Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the current characteristics of healthcare and welfare policies in Japan focused on the related policies in 2000's. In Japan, with the perspectives of entering the super-aged society by 2005 and the movement of all of the baby boom generation into the elderly generation by 2015, more rapid progress to the aging society is expected. From this situation, Japanese government has developed diverse elderly-oriented strategies such as "structural reform of social security", "nursing care system" and "gold plan 21" in 2000's. However, most of the related researches targeted the period to early 2000's, excluding the papers about the individual policies. Recently in our country, many related policies have been developed such as the enforcement of "long term care insurance system for the elderly" by 5 year period reevaluations and the preparation for 2nd step of "Plan for Ageing Society and Population"(2011~2015). At this moment, the investigation on the related policies of Japan could give appropriate references to us, a late starter of aging society.