[Similar findings on different backgrounds: different effects of a longer life expectancy in Japan and Germany]

From October 27 to 29, 1983, a Japanese-German Colloquium on 'Time' took place in Kyoto. One of the main topics being discussed was 'Human Life Time'. The first section of this report deals with some common demographic findings - actual as well as historical ones - such as developments of life expectancy, aspects of life planning, attitudes towards different stages of life, grids of inheritance and transmission systems, etc. The second part concentrates upon the consequences of a standardized long life in both societies today against the background of two different cultures, above all in view of the religiously conditioned differences in attitudes towards a life/no life after death. In Japan, a 'good dying and death' traditionally means the transition into a state where there is neither life nor death (and thus no eternal life), whereas in Europe, dying and death meant during nearly two thousand years only a passage between an earthly and the eternal part of 'Life'. And even after 'dechristianization', most of us still know what we have lost--fully or partly--only very recently: our belief in eternity. As a result, many elderly people in Japan may prove 'only' economic or family and generational problems, whereas in the West, the deepest concern of the aged still more often may be a metaphysical one.