In contemporary society, against a backdrop of a declining birthrate and an aging society, generation gap, disparity between greater incidence of chronic diseases and available medical care, economic disparities, manipulation of life and death issues, diversity of values, and other elements the society is increasingly pressuring individuals to make their own decisions and choices regarding how to live, grow old, endure sickness and die. Even as individuals and those around them experience suffering, so too have specialists who have become entangled in thorny theoretical problems again had to confront suffering (the experience of suffering equals its elimination). This research will address questions related to the meaning of suffering as it arises in specific lifestyle situations in our contemporary society or clinical situation, and will reassess methods for care of suffering. In doing so, we will attempt an anthropological reconstruction of the concepts of care and suffering which can be in a fundamental style that is applicable to constituting the lives of all human beings. The special characteristics of this research are that it will incorporate suffering research which looks at things from the perspectives of the civil functionaries of cultural anthropology, as well as from the suffering (care) community. At the same time, this research attempts to understand one more kind of suffering that is the object of study for structural specialists on post-modern systems concerning questions related to living, growing old, becoming sick and dying.

Thus, we want to consider how these relate to the suffering of people who are ill as studied up until now as an object of study for medical anthropology. We hope to inform society of the significance of anthropological research into suffering and care, and in order to contribute to previously existing medical and welfare locations, we intend to engage in academic exchanges with researchers in fields adjacent to anthropology and specialists in the fields addressing living, growing old, sickness and death. Through these activities we will be presenting a form of mutual-participation joint research.