Through Japanese Eyes: Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America
Yohko Tsuji, "Through Japanese Eyes: Thirty Years of Studying Aging in America "
English | ISBN: 1978819560 | 2020 | 252 pages | EPUB | 676 KB
English | ISBN: 1978819560 | 2020 | 252 pages | EPUB | 676 KB
In Through Japanese Eyes, based on her thirty-year research at a senior center in upstate New York, anthropologist Yohko Tsuji describes old age in America from a cross-cultural perspective. Comparing aging in America and in her native Japan, she discovers that notable differences in the panhuman 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. Tsuji reveals that American culture, despite its seeming lack of guidance for those aging, plays a pivotal role in elders’ lives, simultaneously assisting and constraining them. Furthermore, the author’s lengthy period of research illustrates major changes in her interlocutors’ lives, incorporating their declines and death, and significant shifts in the culture of aging in American society as Tsuji herself gets to know American culture and grows into senescence herself.
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