It’s mid-afternoon in Fujisawa. Schoolchildren, rucksacks on their backs, bound into a room where a group of pensioners welcome them boisterously, before sitting them down to help with their homework. This group of older people is looked after by some of the pupils’ parents. Up the road, a cluster of university students live above some over-75s. They get half-price rent in return for checking in on them on their way to and from studies.

This multigenerational community I visited in a small town not far from the port of Yokohama is one of 5,000 in Japan.

Sometimes the solutions to the big social challenges of the day are right in front of us; they don’t necessarily cost much, but they do require forward thinking and a determination to make them work. Across Europe, these challenges are often shirked.

By 2050, the number of centenarians in Japan could reach almost half a million. The proportion of pensioners is expected to rise to nearly 40%. In some ways, Japan is a victim of its own success, with the world’s highest life expectancy for the past four decades. It is now 87 for women and 81 for men.

The destinations I studied had three things in common: resilience, imagination and political courage

Japan has also shown that if you can’t avoid a problem, you might as well confront it. Back in 2000, it introduced the long-term care insurance system, one of the first countries to develop such a public scheme. It is transparent and easy to navigate. Everyone knows what they must pay and when (payments begin on your 40th birthday). Its purpose is to “maintain dignity and an independent daily life routine according to each person’s level of abilities”.

The emphasis is on giving people more of a say in where and how they are cared for. Rather than elderly people receiving services that are assigned by the state, they are encouraged to choose and........

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