Critics warn that Yusuke Narita’s popularity could unduly sway public policy and social norms. Read more at straitstimes.com.
In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.
At other times, he has broached the topic of euthanasia. “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future,” he said in one interview, will “come up in discussion.” Last month, several commenters discovered Prof Narita’s remarks and began spreading them on social media. During a panel discussion on a respected internet talk show with scholars and journalists, Yuki Honda, a University of Tokyo sociologist, described his comments as “hatred toward the vulnerable.”
Despite a culture of deference to older generations, ideas about culling them have surfaced in Japan before. A decade ago, Taro Aso – the finance minister at the time and now a power broker in the governing Liberal Democratic Party – suggested that old people should “hurry up and die”. In his day job, Prof Narita conducts technical research of computerised algorithms used in education and health care policy. But as a regular presence across numerous Internet platforms and on television in Japan, he has grown increasingly popular, appearing on magazine covers, comedy shows and in an advertisement for energy drinks. He has even spawned an imitator on TikTok.
But detractors say Prof Narita highlights the burdens of an ageing population without suggesting realistic policies that could alleviate some of the pressures.
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