Abstract

As population ageing progresses globally, incidents of dementia, a condition closely associated with ageing, are also on the rise. As a result, there has been an increasing visibility of dementia in cultural life in many ageing societies. Part of this visibility is a growing number of cultural productions that feature dementia, from plays and films to TV dramas, from novels and memoirs to autobiographies. This talk focuses on the context of Japan, a country with the world’s fastest ageing population, and introduces three examples of these cultural narratives: The Twilight Years (novel, 1972), Memories of Tomorrow (film, 2006) and Pecoross’ Mother and Her days (comic book, 2012). The talk analyses how these narratives represent life with dementia, focusing on the care relationship in particular, and how different media contribute to these representations. Taking into account the social and historical contexts in which these narratives were produced, it asks what these narratives suggest about the ways in which we imagine and think about dementia and care.