End of life care in the United Kingdom and Japan - intersections in culture, practice and policy (The Mitori Project)

In this project we will bring together an innovative team of academics from Japan and the UK to work together on one of the most pressing matters of our time. The Mitori Project will use the perspectives of social science, the humanities, and ethics to address a range of end of life issues that are of growing importance. We will examine how care of people at the end of life is currently organised in the UK and Japan. We will explore how this has been shaped by relevant cultural, demographic, professional and policy factors. Our focus will be on how two post-industrial societies - with ageing populations, heavy demand on health and social systems and changing social expectations about dying, death and bereavement - are responding to the challenges they face. We will also consider the wider discourses about the end of life that exist in the two countries, examining cultural responses, debates about assisted dying, and the representations of life and death that occur when life-threatening illness trajectories become extended, erratic and unpredictable. The Mitori Project will take a 'watching' brief on end of life issues in the two countries. It will enhance our understanding and adopt innovative approaches to shape a new agenda for research, knowledge exchange - and ultimately for social change and societal improvement.

1. Those involved in advocacy work relating to end of life matters, as well as the broader spectrum of cultural activists, artists and producers who focus on end of life issues will all benefit from our comprehensive approach. We will foster dialogue with these communities of interest and practice and stimulate new forms of public engagement in our research themes.

2. Politicians and policy makers in both countries will undoubtedly see benefit in the possibilities for knowledge exchange that will result from our comparative analysis of end of life issues in Japan and the UK. there is significant scope for a 'what works' approach to end of life policy-making in the two countries and careful scrutiny of how innovation may flow from one context to the other, and back again.

3. We will also engage with prominent public figures in the arts, broadcasting, the diplomatic service, to raise awareness of the Mitori Project.

4. We will form specific links with professional organisations working in palliative and end of life care. These will include the European and Asia Pacific Palliative Care organisations, as well as national groups in the UK and in Japan.

There is significant potential for impact with all of these groups. They will benefit from the innovative focus of our work with its in-depth comparisons relating to end of life care in two contrasting, but in other ways similar, countries. Our work will reverberate with a growing zeitgeist of public concern in both countries about how and where we die. It will offer new insights into obdurate problems, based on in-depth consideration of 'how things are done' in another culture.

Through our communications strategy and active use of social media, we will make use of diverse ways to reach these communities of interest and practice. We will place a strong premium on finding simple ways to communicate about complex and sometimes taboo subjects.