Japan as a Child’s Paradise
Personal reflections on childhood in the US, UK and Japan
It is said that Japan, with its tradition of favoring men’s pleasures, privileges and opportunities over women’s, used to be a “man’s paradise”.
Having raised three boys in Takamatsu on Shikoku island, I argue that present-day Japan is a “child’s paradise.”
Japanese children are allowed to be children — to enjoy the pleasure and privilege of innocent play — longer than the children in many other countries. They can, for example, feel safe, at liberty to roam freely, to engage in outdoor activities, without fear of being killed by a random bullet.
Of course, the children in a war zone such as Ukraine currently face unimaginable danger and horrors. Ironically, however, children growing up in the United States — the world’s leading economy and a nation not currently engaged in armed conflict with another —also face a daily threat of violence.
Recent reports of yet another horrific school shooting in the States have inspired me to reflect on my own childhood spent in 1950s and 1960s small-town America. When I didn’t have my nose buried in a book, I used to spend much of my free time — the weekends, the long school holidays — outside.
My friends and I rode our bikes up and down the deserted streets of our town. We climbed trees. We played baseball. In winter we built snowmen and had snowball fights. Of course, we all walked to school.
There was little parental supervision or parental interference.
I married a Japanese farmer in 1987 and our first son was born a year later. My husband fashioned a long bamboo tree into a pole from which we could fly carp streamers for ‘Boys’ Day’ on May 5th, celebrating our baby’s birth and expressing our hopes he would grow up to be adventurous and strong and brave.
I had two more sons within the next five years.
My boys soon became friends with children in the neighborhood. I was grateful. Juggling full-time work with domestic chores, I only managed the occasional game of badminton with them. It was the kids living nearby who taught my sons how to ride their bikes, climb trees and fly kites, and skim stones on the reservoirs.
I bought my boys nets and collection boxes and, on hot summer days, they would set off with their friends to catch cicadas as large as tiny birds.
Once my boys were six, they joined groups of local kids in walking nearly three kilometers to the local primary school. We lived in a scenic rural spot. The route the children took skirted busy roads, following the farmers’ network of narrow dirt paths running between rice paddies and orange groves and greenhouses for fruit and flowers.
I was glad parents were actively discouraged from giving their children lifts to school, feeling that walking offered valuable exercise. Driving home from my university job on weekday afternoons, I enjoyed seeing small schoolchildren straggling home.
I saw how they’d often pause. How they’d loiter in the sunshine. How some would stop to pick flowers while others were bent over drainage ditches or scouted for frogs in rice paddies.
At the age of six each of my three boys was automatically enrolled in the local “kodomo kai” or “kids’ club.” The meetings were held at the community center on a hill just behind our house.
There were monthly activities: picnics, expeditions to swimming pools or museums or bowling alleys or parks. They also played games of kickball, competing against local teams.
None of my sons turned out to be good at sport. I could scarcely complain. As a child I was always the last to be chosen for volleyball in gym.
At those kickball matches, I’d sometimes see another mother wince and turn away when one of my sons got up to bat or pitch. Still, the atmosphere was friendly, and my boys weren’t bullied — as far as I know — for being bookish and fond of playing the piano rather than sporty and able to catch and throw balls.
Through “kodomo kai” my boys also got involved with the local “Shishimai” or “Japanese Lion Dance” group. Rehearsals began at the beginning of September, culminating in a performance at the local festival in the first week of October.
On a few frosty nights in the winter, “kodomo kai” children joined members of the local firefighters in strolling down the streets, shouting out warnings for people to be careful in using heaters and in cooking and not cause a fire.
The elder boys and men in the group acted as mentors and role models. And as friends.
Family and community are important in Japan and play an important role in socializing and training Japanese children.
I was grateful my husband’s family had lived in our old-fashioned farming neighborhood for generations. We lived in a Nakanishi enclave, with my husband’s parents and his uncles and aunts and cousins and brother and his family living in close proximity.
We would hold many big parties, celebrating birthdays and graduations and holidays.
Hilary Clinton has famously been credited with the adage that “It takes a village to raise a child”. Certainly, my neighbors and extended family helped raise my boys, and I could usually count on them to know where any child of mine was at any given time.
I couldn’t help reflecting on the Japanese attitude to children during the year I spent in Britain with my boys in a village called Halton on the outskirts of Lancaster. My university had given me a sabbatical, and I had decided to spend it in England.
It was a rather traumatic time for my elder two sons, then aged seven and six, who were enrolled in the local primary school. They were expected to understand English: to speak, listen, read, and write in it. But what they found even worse (I think) was the loss of their personal liberty.
I soon learned I was supposed to accompany my boys to school each morning — despite its being only fifteen minutes away from our home on foot — and to be at the school gates every afternoon to collect them. The road outside the school was always thronged with cars: parents picking up or dropping off their kids.
I also discovered play dates had to be arranged and that, if my kids wanted to use the school playground out of school hours, I should go there with them.
My boys hated it!
The day after we returned to Japan, my two older boys disappeared from early morning, only returning in the late afternoon. I later heard from a friend that one of them had been spotted miles from our house, riding his bike.
I felt the two of them were reasserting their right to be free of parental supervision and constraint. It was a luxury afforded them because of the safety offered by Japan, and one that had the benefit of instilling self-discipline and independence.
I hasten to add I am speaking specifically of the experience of Japanese school children aged six until twelve. Although they are given a great deal of homework as primary school students, they also benefit from a non-competitive atmosphere, with each student, it seems, cherished and encouraged by the teachers.
On entering junior high, Japanese children encounter a very different situation. In addition to the huge amount of homework, there is the pressure of being constantly tested. On the basis of those tests, the children always know how they rank academically compared with their classmates.
For those students not academically inclined, it can be a very dispiriting, demoralizing experience. It is no coincidence that some Japanese junior high school students engage in bullying or self-harming, with a few even contemplating or committing suicide.
Also the easy camaraderie of informal play is replaced by the stringent demands of club activities, with students often expected to spend several hours after school each day training with fellow members.
Once my boys entered junior high school, I had the terrible sensation of ‘losing’ them to Japan. I felt it was at this point that they became fully indoctrinated into Japanese culture.
Even so, I’m grateful to my adopted country for allowing my boys, as young children, to enjoy the paradise of innocent play I had enjoyed myself. I think of it as a period of life that, like the garden of Eden, once lost, can never be regained.
