These people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards.

You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.

20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.

Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...

If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?

This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?

I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.

Their kids are in the 70s and 80s too