As I mentioned earlier, I was able to conduct research while receiving a scholarship during my doctoral studies at the University of Tsukuba. Nowadays, there seem to be more scholarships that do not require repayment. However, in my case, the scholarship I received had to be repaid, totaling several million yen over the five years of my doctoral studies. Unable to secure another research position for some time, I relied on the meager savings I had accumulated during my time as a postdoctoral...
I think nursing homes often have memo pads, such as "handover notebooks," to inform care staff of important matters, including residents' conditions and facility events. Similarly, my parents and aunts created their own notebooks to stay in touch while caring for my grandmother. They recorded observations about her condition and important tasks, such as refilling diaper pads. My grandmother stayed in the same nursing home for over five years, from April 2007 until her passing in December 2012....
My grandmother had several children, including my father, her eldest son. She had previously lived with my parents, and the nursing home she moved into was close to their home—about 20 minutes by bicycle. Because of this, my parents visited her almost every day. My two aunts, my father’s sisters, traveled several hours from Ibaraki and Kanagawa to visit my grandmother several times a month. Unable to find a research position, I was unemployed and working from home, trying to compile a paper...
Caring for my grandmother with dementia As I have explained at length, I began living alone at 18 when I entered university, moving into a shabby one-room apartment without a bath or toilet. After failing to secure another research job, I returned to Japan from Taiwan when I was around 40. In total, I lived alone away from my parents' home for over 20 years. I never imagined this was happening at the time, but while I was away, my grandmother—who lived with my parents—developed dementia. By...
Re-reading P. B. Medawar's papers, I felt defeated and depressed. What disappointed me most was realizing that, despite studying biological populations for many years since university, I had never considered the issue of declining birthrates and an aging population—an increasingly serious problem in Japan. It was not until I returned to Japan from Taiwan in July 2008, without securing a research job, and was reflecting on my work at my parents’ house that I finally paid attention to this...
Then, in Japan, where the issues of a declining birthrate and an aging population are becoming increasingly severe, was it not anticipated that such social challenges would arise in the near future? Unlike British researchers, it may not have been feasible to foresee this immediately after the Pacific War ended, when Japan was in a state of chaos following its defeat. However, I believe that by around 35 years ago, when I was preparing for my high school entrance exams, these issues would have...
I do not think it left much of an impression on me when I first read it in Edinburgh. However, when I returned to Japan and re-read Medawar's papers, I was truly struck by his words—words that may seem radical on the surface but are, in fact, extremely rational and moderate. What surprised me even more was just how old the paper containing these words actually was. I was overwhelmed by the fact that British researchers had predicted the serious problem of population aging that Japan is...
P. B. Medawar, a researcher who won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in immunology, stated the following in the final paragraph of the paper published in 1946: “The moral is that the problem of doing something about old age becomes slowly but progressively more urgent. Something must be done, if it is not to be said that killing people painlessly at the age of seventy is, after all, a real kindness.” (italicized in original) At first glance, the true meaning may...
I believe this was when I was reflecting on my research on the evolution of aging at the University of Edinburgh. Among evolutionary geneticists, two theories are currently considered particularly important in explaining the evolution of aging: the "mutation accumulation theory" and the "antagonistic pleiotropy model." A British biologist, P. B. Medawar, played a major role in developing both theories. P. B. Medawar's two papers on the evolutionary mechanisms of aging, Old Age and Natural Death...
Something must be done After returning to Japan from Edinburgh, I spent a year researching insecticide resistance—the topic of my graduate studies—under the supervision of a professor who had been especially kind to me during my time at the University of Tsukuba. After that, I took a part-time research position in Taiwan. However, as I previously mentioned, I was informed in person at an early stage that they would no longer collaborate with me on papers, and as a result, my research life...