Yusuke Narita, a 37-year-old Japanese professor of economics at the elite Yale University (USA), has found the solution to the problem of the economic crisis that accompanies extreme aging in Japan: the mass suicide of the elderly. And he encourages them to have seppuku, a practice of the samurai, who disemboweled themselves as a show of honor. Narita’s stupid and aberrational idea is no exception, but he, encouraged by the vanity of the click, has been able to verbalize it.
His thousands of followers are convinced not only that the elderly have to give way to the younger generations, but that the state must cut current social benefits and, incidentally, relieve some square meters to extend a larger futon. Japan is the country with the highest life expectancy – Spain the fourth, let’s get ready! – and, historically, its culture has professed a deep veneration for them. To encourage such collective sacrifice now demonstrates infinite despair and radical amorality.
Our perception of aging is seriously affected. They didn’t teach us to fight over the years. Old age, understood as decline, hardly has creative directors who build a new imaginary. We want to freeze our best face at that age that we believe to be the best in life, that of Narita, a daring and pale thirty. The old are uncomfortable: their flesh trembles because they know too much.
The Juventocracy assigns them corner seats and stays in beach hotels in the low season, when the humidity is hostile. Ageism is more difficult to include in aesthetic discourses –also in the news– than sex or skin color; has worse photography. Old age has never been in style, despite the allure of style strengthened by age. As for Narita, hopefully Yale will prescribe a good drug.
