{"title":"Warm-Soup Proximity: The Spatiality of Eldercare in Hyper-Aged Japanese Society","authors":"Xiaobo Shen","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.2017553","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Why do some people choose to live close to their elderly parents and how do they make sense of it? In Japan, multigenerational co-residence, a cornerstone of eldercare, has been replaced by a residential typology called kinkyo, living nearby. The optimal distance between the homes of family members, defined by the ability to deliver a bowl of soup before it gets cold, is considered a strategy to tackle the population aging. The purpose of this paper is to present a critical assessment of the intergenerational proximity which points to the need for further investigation of the role geographical distancing plays in future city planning. The qualitative data derived from individual narratives of four married daughters in Tokyo were obtained via online and mobile instant messaging interviews, through which real-life kinkyo situations are illustrated.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"139 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Architecture and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.2017553","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHITECTURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Why do some people choose to live close to their elderly parents and how do they make sense of it? In Japan, multigenerational co-residence, a cornerstone of eldercare, has been replaced by a residential typology called kinkyo, living nearby. The optimal distance between the homes of family members, defined by the ability to deliver a bowl of soup before it gets cold, is considered a strategy to tackle the population aging. The purpose of this paper is to present a critical assessment of the intergenerational proximity which points to the need for further investigation of the role geographical distancing plays in future city planning. The qualitative data derived from individual narratives of four married daughters in Tokyo were obtained via online and mobile instant messaging interviews, through which real-life kinkyo situations are illustrated.
期刊介绍:
Architecture and Culture, the international award winning, peer-reviewed journal of the Architectural Humanities Research Association, investigates the relationship between architecture and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. Whether culture is understood extensively, as shared experience of everyday life, or in terms of the rules and habits of different disciplinary practices, Architecture and Culture asks how architecture participates in and engages with it – and how both culture and architecture might be reciprocally transformed. Architecture and Culture publishes exploratory research that is purposively imaginative, rigorously speculative, visually and verbally stimulating. From architects, artists and urban designers, film-makers, animators and poets, from historians of culture and architecture, from geographers, anthropologists and other social scientists, from thinkers and writers of all kinds, established and new, it solicits essays, critical reviews, interviews, fictional narratives in both images and words, art and building projects, and design hypotheses. Architecture and Culture aims to promote a conversation between all those who are curious about what architecture might be and what it can do.