Ageing with Smartphones in Japan: Care in a Visual Digital Age by Laura Haapio-Kirk is an ethnographic monograph within a book series based on the ASSA (Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing) project. The project consists of ethnographies conducted simultaneously in 9 countries over 16 months, offering a comparative analysis of how smartphones impact the experience of mid-life worldwide and their implications for mobile health.
In this book, Haapio-Kirk explores Japan, a country with one of the world’s longest-living populations. Rather than focusing on the ‘oldest old’ or the ‘intense period of care’, the book features a wide range of people aged 50 and above. By considering care ‘as a specific orientation to being in the world’, Haapio-Kirk investigates how care manifests in everyday interactions between people and through smartphones. A key aspect of this approach is the focus on visual communication and the use of graphic methods throughout the research and the book (e.g. photography, film, drawing and collaboratively produced graphic narratives).
The book comprises nine interconnected chapters. Starting with an illustration of an old tree, its boughs propped by wooden supports, as a metaphor for networks of care, Chapter 1 situates the research within the wider context of Japanese society while introducing the research sites and methods. Chapter 2, ‘Experiences of ageing: beyond categories’, questions conventional age categories (such as ‘elderly’, ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ age) by demonstrating cases of individuals and relationships living in between and against these categories and their often-contradictory perspectives. Chapter 3, ‘Everyday life: gendered labour and non-retirement’, further investigates these perspectives from people’s continued participation in paid and unpaid work after retirement. Reflecting on the normative ideals of gendered labour in Japanese society, Haapio-Kirk reveals how these experiences influenced men’s and women’s different attitudes to work and technology in mid and later life.
Building on this observation, Chapter 4, ‘Social relations: sustaining mutual forms of care (yui)’, shows the continuing importance of ‘yui’ (the concept of mutual support from historical agricultural practices in rural Japan) in contemporary community care, and how visual digital media create an effective atmosphere where horizontal relationships and reciprocal care can be performed, though often in gendered ways. Chapter 5, ‘Crafting the smartphone: visual digital communication’, deepens the discussion by examining how emoji stickers facilitate a sense of embodied proximity through which care could be realized. Furthermore, the author argues that smartphones can also be used to create the distance required in care relationships, especially for women.
Chapter 6, ‘Health: self-tracking and warm contact’, challenges the view of health-tracking as an individual act by examining the role of social gaze in state-backed health checks and digital interventions. Chapter 7, ‘Rural Japan: between decline and rejuvenation’, shifts the focus to rural Japan, revealing how digital technologies are entangled in people’s migration to the countryside, and their important role in mediating social connections between rural and urban life. Chapter 8, ‘Purpose in life: “ikigai” through the life course’, unpacks the diverse responses to societal pressures to find meaning and purpose in life (‘ikigai’), discussing both the gender and the generational differences between relational and aspirational understandings of the term. Finally, Chapter 9 reflects on the author’s personal experiences of using visual methods and visual digital communication with participants during and after fieldwork.
Overall, this book provides timely insights into the use and non-use of smartphones among older adults in Japan. It explores how digital technologies not only enable care at a distance but also become a space in which people manage and negotiate their social distances and visibility in care relations. The gender perspective is particularly valuable, highlighting how attitudes towards ageing, care and technology are shaped by both personal experiences and broader societal factors throughout the life course. Challenging the negative narratives around ageing and care, the book vividly illustrates how older adults are using smartphones to not just receive care, but actively participate in caring. It highlights how later life can be a period of reinvention and growth, offering more time for relationships beyond the confines of work and/or family life.
The book’s narrative-driven approach and accompanying illustrations make it unique and engaging, although it is occasionally challenging to follow as the findings are often woven into the stories and narratives. The book will appeal to at least three types of audience. It is particularly valuable for those working at the intersection of ageing, care and technology, offering first-hand insights into people’s everyday care practices. Researchers in ethnography and visual studies will also find it useful, especially those concerning Japanese culture and digital visual communication. Finally, the accessible language and personal accounts make it an interesting read for the general public.
