Rethinking "Medicalization of Death and Dying":Explications through Examining Japanese Case

What does "mecdicalization of death and dying" precisely and really mean?This paper tries to focus on the medicalization of death and dying, and tries to show 1) the historical process of the social transformations surrounding death and dying in Japan, and then 2) theoretical reconsiderations concerning  the concept of medicalization itself .

  Medicalization of death and dying has been customarily and representatively meant to be “hospitalization” .   The radical change in the place of human death recalled the sense of something familiar being lost, and the medical-hospital environments coupled especially with the high-tech medical treatment in the 1970s have long been viewed as something unfamiliar, unhuman, and even anti-human.  Cultural interpretations regarding this process as “denial of death” or “pornography of death” in modern societies have been presented, and prepared for the seemingly backlash movement tentatively called the de-medicalization. However, what does these medicalization and de-medicalization really mean? 

 Japanese situation could present strategically suggestive one, partly because it is the heaviest aged society and partly because it is also the most densely crowded society with medical facilities.  It seems to follow that the medicalization of death and dying would advance most in Japanese society.  The situation is complicated. The health policy have tried to de-medicalize /de-hospitalize the aged, and promote nursing home care and community care ever since 1980s.  The people in general wish for sudden death, or for natural death in home, and both of them share in common one element: with lesser medical interventions.  It is both interesting and somewhat paradoxical. Interesting, because the directions aimed seem to be converge:demedeicalization. Paradoxical, because the intentions fundamentally diverge between the two.

  This paper tries to contribute to broaden the scope of the discussion of medicalization empirically, and to enrich it theoretically by reexamine the validity of the concept of medicalizaion.