There are two prevailing myths about Japanese society: first, that it has a successful elderly welfare system and second, that it has a successful criminal justice system. Both of these myths reinforce a social imaginary where cultural values of family and community harmony make extensive state intervention unnecessary. Yet not only are both of these myths and their arguments deeply flawed, but they also obscure the more troubling reality that institutions of welfare and punishment in Japan are co-extensive, both keeping Japan’s growing population of “excess” older people contained and controlled rather than providing ways for them to integrate and flourish.

Elderly ex-offenders are some of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in Japan today, with high levels of poverty and homelessness, disability, mental health problems, and social isolation. Those with a history of incarceration and, by extension, their family, face stigma and discrimination that further erodes their ability to reintegrate and puts them at greater risk of reoffending. Unlike in any other country in the world, older people in Japan have a higher rate of reoffending than other age groups. In Unsettled Futures, author Jason Danely argues that we cannot dismiss these individuals merely as deviants; rather, their circumstances reveal deep contradictions in the overlapping terrain of welfare and punishment, and the precarity that forecloses on possibilities for older people to build a good life.

“Unsettled Futures breaks new ground in the study of the Japanese carceral system. The core issues in this beautifully written and refreshingly down-to-earth book will only become more important as current demographic trends of aging and a declining birth rate continue to shape Japanese society, impacting its prisons and its social welfare system. This is a work of deep insight and sensitivity, and it presents an unsparing picture of life on the margins as experienced by people who are old and out of prison, slipping through the cracks of Japan’s inadequate social safety net.”
—Adam J. Lyons, author of Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan
“Unsettled Futures breaks new ground in the study of the Japanese carceral system. The core issues in this beautifully written and refreshingly down-to-earth book will only become more important as current demographic trends of aging and a declining birth rate continue to shape Japanese society, impacting its prisons and its social welfare system. This is a work of deep insight and sensitivity, and it presents an unsparing picture of life on the margins as experienced by people who are old and out of prison, slipping through the cracks of Japan’s inadequate social safety net.”
—Adam J. Lyons, author of Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan
“Unsettled Futures breaks new ground in the study of the Japanese carceral system. The core issues in this beautifully written and refreshingly down-to-earth book will only become more important as current demographic trends of aging and a declining birth rate continue to shape Japanese society, impacting its prisons and its social welfare system. This is a work of deep insight and sensitivity, and it presents an unsparing picture of life on the margins as experienced by people who are old and out of prison, slipping through the cracks of Japan’s inadequate social safety net.”
—Adam J. Lyons, author of Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan

Jason Danely is a reader in anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom.