The ideal is “a world without nursing care. What issues did you realize through your experience?
The “Akinada Tobishima Kaido” is a driving course that connects the islands of the Seto Inland Sea from Kure City in Hiroshima Prefecture to Okamura Island in Ehime Prefecture, and has attracted attention as the setting for the movie “Drive My Car,” which won the International Feature Film Award at the 2022 US Academy Awards.
In the Kubi district on Osakishita Island, one of the islands, a new project is underway to renovate old private homes. We visited Mamena Shokudo to talk with Yasuharu Sarashina, president of Mamena, a general incorporated association that is promoting the project.
Mamena Shokudo is an old building that was once used as a hospital. In the back of the building, there is a residential area where the director and his family used to live, which is now used as a meeting space. The wooden building next door, which looks like a row house, is the former hospitalization wing, which is now being used as an accommodation facility.
Mr. Sarashina moved from Tokyo to Osakishima Island after turning 60. While living in Tokyo, she cared for her mother at home and took care of her at the age of 94. At that time, he felt, through firsthand experience, the challenges of caring for Japan’s elderly. He wondered whether Japan’s nursing care system was sustainable even as the number of elderly people continued to increase, and wondered what he could do in the rest of his life to help solve the problem, and actually did some independent research on his own.
He also did some independent research on his own.
If everyone died a quick and easy death, there would be no need for nursing care,” said Sarashina. Sarashina says, “If everyone dies healthy and well, there will be no need for nursing care. For example, an elderly person goes to the field and does not come back, so I go to check on him and find that he has collapsed and died. Perhaps that is the ideal for that person,” says Sarashina.
If the number of elderly people in need of nursing care continues to increase, the caregivers will become exhausted, the recipients will become dissatisfied with the deteriorating services, and the government’s budget will be on fire. No one will be happy,” Sarashina continues.
Marginalized Communities with High Aging Population Have Much to Learn
At that time, a young entrepreneur I knew had started a company on a remote island in the Seto Inland Sea and was doing well, so I visited him to see him. During his stay on the island, he met many elderly people who were energetically working in the fields, and he thought, “There is a way of life here that I should learn.
Osakishita Island has a wonderful natural environment, and elderly people drive light trucks in the morning and go out to work in the fields, from their 70s to their 90s, doing such things in good spirits.
Mr. Sarashina thought that this was the model of the “world without nursing care” he had envisioned, and decided to study the way of life here. He then decided to create a “world without nursing care” here on Osakishita Island. In a little over a year and a half, I had two friends who were willing to work with me. One was Koichiro Miyake, the entrepreneur who had inspired me to visit. Miyake-san is starting a new sake brewery in the neighborhood. The other is Shu Kajioka, a local native. After retiring as a technical advisor for the prefecture, he returned to the island on a U-turn to work on organic citrus cultivation and community revitalization activities.
In March 2019, the three established “Mamena Incorporated Association. With the mission of “taking life back into our own hands,” they aim to create a society in which individuals can live independently. Their activities can be considered a social experiment to address local issues, and they have the following five concepts. The five concepts are: “creating a community of mutual support,” “academic education project,” “development of supportive technology,” “sustainable agriculture,” and “promotion of population mobility.
Donating an Old House to Support New Challenges
Mr. Sarashina recalls how, after coming to Osakishima Island, what he had envisioned proceeded so smoothly that even he was surprised.
When I first visited the island, I was shown around a former hospital building. At the time, it was a vacant house covered in weeds, but he was somehow curious about it. At the time, he had no idea that he would move there and use it as a base for his activities.
However, one of the members, Mr. Kajioka, was a classmate of the heir to the building. The heir himself was working at a large hospital in Hatsukaichi City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and had no plans to return to the island. When Mr. Sarashina and his family went to consult with him about the use of the building, he said, “By all means, please use it. We will donate them all. My father, who was involved in the island’s medical care as a hospital director until his death, would be pleased.
The project was now underway, and Mr. Sarashina and his team were more and more energized by the conversation.
The building was positioned as a place to put the project concept into practice. The building was designed as an open space where people from outside the island could live together.
A few minutes’ walk from Mamena Shokudo, a terakoya facility called “Aidasu” was built as a place for children to play and learn, as well as a library and other facilities. All of these properties are renovated old private houses.
Repairs to the buildings took one year and two months, and the first phase of the renovation work was completed at the end of 2021.
One centerpiece is the “Mamena Diner,” which aims to be a dining hall for local residents. The purpose is to support the elderly who are gradually losing the ability to shop and cook meals. In fact, the sons and daughters of such elderly people return to the island from the city once or twice a month, and each time they return home with a freezer full of food. Since there is no place to eat in this area to begin with, our primary goal was to protect the “food” of the islanders. In any case, they renovated the place into an attractive place that would attract people from outside the island to visit.
We want to have energetic grandparents come visit and use the place as their third place,” he said. The staff here are caregivers and nurses, and they can also offer health advice. If they are specialists, they can provide the right support, whether it is to see if their legs are getting worse or the extent of their Alzheimer’s disease. It also serves as a place to support the wellbeing of the community,” says Sarashina.
