‘Plan 75’ by Chie Hayakawa

The Japanese government initiates Plan 75 – a voluntary, state-sponsored euthanasia policy – in response to a growing societal malaise over the costs and burdens of taking care of the country’s ageing population. Michi, a 78-year-old recently unemployed elder has no family and decides to enroll in the plan due to difficulty finding a new job and new housing. The film follows the story of Michi and other elders, a migrant care worker, and an administrator of the plan. It depicts the complex relationships that are established between them in the process. For example, consequences of the demographic structures and adjacent crisis of care in an ageing society are explored in the character of Maria, a Filipino care worker. She works in an elderly care home to support her gravely ill 5-year-old daughter whom she had to leave in the Philippines with her father. Due to economic necessity, she accepts a job offer from Plan 75 sorting items of the deceased. The language of assisted dying organisations frames the way Plan 75 is presented in the film – the scheme is introduced ‘to plan one’s own death’, ‘die with dignity’, but also as a solution to not be a burden to others. What becomes apparent, however, is that the language of free choice is driven not by ethical but capitalist concerns that place no value in unproductive and vulnerable elders past retirement age.

Euthanasia in the context of an ageing population is a key focus of Plan 75; yet, this is not a pro- or anti-euthanasia film. Rather, it depicts an inhumane society in which capitalism has fundamentally deformed Japan, leaving behind lonely, disconnected individuals that feel like the most valuable thing they can do for the society they live in is to buy into Plan 75. Although this science-fiction film imagines a dystopian society in which ‘Plan 75’ is presented as a state-sponsored solution to Japan’s ageing population, the documentary style of the film seeks to blur current realities and the dystopian future it imagines. For example, a scene reimagines the actual mass murder of 19 care home inhabitants with disabilities in Tokyo in 2016 by a man who believed those with disabilities should be euthanized. At the same time, it presents the attitude of wanting to rid society of useless people as absolutely normal. The film’s depiction of voluntary euthanasia has led some Japanese commentators to welcome the idea; indeed, some surveys suggest that a certain portion of Japanese society favours active physician-administered death. Medical assistance in dying is currently illegal in Japan: Penal Code Article 202 criminalizes those who assist another in dying, even when it comes at their request. Famous cases in Japanese courts, such as one in Tokai University Hospital in 1995, in which a physician was convicted of unlawfully killing his patient, act as judicial precedents for discussing contemporary cases in which physicians have helped patients die. Meanwhile, outside of Japan, the Netherlands have debated – and rejected in 2022 – a Completed Life bill, which would have extended eligibility for physician-assisted death to healthy citizens over 75 who feel they have accomplished everything they wanted to do in life.