As more elderly people require special treatment due to dementia and other illnesses in Japan, what should the government do to increase the number of nursing care workers and caregivers? For example,

Encourage immigration to offset the population decline.

Japan has left this problem & a lot of others festering for decades & is now hoping to fix things by treating a few symptoms.

By all means allow for foreigners in to help, BUT that wont fix the problem except for a fortunate few. This is going to get a lot worse over time, scary stuff!

Like I have been saying for ages here, you wanna grow old in Japan?? Its not pretty now & its headed for worse each day!

I would say "don't isolate them from the society in first place".

Take measures to involve them more in the social activities inspite of their limitations.

Create opportunities for them to mingle, make friends and socialize with normal people.

This works wonders in many third world countries and benefits the elderly people emotionally and psychologically. Once the above measures are taken one will be surprised to notice a huge difference in their response to even average care givers.

The traditional Japanese family system has been challenged by different lifestyles and values; in addition, the empowerment of women is challenging traditional customs and gender-based division of tasks, particularly related to family burden such as elderly care and childbearing. Despite gender equality is acknowledged by the Constitution and laws, in practice even today gender division in the workplace and in the household find their roots in the ideal of the traditional. Due to the increasing number of working mothers, women not only have to care about childbearing and housework but their work careers as well. If we add that many of them have to look after elderly parents and/or parents-in-law, sometimes living under the same roof, it is understandable why women in Japan seem to view marriage life much less favourably, more frustrated by child rearing and feel much less satisfied from family life in general than their counterparts in Asia, Europe and US.

Like many salaried workers, I am sick and tired of carrying their load.

Boo hoo.

There are more than enough Japanese women that quit their jobs after getting married that can be coerced into going back to study and work if the salaries were there.

I absolutely agree with you. I would go further and say that Japanese housewives should be forced to get off their lazy butts and earn their keep, for a change. Like many salaried workers, I am sick and tired of carrying their load.

It is essential that people can look after themselves for as long as possible Investment and the development and research into gerontology in Japan would help....

There are more than enough Japanese women that quit their jobs after getting married that can be coerced into going back to study and work if the salaries were there.

Robots. Its the Japanese way.

One of my first confrontations with cultural things here was the film 楢山節考(1983) (The Ballad of Narayama), in which 70 was the cut off, despite the village-extended family social milieu.

These days though, deterioration of extended families as social units, partly due to economic and demographic change not to mention cultural attitude shifts following in their wake - this does not help. Single-person uchis do not help either. And kids are just not so into looking after their parents any more.

A telling signpost in the paper last week was that early in the 2020s the number of 25s will be equal to the number of 65s in the population. Then, um, it is going to all just become publicly less affordable, or individuals will just not get as much bang for their nenkin buck. Or both.

There would need to be some kind of social alignment along the lines of cooperatives or communes for more mutual and self-support, both finance-wise and facilities-wise. Something that could resemble the social structure of an extended family could be used as a guide. Here and there are various grassroots and private initiatives along these lines, but politics outside of this area of need probably will not cotton on. For instance bringing in Filappinas to change all the old Japanese people's nappies or daipers is just a stopgap solution. It is still better if people can change their own.

I am in my mid 50s and I already am trying to set things up for maybe just 20 years hence. I am very clear about my decision that I will not be in a place where I have to be demented in a second language.

what should the government do to increase the number of nursing care workers and caregivers? For example, is bringing in more such workers from overseas the best answer?

Yes. But also making sure that workers are paid well and not overworked to ensure that they do a good job and take care of the elderly- which is of course what the elderly are entitled to after the sacrifices they gave to rebuilding the country after the war.