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A series of auspicious birthdays and mortuary rituals offers Japanese elders a smoother path to death and afterlife-but social change has impacts on these intricate rituals and those who practice them.
More than two decades ago, Barbara Myerhoff noted the sparse cultural demarcations of old age in America, where "the stark beginning" of senescence is crudely marked by retirement and its end with a funeral. Although some events, such as moving to senior housing, using a hearing aid, or giving up driving, might denote the phases of aging, these happenings are normally regarded as "failures and signposts indicating that the end is ever nearer" (Myerhoff, 1984).
Since then, the impending mass retirement of 77 million baby boomers has changed the culture of aging, "reinventing" old age and altering the life course. Yet the fact remains that the continuing ceremonial under-service-lack of rites of passage-to retirement (Savishinsky, 2002) and the absence of life-marking events in later years require older Americans to negotiate and maneuver through aging processes with little cultural guidance.
The situation is quite different in my native Japan, where culture prescribes the rites of passage from ages 60 to 111. One of my vivid childhood memories is of an elderly man, clad in a red vest and a red cap like a newborn baby, sitting on a red cushion, and surrounded by many people. He was celebrating his kanreki or sixtieth birthday. Kanreki warranted a big celebration because in earlier times not many Japanese lived to reach that age, and also because it was an auspicious occasion when two zodiac signs of his birth year-one in the ten-year cycle and the other in the twelve-year cycle-converged again. He had completed a full circle to attain "rebirth," which was symbolized by his baby attire.
Today, with the average life expectancy of nearly eighty years for Japanese men and eighty-six for women, kanreki has become most meaningful as the age of mandatory retirement. Nonetheless, many high schools, including mine, hold a reunion in the year when the graduates of each class have reached kanreki.
Kanreki is the first of a series of auspicious birthdays acknowledged by Japanese culture. It is followed by koki (seventieth), kiju (seventy-seventh), sanju (eightieth), beiju (eighty-eighth), sotsuju (ninetieth), hakuju (ninety-ninth), jôju...