| [ Leuers At Large ] |
Issue 48 |
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Babies & Children (With Tim Leuers) Japan is a great place for babies and children. The Japanese home is structured to suit (not couples but) children. It exists at baby level; on the floor, under the kotatsu or futon and adults must come down into it taking their dirty shoes off. There were no separate rooms with doors nor even solid walls; children sleep with the mum and bathe with dad. There were no cocktail parties nor ethos of children being best "seen but nor heard"; all those who don't want to play with children can come home late. All this helped to create a culture in which there was no generation gap nor conflict with daddy who is just another of the kids. We hear a lot about the problems of Japanese schools but they need to be seen in perspective. There is bullying and there have been some famous suicides as a result. But the level of teenage suicide is no longer higher than other nations the "ijime" does not even compare with the institutionalized slavery/pederasty in British Boarding schools let alone the gun toting teenagers killing each other on American streets. Japanese children will neither be subject to rape or violent crime nor rarely take part in graffiti, vandalism, taking drugs nor less still pushing them. The Japanese school is certainly hard but so is Japanese society. With a lot of people in a small resource-less island - no vast tracts of land obtained by exterminating "primitive" races for the Japanese - every one has to work hard. Japanese children are little realists; there is no childhood idyll nor teenage crisis when they bang up against the "real world" from which they have never been excluded. Above all there is no "stick". Mother may cajole them ( which probably accounts for the fact that only 63% of Japanese children said that mummy was kind as opposed to 98% of Americans ) but there is no household lawmaker forcing them to "Juku". They go to Juku and nearly 50% to university (the highest level after Korea) of their own accord. The ones that do not work at school may become laborers or lorry drivers, like British graduates with Arts degrees.. It is difficult for an "outsider" to understand the situation, A Japanese father's hours of overtime or the mothers "kenshin" (selfless deeds). But we can learn a little from the media. Japanese High school Baseball/Soccer matches and relay races are given as much coverage as the Japanese major league and three year old running errands are stars on prime time TV. The Japanese really care about their children so they do not send them away to boarding school nor molly coddle them, but offers them a future; a job and the family home which many of them choose not to leave. Issue 48 |
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