KYOTO - For more than 20 years, Koji Morimoto made his living flying small aircraft. These days, the 60-year-old spends his working hours at a welfare facility near Kyoto Station, helping people with severe intellectual disabilities learn new tasks.
Morimoto is among a number of middle-aged and older workers in Japan making the switch from mainstream corporate careers into disability welfare services, bringing skills and experience from jobs that may appear far removed from care work.
The facility, run by social welfare corporation Kyoto Life Support Kyokai, provides daytime care and activities for people with severe intellectual disabilities or autism.
Morimoto joined in 2024 after health problems forced him to give up flying.
With no previous experience in welfare, he began looking for a new career that would allow him to work closely with people and even attended a recruitment fair for the sector.
He said he had imagined welfare work would be physically demanding and rather monotonous, but his view changed after he joined.
"When one of the people we support learns how to do a new task, I also feel a sense of achievement, and their families thank us," he said. "There is a kind of enjoyment to it, almost like being at school."
Kyoto Life Support Kyokai actively recruits people from other industries. These career changers now account for about half of its staff.
Among them is Hideki Kawakami, 59, who spent many years in sales at a major underwear manufacturer before becoming a support worker.
Kawakami said experience gained while managing around 100 subordinates as a section manager had proved useful in his new role.
"I think I can make use of the ability to adapt my approach to each individual's personality," he said.
The move has come with a substantial pay cut. Kawakami earns about half as much as he did in the corporate world. "I can live on what I earn, and the feeling that I want to lead a life I can be satisfied with is stronger," he said.
Supporting people with disabilities can be demanding. Some users have behavioral difficulties that can include self-harm or violence.
But Yukio Higuchi, head of the social welfare corporation, said older recruits can be particularly well suited to the work because of the patience and perspective they have developed over decades.
"It is precisely middle-aged and older people, with their life experience and capacity to accept others, who are suited to this," he said. "We are not recruiting senior workers simply because of a labor shortage."
Japan's labor ministry carried out research projects in fiscal 2023 and 2024 on ways to encourage people to move from corporate employment into welfare work, producing information materials and holding seminars around the country.
Takeshi Ikeguchi, head of the Teinengo Laboratory, an institute that studies life after retirement and took part in the projects, said people often become more interested in contributing to society as they grow older.
He said skills acquired in business could also be put to use in disability welfare because many facilities involve users in productive activities.
"Unlike elderly care, disability workshops have an element of 'doing a job,'" Ikeguchi said. "That makes it easier for people to use the experience they gained as company employees."
He added that welfare providers also need to give career changers careful training and support to help them settle into unfamiliar roles.
