What to Do After Retirement? Japan Has an Interesting Answer

What to Do After Retirement? Japan Has an Interesting Answer

Every once in a while, I stumble across something about retirement in another country that makes me wonder whether we’ve been asking the wrong questions (what to do after retirement) over here.

This happened when I discovered Japan’s Silver Human Resource Centers. I’d never heard of them. Japan has more than a thousand of these community-based organizations where older adults can take on temporary, short-term, or relatively light work. They are a unique proposition.

Not another career.

Not quite volunteering.

Not really a seniors’ centre.

And apparently not quite a workplace either.

Which is where this got interesting.

What the Hell Is a Silver Human Resource Center?

The first organization that eventually became part of Japan’s Silver Human Resource Center system began in Tokyo in the 1970s, and the basic idea seems almost ridiculously simple.

Businesses, households, municipalities and other organizations have things that need doing. Older people have time, experience and abilities they might still like to use. The centres put the two together.

Members might do gardening, cleaning, clerical work, bicycle parking management, school safety patrols or any number of other short-term jobs.

The work isn’t intended to become another full-time career. The income is generally modest. Some members work only occasionally.

And that immediately caught my attention, because so much of the North American retirement conversation assumes a fairly clean divide.

You work.

Then you retire.

And once you retire, the question becomes:

What would you like to do with all your free time?

Japan seems to have left considerably more room between those two boxes.

Then I Found “Place 2.5”

This is where my ears really perked up.

Researchers recently interviewed members of Silver Human Resource Centers to understand what people were actually getting from participating.

Money was part of it.

But so were health and social connection.

The researchers noticed that the centres seemed to occupy a peculiar place in people’s lives.

They had some characteristics of a workplace.

I’ve wandered into third places before, while trying to understand why making and maintaining friendships can become more difficult after retirement. We tend to think of friendship as something between people, but the places that repeatedly put those people together matter too. Apparently, I hadn’t followed that thought far enough.

The idea of third places isn’t new.

Your first place is home.

Your second place is work.

Third places are the other places where ordinary social life happens—coffee shops, pubs, libraries, parks, community centres and the neighbourhood places where people encounter one another regularly.

The Silver Human Resource Centers seemed to be doing something different.

So the researchers proposed another term.

Place 2.5.

Well, shit.

Now you’ve got my attention.

What Happens When Place Number Two Disappears?

I’d thought about third places before. But in the abstract, not the actual location.

I’d never thought very much about what happens when you retire and suddenly lose the number two place.

Work wasn’t just where I earned money.

It was somewhere I went.

There were people there—people who were waiting for me.

Things needed doing.

Problems appeared.

I knew how to solve some of them.

Other people knew I knew how to solve them.

There was routine. Conversation. Responsibility. Competence. Frustration. Participation. Ridiculousness.

And occasionally somebody brought donuts.

Then one day you retire.

We spend an enormous amount of time preparing to replace the income.

But what replaces the place?

Maybe They Just Need the Money

That was my next question. And that’s a legit question.

Perhaps I’m romanticizing this.

Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, and plenty of older Japanese people continue working. Maybe these centres are simply a way for people who can’t afford to stop working to make a few more yen.

Except that doesn’t appear to explain the whole thing.

Research into why older people participate in Silver Human Resource Centers has found a mixture of motivations.

Money, certainly.

But also maintaining health.

Social contact.

Having something to do.

Contributing to the community.

And the latest research suggests these things don’t necessarily arrive in separate boxes.

Which made me realize that perhaps we’re the ones putting them into separate boxes.

Work Was a Bundle

This is the part I can’t stop thinking about.

We know that work provides several things at once.

It provides income.

I’ve already discovered that work was doing more with my time than I realized. Deadlines weren’t merely annoying constraints; they gave things edges. Once those edges disappeared, apparently even replacing an oil tank could become a four-year project…but I digress.

But it also bundled together place, people, routine, contribution and opportunities to use whatever we’d become good at.

Now I’m wondering whether time was only one part of the bundle.

Then retirement unbundles them; at least it appears that way to my Canadian eye.

The paycheque stops.

The workplace disappears.

The routine disappears.

The people scatter.

Nobody automatically needs the thing you know how to do anymore.

If we want some of those things back, we tend to go looking for them separately.

Need social contact?

Join something.

Need exercise?

Go to the gym.

Need purpose?

Volunteer.

Need some extra money?

Get a part-time job.

Miss using your professional skills?

Consult.

Need somewhere to go?

Find yourself a third place.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things.

But Japan’s Silver Human Resource Centers appear to have done something slightly different.

They bundled some of it back together again.

Not enough to recreate the career.

Just enough to create something that’s somewhere between work and not-work.

Place 2.5.

Apparently, Japan Built a Competency Container

I’ve been thinking for some time about what happens to competence when people retire.

You don’t surrender your abilities with your security pass.

You may have spent forty years becoming extremely good at organizing, fixing, teaching, managing, making, negotiating, growing, calculating, building, caring for, or understanding something.

Then one Friday afternoon somebody gives you a cake.

On Monday, you’re still competent.

That’s one reason I’ve become suspicious of the word boredom when we talk about retirement. Sometimes the problem may not be a shortage of activities. You can fill a calendar and still have nowhere that particularly needs what you’re capable of doing. You need a place to take your competency!

I’ve called that missing piece a competency container. Japan appears to have built one.

But what’s suddenly missing is the “container” that regularly called upon that competence.

That’s one of the things I find so intriguing about the Silver Human Resource Centres.

They don’t merely say:

Come hang out with us.

They also say:

We’ve got something that needs doing…and there are people here too!

There’s a difference.

Both can provide social connection.

But the second one contains something else.

Participation that needs your competencies.

Somebody needs something.

You can do it.

Off you go.

We Have Places for Retired People

Of course we do.

We have seniors’ centres.

Libraries.

Golf courses.

Pickleball courts.

Churches.

Service clubs.

Volunteer organizations.

Community gardens.

Coffee shops.

And I’m quite sure there are organizations scattered all over North America already performing parts of the same function as Japan’s Silver Human Resource Centers.

Maybe some are performing nearly all of it.

But I wonder whether there’s a difference between having lots of individual opportunities available and deliberately building post-employment participation infrastructure.

Japan seems to have recognized that people leaving full-time employment may still have something useful to contribute—and that having somewhere to contribute it might be good for them too.

That’s a slightly different proposition from keeping retired people busy.

But Let’s Look At the Flipside of That Coin

For about five minutes after discovering all this, Japan was starting to make us look rather selfish.

They have older people contributing to their communities.

We’ve got advertisements featuring silver-haired couples holding hands on beaches.

Then I thought about it a little longer.

Because there’s another side to this.

North American retirement culture places enormous value on autonomy.

You’ve worked for decades.

You’ve met deadlines.

You’ve answered to employers.

You’ve raised families.

You’ve done what needed doing.

Now, finally:

Your time is yours.

I happen to like that idea.

Quite a lot.

Coincidentally, I’ve also recently been thinking about what happens when retirement finally makes our time our own—and other people interpret that freedom as availability. So I’m not quite ready to romanticize a culture in which retired people remain useful to everyone around them.

Being needed can feel wonderful.

Being obligated to remain useful is something else entirely.

Maybe we’ve pushed too far toward individual autonomy.

Maybe other cultures sometimes push too far toward obligation.

I don’t know.

But I think it’s worth turning that coin over before declaring either one enlightened.

What Problem Did Japan Think It Was Solving?

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

Japan didn’t merely tell older people to stay active.

It built infrastructure- government-funded and policy-driven infrastructure- through which they could continue to participate.

Somewhere to go.

People to encounter.

Something to do.

A little money.

A reason to use abilities they still possess.

A way to remain useful without necessarily signing up for another forty-hour week.

Not home.

Not quite work.

Not merely leisure.

Place 2.5.

And suddenly I’m wondering whether we’ve concentrated so heavily on helping people leave work that we’ve paid too little attention to where they’re supposed to land.

Because retirement doesn’t only remove employment.

It can unbundle a collection of things we may not even have realized work was providing until they’re gone.

Maybe you won’t miss any of them.

Maybe you’ll happily rebuild every one for yourself.

Maybe you’re already doing it.

But perhaps before we retire, alongside all the questions about money and travel and hobbies, there are a couple of others worth asking.

When place number two disappears, where am I going to go “where everybody knows my name?”

And maybe even:

Where will somebody still need something I know how to do?

Japan apparently decided those questions were important enough to build a place for them.

Not quite a second place.

Not quite a third.

A place 2.5.

And I’m very glad I stumbled into it.

Related Reading

If you enjoy following ordinary observations that turn into bigger questions, you might also like:

• Another Strange Retirement Paradox – Can You Miss Work After Retirement, But Not Miss Working?
• Retirement and Social Connection: The Danger of “Bowling Alone”
• Is a Longer Retirement the New Second Adulthood?

• Hanssen & Fujita — From Workplace to Third Place: How Japan’s Silver Human Resource Center Combines Work and Social Engagement After Retirement
• Shirai K, Iso H, Fukuda H, Toyoda Y, Takatorige T, Tatara K. Factors associated with “Ikigai” among members of a public temporary employment agency for seniors (Silver Human Resources Centre) in Japan; gender differences. Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2006 Feb 27;4:12. doi: 10.1186/1477-7525-4-12. PMID: 16504162; PMCID: PMC1450260.
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare: Age of the 100-Year Life – Current State of Employment Measures for the Elderly