including the keyword “SHU-KATSU” were selected from a database.
2) The articles were categorized and text mined by the context of keywords and relative to the number of characters.
Results
There are some differences between the content covered in the media and the intention of the elderly.
In the mass media, funeral and grave are still the main subjects. On the other hand, psychological subjects such as ‘views of life and death’ and ‘spiritual or emotional side of life’ are poor.
In contrast in previous studies, the elderly tend to hope for a simple funeral and grave. They also tend to hope for an opportunity to learnabout death and the preparation for it.