Centenarians: Beyond Ageism and Beyond Horizons

She wakes every morning on the small island of Okinawa, Japan at 6 A.M. to make her breakfast vegetable miso soup: steaming aromas of revitalization, hardiness, and soy. Taking a stroll or working for a couple of hours in her garden, she spends her early mornings with habitual vitality. At noon, she greets her family with arms waving over her head as she shouts, “Genki, genki deska?” (happy, are you happy?). She has lunch with her daughter and she dances to Japanese folk music with her granddaughters in her navy blue kimono. Sometimes she works at a local market selling oranges to tourists. Other times she gossips and drinks tea with her friends and family. By nightfall, she prepares a vegetarian dinner complemented with a fine cup of mugwort sake before going to bed. This is Ushi Okushima’s daily routine at 107 years of age.

We have all heard the phrase, “life is short, so make the most of it” but does life really have to be as short as people expect it to be? In Ushi Okushima’s situation, life is the least bit short or boring. Throughout history, people’s fear of the vulnerability of life marked the endless search for the fountain of youth. However, today, the search has shifted to the search for longevity. Since the 1970s researchers, journalists, and doctors worldwide have mused on the longevity of the Okinawan centenarians. Through studies and interviews, researchers have connected centenarian longevity to healthy diet, daily exercise, positive attitude, and cultural roots to the land. When the mystery of the centenarian secrets to longevity finally had been uncovered, popular media, such as BBC, Time Magazine and the New York Times took great interest in sharing to the public the possibilities of living to 100 years. Article headlines such as “Forever Young,” “Secrets of the Wellderly,” and “The Okinawan Way,” and images of Okinawan centenarians engaged in unexpected activities for the elderly—farming in their rice fields, running, dancing, and singing karaoke— have captured the concept of aging and old age in an unprecedented, over-idealized way.

The images, articles, and stories of the extremely old challenge our preconceived stereotypes of the elderly population. The American people in particular have developed an ageist culture where the youth population views elderly people as functionally and cognitively incompetent, dependent, and depressed. Although these negative stereotypes about the elderly population still abound among America’s youth, the publicity of centenarian longevity has begun to break down these ageist barriers. Based off of centenarian studies, journalists apply the success stories of centenarian longevity, through images of health, landscape, and youth, to counterbalance the negative stereotypes of aging. Although popular media romanticizes the aging process of the centenarians, it has commenced a new discussion surrounding the larger importance of longevity versus our negative views and biases of old age. Seen through the Okinawan centenarian model, aging now holds potential for an actual future rather than a timer counting down to one’s death.