NO COUNTRY FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

Forget the yakuza.  Forget politicians or big business.  If you want to know who runs Japan, look no further than this article concerning the complaints being filed against schools and daycare centers.  Here's the gist: kids are noisy, and the elderly wish they would pipe down.   My grandmother would have put it another way: Children should be seen and not heard.  The elderly want institutions and individuals caring for children to enforce this adage, even going so far as to file suits against schools for damages for mental suffering.  According to childcare experts, however, the problem with penalizing people who work with or have children is that it deters couples from having more kids, lowering the already precariously low birthrate in Japan.  This in turn places an even greater financial burden on younger citizens to support the burgeoning aging population.  

What a menace.  From www.japantoday.com

I was surprised to learn that children are being targeted for, well, being children.  First because as the article points out, Japan is "a nation where convenience stores blare electronic greetings and political candidates shout through high-volume megaphones at train stations." Not to mention the political candidates who hire vans with loudspeakers to drive through neighborhoods at late and early hours to shout campaign slogans, or the ungodly din of the pachinko parlors at any time of the night or day. Then there are the elderly themselves, who are far from meek and taciturn.

I speak from a place of cranky experience when I say that the elderly are not silent waifs waiting to pass from this life into the next.  Board any packed train in Japan, and the two greatest creators of noise are students commuting to and from school, or the elderly on some sort of group excursion.  More often than not, the sound that awakens me early in the morning is not my alarm, nor even the speaker that shrieks morning announcements from the village outside my window.  No, I am usually jolted awake by the sound of my 80 year-old neighbor's gravely voice shouting greetings or small talk at other neighbors passing on their way to work.  Other times it's the obachans (grandmothers) who thwart naps, sleep, or Skype calls with their gossiping roundtables.  Conversely, all the local kids seem to be inside by dinner time, leaving only a brief window during which they play soccer, ride bikes, or skip rope.


It will be interesting to see if any of these lawsuits gain traction in the courts.  On the one hand, you could argue that inhibiting children could adversely affect their development, and that it is unreasonable for people to expect absolute peace and quiet during working hours, unless you were also going to levy fines against delivery trucks, construction crews, gardeners, etc.  

However, the elderly are, for all intents and purposes, the primary special interest of Japan.  The yen was kept artificially low for years in order that retirees might be able to live a luxurious lifestyle, cheaply.  Deflation benefited the aging, but hurt a lot of Japanese businesses, which were forced to relocate their operations abroad in order to survive.  Japanese politicians are notoriously wary of coming down on the wrong side of an issue that might anger their most important voting demographic: the aged.  Not to mention the billions of yen being poured into caring for the elderly and providing for their welfare, mostly at the expense of the working sector, which makes up a far smaller percentage of the population.  

Hopefully both sides are able to strike a happy balance.  Maybe insulating houses and apartments would provide a modicum of soundproofing (not to mention making the summers and winters more bearable).  Just a thought.