ACQ Vol 12 No 3 2010

Asia Pacific

Speech language hearing services in Japan Jun Katsuki-Nakamura and Junichi Fukaura

Keywords JAPAN JAPANESE ASSOCIATION OF SPEECH- LANGUAGE- HEARING THERAPISTS SPEECH- LANGUAGE- HEARING THERAPIST

Demographics The population of Japan has been in decline since its peak in 2004. As of 1 November 2009, the total population of Japan is estimated to be 127.5 million people (approximately 6 times that of Australia) living in an area of 370,000 km 2 (less than 5% of Australia). The nation is rapidly ageing having both the longest average life expectancy in the world (79.29 years for men, ranked 4th place in the world; 86.05 for women, ranked 1st place) and a low birthrate (1.37) (Honkawa, 2010a, 2010b). Children under the age of 14 account for only 13.3% of the population, while senior citizens who are 65 years and older, 22.8%. Almost 11% of the population is over 75 years old (Ministry of Internal Affairs, 2010).

Religion Most Japanese people do not identify themselves with any particular religion, but they follow the family religion for worshipping ancestors. They also participate in a variety of annual events and festivals which have a religious origin. An average home has both Shinto and Buddhist altars. Influences of Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity can be also found in Japanese culture (The Kodansha Encyclopedia, 1999, pp. 476–499). Language Japanese is used as the official language and taught in schools as the “national language”. Only 1.3% (1.72 million) of the population is non-Japanese, of which Chinese and

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ACQ Volume 12, Number 3 2010

ACQ uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing