RIGHTS-JAPAN: Stress, Old Notions Lead to Child Maltreatment

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 21 1999 (IPS) - The number of children murdered by their own parents has risen dramatically in Japan in the last year, and indications are the Asian financial crisis is partly to blame.

But activists and sociologists here say centuries-old thinking and what seems to be the non-recognition of many children’s rights are also factors leading to such murders as well as other cases of maltreatment of children in this country.

“Economic development in Japan may have prevented child soldiers as seen in parts of Asia and Africa, but there are other kinds of abuses against Japanese children that are just as horrific, revealing the darker side of progress,” says Kazuko Yokota of Motherly Network, a counselling service for adoption.

This month, the Child Abuse Prevention Network (CAPNA) chapter in Aichi, central Japan, released the results of a survey that said at least 72 children were murdered by their parents in Japan last year as part of “family suicides”.

The figure represents a 56 percent increase from the 46 children whose lives were taken by their own mothers or fathers in 1997.

Factors that led to the children’s deaths in the hands of their parents were mostly related to family financial problems, such as huge debt burdens. Sociologists note that 1998 was the year thousands of workers lost their jobs in a country where lifetime employment used to be a given.

But Professor Shigero Takahashi, who teaches family and child studies at Komozawa University also observes: “It is the cultural norm in Japan for parents to die with their children because the concept here is that children belong to the family and are not looked upon as individuals.”

He says that the concept of the child as part of the family makes it easy to overlook the child’s right to live.

Takahashi concedes that parents contemplating suicide but who kill their children first do so out of fear that there will be no one to look after their offspring. Still, he laments that while “killing one’s own child should be considered murder,” Japanese society seems to condone such an act.

Chilling stories of parents who strangled their sleeping children before taking their own lives or of mothers, with children in tow, jumping in front of moving trains are usually viewed in Japan not as murders but as the result of cultural norms.

Activists observe that children’s rights are still a relatively new concept in Japan, which joined the UN Children’s Rights Convention only in 1994. That is largely why, they say, even teachers or doctors who stumble on cases of child abuse choose to remain silent.

According to Ryoko Sekido, a counsellor who handles child abuse cases, many Japanese today remain reluctant to report the maltreatment of a child for fear of being accused of interfering.

Sociologists say mothers have been revealed to be the worst perpetrators of physical abuse of children. Surveys have indicated that this may be the result of accumulated stress in Japan’s increasingly isolated nuclear families.

Says Yokota: “Families have nowhere to go for help as industrialisation has weakened the family base. It is the children who suffer the most as they are forced to bear the brunt of this problem.”

That mothers are committing the abuse in many of the cases may be traced partly to their being stuck doing most, if not all, the parental chores while the fathers concentrate on their careers.

With not even their spouses to turn to in times of great anxiety and frustration, the mothers are more likely to take out their anger on their children.

Ikoku Mabuchi, a 60-year-old activist, says there have been cases of children suffering from “physical abuse from their mothers who (have had) to carry the household burden by (themselves)”.

Mobuchi, whose husband died from a heart illness brought on by overwork, adds, “Japan’s work environment does not respect the rights of children to spend time with their fathers.”

Yokota, for her part, says that these days, she is counselling more and more young women and families who apparently cannot cope with looking after their own children and want “alternative” homes for the youngsters.

More often than not, say social workers, the real problem is not the lack of finances, but more of the mental stress unplanned babies give to the women.

Meanwhile, Yokota notes that even in adoptions, the happiness of the children involved is rarely a primary consideration.

“Traditional Japan encouraged adoption among childless families or families without sons for the purpose of keeping the family bloodlines going,” she says. “There was no debate of whether the child would be happy with the family.”

Yokota says her organisation is trying to change these attitudes.

“We explain to the birth mother that adoption should put the rights of the child as its top priority,” she says. “We are also seeking a system that will allow the adopted child the right to know about his birth parents and choose his or her own life when he or she turns 18.”

Activists say a clearer understanding and appreciation of children’s rights have become more urgent today because of the ongoing recession.

They say that with the adults under even more stress, children are at higher risk of being beaten, abandoned or murdered by their frustrated and desperate elders.