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The story
A Yahoo! News article about the lives of people in their early 50s from the “Baby Boomer Junior” generation sparked discussion on 5ch’s News Express+ board. The original article questioned whether “halfway point of life” is really the right way to describe this generation, and the thread filled up with comments pointing out a mismatch in how people perceive age, from “halfway point? more like already elderly” to “40-45 is the real halfway point.” At the same time, many posters shared stories of their 80-something parents still energetically playing golf or hiking, highlighting a disconnect between the hardships of the Employment Ice Age and the lived reality of today’s increasing longevity. Some comments also noted how many Baby Boomer Juniors never had children, and the generational discussion expanded to cover economics, health, and the declining birth rate.
Is Your 50s the “Halfway Point of Life”? The Diverse Reality of Baby Boomer Juniors Can’t Be Captured by “Unlucky Generation” Narratives Alone
■ Where Are the “Baby Boomer Juniors” Now? From “Unlucky Generation” Discourse to the Reality of Life in Your Early 50s
(Omitted)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Time to start prepping for the end (shūkatsu, lit. "end-of-life planning") lol
Nobunaga said "a man's life is 50 years," remember?
Inside your body, decline starts once you're past 30, and once you're past 50, biologically speaking, a doctor told me you could drop dead anytime and it wouldn't be strange.
For example, you might think hardening only affects the arteries, but the heart valves also stiffen, deform, and stop closing properly.
The person just doesn't notice.
Apparently it's becoming really common now — if you catch it while you're still young, they swap it out for an artificial valve on the operating table.
Cancer and stroke rates go up too.
Sure, there are tons of 100-year-olds around now, but those are the elite survivors who made it through everything — not really the same as us.
I'd say the halfway point is 40 or 45.
It was a single-parent household and I was an only child.
I'm basically a dead man walking now.
Hang in there and keep living!
You've got a wife and kids though.
I'm three years ahead of you — traveling sounds great. Maybe I should take time off work and go all over while I'm still healthy.
The Ice Age generation starts with the Baby Boomer Juniors.
Call centers, for instance, will happily take you even at 60.
Security guard jobs and flyer distribution work are also very senior-friendly.
More like you work until you die.
Dropping dead suddenly on the job is the ideal way to go.
Japan's just going to keep getting worse from here.
We barely managed to escape, but you guys are going to have to live with that hardship.
Good luck.
I don't know how old you are, but there's no need to take care of your body.
Taking care of it won't let you beat aging anyway.
So you might as well do what you want and eat what you want while you're young and die early — that's better for Japan.
Now that I'm 50, I really see how amazing Confucius was.
He just lived a long life and looked back on it.
The road you've traveled always looks short in hindsight.
Long time no see, Enari-kun. (a jab referencing actor Kazuki Enari, often used to mock someone sounding sheltered or naive)
I don't think having those things since birth counts as being blessed.
For people today it's just normal — they don't experience it as happiness.
You get more of a sense of happiness from living through the era when those things were spreading and becoming common.
Except smartphones gave them brain rot at a young age.
Kids with checked-out parents had their whole upbringing outsourced to a smartphone since infancy.
My dad's healthy too even past 80.
I might end up dying before him lol.
He's over 80 and still goes mountain climbing.
My dad's 85 and still golfs every week.
It's amazing — he's probably got more stamina than me.
Week / #1 / Artist
Sept 1: Aozora no Kakera — Yuki Saito
Sept 8: Nagisa no "·····" — Ushiro Yubi Sasare Gumi
Sept 15: Say Yes! — Momoko Kikuchi
Sept 22: Kagami no Naka no Watashi — Akie Yoshizawa
Sept 29: Melody — Mamiko Takai
I used to dislike Minako Honda and Akina Nakamori, but as I got older I realized they were beautiful and talented.
I liked Momoko Kikuchi and Yoko Minamino though.
Hmm, I don't know a single one of those songs.
Cancer too, probably.
I know some who died as early as their 30s.
High blood pressure and high blood sugar don't kill you that easily.
You just keep on living, burning through healthcare spending the whole time.
Truly sorry about that.
This country is something else.
Well yeah — bonus cuts started from our very first year on the job, plus endless unpaid overtime.
It was an era so bad that today's "black companies" (exploitative workplaces) would look practically wholesome by comparison.
The economy hasn't grown in the 30 years since, so economically this was an extremely unlucky generation.
Anyone smart enough understood that having kids in an era like that would just be cruel to the kids.
And this is such a massive population bracket too.
No wonder the birth rate keeps declining.
Wages never rose and you never knew when your company might collapse, but compared to our parents' generation it was still not so bad.
We got to experience the social changes of the digital transition, for better or worse.
Being with people who are a good match for you.
Having your own standards.
Background and Points of Debate
The Baby Boomer Juniors are generally defined as those born between 1971 and 1974, a generation whose job-hunting years overlapped with the so-called Employment Ice Age. What split opinion in this thread was the validity of the phrase “halfway point of life” — some see the 50s as still short of the halfway mark given today’s longer life expectancy, while many others felt that declining physical strength and health made it feel like “effectively old age.” Also notable, though hard to capture from the article alone, was the gap between this generation’s distinct experience of Ice Age-era low wages and harsh working conditions, and the sight of their own parents, now in their 80s, still leading active lives. It’s worth noting that while the Baby Boomer Junior and Employment Ice Age generations largely overlap, they aren’t strictly identical, and some posters in the thread pointed out that distinction.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Is Your 50s the “Halfway Point of Life”? Where Baby Boomer Juniors Are Now.”
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