Abstract

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN 269 by Peter Backhaus, London, Routledge, 2017, 188 pages., ₤105 (Hardback), ISBN 9781138229846; eBook, ₤20 ISBN 9781315387826 It is no news that Japan has a fast-growing population of older adults, and the surrounding sociopolitical issues have been discussed extensively in the media as well as in academia. As a relatively new trend after the establishment of the Long-Term Care Insurance System in 2000, older people who live in residential care facilities, rather than at home, are increasing (to the total of 900,000 in 2014, according to the 2016 Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare report cited by Backhaus). However, little is generally known about residents’ daily life at care facilities, especially in regard to how they communicate with people who provide care to them in such an institutional environment, away from their homes and families. In his new book, Care Communication: Making a Home in a Japanese Eldercare Facility, Peter Backhaus, a sociolinguist, eloquently details the verbal interaction between the residents and the care workers at a public residential geriatric health care facility near Tokyo. His earlier experience, working as a care assistant for 15 months after high school in Germany to fulfill his ‘civilian service,’