On the 24th, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced it was canceling its tie-in promotion with the film *Even If Mom Is No Longer in This World: My Life Diary*, which portrays a cancer patient’s battle with the disease, and apologized to patients and their families. The film reportedly includes a storyline in which the protagonist refuses chemotherapy, and threads quickly pointed out that this contradicts the ministry’s own push for standard cancer treatment. Some also questioned whether the ministry had simply left the whole project in the hands of an ad agency.
2026-08-24 17:45
We offer our deepest and most sincere apologies.
On the 24th, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced the cancellation of its tie-in with the film *Even If Mom Is No Longer in This World: My Life Diary*.
Source: oricon.co.jp / Original article here
They just want to throw money around to flex their influence somehow.
They're probably in bed with the ad agency.
The bureaucrats are idiots too, though.
And on top of that, the plot involves refusing chemo?
Makes you want to cynically wonder if they're secretly trying to cut medical costs.
Refusing standard treatment is a no-go.
The point is: what kind of awareness campaign is it, putting this poster up in a hospital where people go to actually get treated? It really does show a total failure of imagination on everyone involved.
The ministry's bureaucrats clearly weren't thinking at all.
Dentsu probably sent over a proposal and they just went 'sure, no-bid contract, go for it!' and handed the whole thing off.
Get yourself cancer insurance even while you're young.
Ministry of Health: 'Fine then, no subsidies for you.'
Hospitals in Japan are required to bring on ministry retirees ('amakudari') as executives, so cutting off subsidies isn't really an option. If 'no subsidies means no amakudari' ever actually happened, whoever pulled that off would be prime-minister material.
When my wife died and left me with small kids and no idea what to do, all the ward office did was hand me an NPO pamphlet.
I still haven't forgotten the look on that official's face.
Sorry about that, man.
It's the generation of idol Aya Matsuura's kids.
Honestly, I think the term just never caught on because of the name — it sounds like someone's actual name, which makes it feel kind of goofy.
They're basically trolling the public on purpose at this point.
This will probably end up as ammunition to attack the minister in the next Diet session, but tanking the cabinet's approval rating is basically part of Kasumigaseki's job too.
It's leverage to make politicians fall in line with what the bureaucrats want.
The original book this movie is based on is literally a collection of cases of people who died because of that outdated mindset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q0XcteEeYI
'Aya generation' is apparently the 'correct' reading.
Dentsu, Hakuhodo, or ADK?
Both the Justice Ministry and the Health Ministry probably figured 'they're PR pros' and just dumped the whole thing on an ad agency.
Ever since Koizumi started pushing 'personal responsibility,' the Japanese mindset shifted.
Things got especially messed up once the Ice Age generation (Japan's lost generation of job-market victims) became the core of the workforce.
Between the posters and everything else, we're talking losses in the hundreds of millions of yen, right?
Losing someone is obviously sad — is that really something you go out of your way to watch in a theater?
Guess that makes me a jaded person for even thinking that.
There are people who watch stuff like the '24-Hour TV' charity telethon too — folks starving for 'inspiration porn.'
It was the contractor who screwed it up.
But it was the ministry, as the client, who gave the final go-ahead.
There was actually a real dispute over something just like that recently.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Entertainment] Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Announces Cancellation of Tie-In with Film ‘Even If Mom Is No Longer in This World: My Life Diary,’ Apologizes to Patients and Families [Ailuropoda melanoleuca★].”
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