PLAN 75 THROUGH A GEN Z LENS

Chie Hayakawa’s debut feature boldly tackles Japan’s aging crisis, exploring the societal implications of growing old in a changing world.

The poster for PLAN 75 reads: “an institutional system where one has the authority to choose between life or death at the age of 75. Just or unjust?” 

Objectively speaking, the answer comes quite easily to me as a Gen Z: unjust. However, looking around at the faces of the Boomers who were in the same theater as me sitting only a couple of seats away, they seemed to contemplate this seemingly easy-to-answer question for the entirety of the film. 

The first time I saw PLAN 75 in the theater was in July 2022 in Tokyo, Japan. It was a blazing, hot summer afternoon. Much to my surprise, it felt oddly desolate in Tokyo during the summer. The concrete jungle captures so much humidity that the heat clings onto your shoulders and just won’t go away. It is as if the crowd’s desperation in having a hot summer had turned into heat, and somehow collectively raised the temperature of the entire city. Everyone must be hungry for excitement, itching to connect, and fevering over the summer they have projected. 

PLAN 75, directed by Chie Hayakawa, is a film that brings social awareness to the issue of the aging population in Japan. The film opens with a scene of a young man who invades a retirement home and starts a massacre. This was a shocking scene for many audiences, and I even heard a couple of gasps from the crowd (it is very unusual for Japanese audiences to make a noise during a film screening). The intent for the young slayer’s action? He found the elders to be a social burden. It felt as if the older audiences sitting in the room had superimposed themselves onto the victims in the film and a piece of themselves had died along with the massacred elderly. Am I overthinking? Perhaps. Was the scene just unexpected that people were caught off guard? Maybe so. Regardless, it is true that the atmosphere in the theater had become several degrees heavier compared to when I first entered the room only within a couple minutes into the film.

Does that mean that the entire film is gray and sad? Not necessarily. Although, indeed, PLAN 75 is not a film whose primary intent is to entertain the viewers or to make one’s heart warm per se, there are still some hopeful elements to the film. For instance, the character development we see in Hiromu.

Hiromu is a young social worker who sells and promotes the Plan 75 program to the elderly–a program of choosing death at the age of 75 enforced by the Japanese government. Towards the beginning of the film, despite his polite manners and diligent work behavior, because of the inhumanity of the program Hiromu is promoting, we as the audience cannot be entirely fond of his character. There is even a scene later in the film when Hiromu is, again, hard at work, testing out which park bench is designed best to prevent homeless people from spending the night in parks. Although we can not entirely be fond of Hiromu, we also cannot detest the character entirely either. Perhaps it is his very innocence and earnestness towards his job that makes it difficult for the audience to dislike the character of Hiromu. It is not the case that Hiromu is immoral and completely senseless himself, it is simply the fact that he is trying to get his job done. Hiromu merely does not realize the gravity of the jobs that he is taking part in. 

We see a shift in Hiromu’s character in the scene where his estranged uncle has decided to enlist himself in Plan 75 without any hesitation. Hiromu has not once contacted his uncle previous to that day, yet he later visits his uncle a later day and tries to convince him to rethink his decision. After the job with his uncle, the promotion of Plan 75, becomes a relevant issue to him, and for the very first time, Hiromu regains his sense of consciousness and sees the cruelty of the program. 

Not only does PLAN 75 raise awareness on the issue of the aging population in Japan, but it also brings awareness to other social issues such as solitary death, ageism in the workforce, and homelessness. These are all issues that have been prevalent in Japanese society for a long time, yet seem to only deteriorate with the flux of time. 

As the room started to gradually lighten itself, I thought to myself about the elders who were watching the movie with me. What would they think of this film–– a film that has no obvious happy ending? As I somewhat felt during the screening, many of the faces of the older audience members seemed to have clouded. Even those who came to the theater as a couple were slow of speech, and gathered their belongings and headed towards the exit fairly quickly. A reasonable reaction, I thought, but what a waste. 

PLAN 75 is unique because of how much blank space is left in the film. The film leaves the audience with their thoughts provoked but does not quite give them a discrete solution to the problems it has addressed. Those margins are to be filled up by the viewer and the viewer’s take on the topics discussed in the film. After all, there are as many opinions as there are people. That is why I believe it is especially important for people to share their own ideas and responses to these types of films with their family and friends, or even on social media, hence was a waste that most of the people whom I have watched the film with failed to take a moment to soak in the afterglow of PLAN 75. 

As I was making my way towards the exit, I saw a group of young men, most likely in their 30s or 40s, lined up for the anime film that was scheduled to stream next. The men all wore some sort of merch from the anime, one of which even had a towel wrapped around his forehead that read: mai waifu (translating to “my wife” in English). Ahh the heat, I thought and made my way out the door of the cinema house.▮