Grey concrete maze streets
Sky and old are same colour
Nine million of them
It’s a long drive out to Tokyo’s suburbs. And my mind has begun to drift to haiku for some reason.
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables
A confined and constrained communication form – a little like ancient Twitter.
Grow old and die, yes?
This country has changed so much
Best leave for the young
There are nine million senior citizens in Tokyo alone, with precious few young people coming in to take their place. Confined and constrained is, of course, how many old people in Japan feel these days. Constrained by culture, and confined to grey streets and small apartments where they live life to its eventual, inescapable, end.
Not Fumie though.
Fumie Takino, 86, has a fridge full of Coca Cola and beer. She orders pizza with impunity. And she dances – good lord, does she dance.
I spend several days with her while filming my latest Dateline film, which profiles Japan Pom Pom – a 55 plus cheerleading squad based in Tokyo, and Fumie’s decades long passion project.
The average age of the group in 70, and Fumie sees their mission as showing that staying fit, healthy and social in old age is not impossible, or really that difficult at all.
“No matter what it is or how old you are, I tell everyone to start something,” she tells me. “Stop blaming your age for being unable to do this or that.”
In her wardrobe, Fumie has racks full of sparkles and sequins that would make a drag queen drool. Pom poms and feathers and stockings, oh my!
She refuses to grow old gracefully. Or even, to grow old at all.
The drive to her Tokyo suburb is replaced with a swift train trip back to town. Fumie is wearing headphones; listening to electric blues, hip-hop and Taylor Swift. Whenever I ask her to slow down for a picture, she raises her eyebrows ‘you, kid,’ her look seems to say. ‘You slow down too much and you die’.
And then, arriving at Fumie’s favourite place, an inner city gymnasium, we’re shut out. No apologies. No airs, graces, or old-person politeness.
Other demure, elderly ladies shuffle past us, giving brief nods. They enter the sanctum. They leave me and the crew alone in the cold Tokyo night.
When the doors open again, Fumie and friends are reborn, or at least reversioned. Sparkling, sequined and doing the splits.
They’re really good. Not ironically, good-for-old-people good – they’re genuinely good. And they work extremely hard. This stuff, they take seriously, and thrive on it. They’re amazing, 80-year-old plus cheerleaders who are fitter and more flexible than I am.
As outsiders, and documentary-makers, we came here assuming that Japan is a culture that prefers its female citizens quiet, demure and traditional. But looking around and asking about Fumie’s group, we found little cultural pushback from other older Japanese. They’re embraced. Old people admire them, foreigners like me want to report on them.
Shake your pom poms now
You’re not as old as you think
Just do what you want
Fumie isn’t haiku. She’s not restrained.
This sequined octogenarian is a free-flowing sonnet, a glam rock ballad and a punk anthem rolled into one.
