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Vol 5 No 6 December 2016/January 2017
Australian Journal of Dementia Care
21
Learning fromJapan: social
projectswith business links
Dementia care practice at home can profit from observation of practice abroad.
Rachel
Woodbridge
set out to discover what she could learn from two social projects in Japan
L
ooking across borders to see how other
countries are supporting people with dementia
may help in developing innovative approaches
to care. East Asia is reported to have the highest
number of people living with dementia in the
world, with prevalence rates of 3.1 million (Prince
et
al
2015). What can we learn from approaches that
Japan is taking to support large numbers of people
living with dementia?
The UK has already obtained valuable lessons
from Japan’s response to dementia. For example,
the Dementia Friends initiative (Department of
Health 2012), which aims to raise awareness of
dementia within communities, is modelled on a
similar program in Japan (Nakanishi & Nakashima
2014).
Another initiative taking off in Japan is a set of
social projects of which I had heard frommy
colleague Professor Nick Tyler. Since I already had
plans for a trip to Japan, I asked him to put me in
touch with researchers involved in these projects, so
he arranged a meeting with Makoto Okada, who
works for Fujitsu Laboratories in Tokyo. Mr Okada
was able to introduce me to two of the social
projects; it is my purpose here to share my
experiences of these visits, as some elements may
be applicable to dementia care in other countries,
including Australia.
OiwakexDementia Project
The OiwakexDementia Project was set up by
Tatsuya Wakano and is located in the small village
of Oiwake in Nara Province. Mr Wakano’s vision is
about creating networked communities where
people with dementia can be valued and connected
with others in the village. The aim is for the project
to be self-sufficient so people with dementia work
and profits are used to continue funding the project
and develop services. I visited this project with
Nobuyuki Yasukawa, a researcher for NEC and
volunteer for the scheme.
The hub or ‘place of exchange’ looks out on the
hillside over Nara. It functions as a meeting space, a
guest house for people with dementia and families
and a place for exchanging information, with a cafe
area providing dementia-related resources.
When we arrived we were greeted by a group of
people peeling potatoes and packaging vegetables
at the kitchen table. My attention was captured by
the way people with dementia and professional
carers were working together and supporting each
other in this activity. We were soon joined by others
who had spent the afternoon outside, planting
seeds and collecting vegetables.
To the group’s amusement I asked a man dressed
in overalls, “Are you a farmer?” to which he
replied, “Carer turned farmer!” Both he and the
man with dementia he was supporting talked about
working together, building a mutual system of
rapport around a shared activity and being part of
something meaningful ‘beyond dementia’. Their
morning concluded with a trip to local businesses
to distribute the products. The afternoon was spent
discussing the future for the project with Mr
Wakano and Mr Yasukawa.
Down the road from the place of exchange they
were building a cafe attached to a traditional
‘shukuba’ (a historic resting place for travellers),
where people with dementia, families and local
people could visit and work in the cafe, serving its
customers. Across the way, they were also restoring
a plum tree forest that had been desolate for some
time. Mr Wakano spoke enthusiastically about how
future revenue would also be used to build a
community centre for the village.
DAYS BLG, Machida, Tokyo
The second project I visited, DAYS BLG, was set up
by Takayuki Maeda, catering for 10 people with
young onset dementia living in the city. The setting
differed from the first project; the centre was
smaller and tucked into a busy road, being closer
into Tokyo. However, the philosophy and daily
structure appeared to be in line with the work in
Nara. As summarised by Okada
et al
(2013) “rather
than treating people with dementia as simply
service recipients, treat them as service providers as
well” (p450).
For this visit, Mr Okada, Mr Yasukawa and I
spent the day at the project joining in with activities.
The day began with a morning meeting, where the
group discussed activities on offer for the day and
organised themselves according to preferences.
Activities available were washing cars for Honda at
the showroom, packing and preparing food for
businesses and restoring the garden. We were
invited to help in the garden with a group of six
others.
Two men supported each other up a ladder to cut
back a tree, another spent the afternoon observing
from a chair in the garden and one man supervised
our tasks. It appeared the focus was on enjoying the
process as opposed to the goal of clearing the
garden. As with the project in Nara, staff and
Rachel Woodbridge
(shown above in a
gardening activity
supported by Kinya
Sugimoto) is a PhD
researcher at Brunel
University London linked
to an ESRC/NIHR funded
dementia project with
University College
London, ‘Seeing what
they see: Cortical Visual
Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s
Disease’.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Professor Nick
Tyler at University College
London and colleagues at
Brunel University London,
and to Makoto Okada and
Nobuyuki Yasukawa for
their kindness in
introducing me to dementia
care in Japan. I am also
grateful to the social project
managers, Mr Wakano and
Mr Maeda, and the people
with dementia with whom
they work.