A Cross-Cultural Study on the Divergence of Elderly Care Models and Related Social Issues between China and Japan

Against the backdrop of intensifying global population aging, China and Japan, typical representatives of the East Asian cultural circle, are confronted with similar yet distinctive elderly care challenges. Adopting a cross-cultural comparative research method, this paper conducts a comparison from three dimensions of China and Japan, namely family ethics, the pace of social transformation and perceptions of life and death, to dig into the underlying reasons for the path differentiation of the two types of elderly care systems. The study finds that differences in the inheritance forms of filial piety culture, the developmental asynchrony between “aging before affluence” and “affluence before aging”, and discrepancies in people’s perceptions of life and death are the fundamental reasons for the different elderly care paths of the two countries. Therefore, this paper constructs a mixed development path for elderly care that balances family support responsibilities and professional socialized services, offering theoretical references and practical insights for China to alleviate aging pressures and perfect its multi-level elderly security system.