SOCIETY-JAPAN: Wanted – Parents for 35,000 Children

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 27 2003 (IPS) - The Sakamotos take care of ten, which leaves thousands of children in Japan still looking for a foster home. Their chances of finding one range from indifferent to possible, but not if this couple can help it.

The Sakamotos take care of ten, which leaves thousands of children in Japan still looking for a foster home. Their chances of finding one range from indifferent to possible, but not if this couple can help it.

Yoko Sakamoto and her husband are childless, and celebrities, in Japan. The reason they are celebrities is because they have told the country, through their book on foster parenting, their own experience at providing care to those youngsters who need it most.

”It was never easy since I was looking after children who had, for various reasons, been abandoned temporarily by their parents,” explained Sakamoto. ”But I knew they needed a home and I was determined to give them one,” she added.

Eight years ago she took the decision to bring up a foster child, the couple’s first. Nine more children later, the foster parents are arguably Japan’s poster couple for foster care. The book they wrote, ‘Grape Tree’, was in fact commissioned by Tokyo mayor Shintaro Ishihara.

The Sakamoto success story aside, the foster care scenario in Japan has few bright spots. ”Ninety percent of children who cannot live with their own parents are not able to find foster parents,” said Makoto Yoshino, a civic official with the Tokyo Metropolitan government and in charge of deserted children. ”There is an urgent need to tackle this problem.”

According to government statistics, there are more than 35,000 children now looking for homes. More than half that number have been abused by their parents, or abandoned by parents who have decided they can no longer care for them.

Not only are the numbers of children who need foster homes growing, the number of homes willing to take them in is not growing fast enough to keep up. Despite the generosity of families like the Sakamotos, last year only 7,000 could find foster parents.

”The economic recession, leading to social breakdown, has contributed to the widening gap between children seeking homes and availability of foster parents,” explained Yoshino. ”Domestic abuse and poverty are the main reasons for the sad plight of children.”

Based on the policy that children are best reared in a family environment, Japan’s Health, Welfare and Labour Ministry drew up in October 2002, for the first time, stipulations to govern care in foster homes.

Accompanying the new regulations is a package of financial support: a per child allowance that is the equivalent of 1,200 U.S. dollars per month that is meant to pay for the youngster’s food, education, clothing and medical care until the age of 18.

Even so, the list of couples signing up to become foster parents is not a long one. Hiroshi Kato is a welfare official with the Metropolitan government office of Chiba, a large suburb of Tokyo. ”Fostering is a still a new concept in Japan,” said Kato, ”and it’s hard to persuade Japanese couples – who worry more about the risk rather than focus on the rewards – to give a lost child a home.”

The sense of fulfilment the Sakamotos found has been highlighted in their book and by the authorities, but the ministry has been forced to develop a short-term fostering plan and even week-end parenting in a bid to encourage more adults to meet the challenge. All that is needed from foster parents is that they be economically sound and physically and mentally fit.

Fostering as a concept however is proving difficult to spread. ”Foster parents must look after children temporarily till they can be returned to their own parents,” said Kazuko Yokota, head of Mothers Network, a non-government organisation that encourages adoption. ”But the system is complicated for the Japanese, whose identity is based on family bloodlines.”

Social experts say that Japan has never faced a situation like this before. In the late 1940s and 1950s – when Japan’s orphanages were packed to capacity after the war with homeless children whose parents were killed or missing – the government policy was to promote adoption. The system worked based on Japan’s deep-rooted tradition of adopting to preserve the bloodlines of families through the adoption of male heirs.

Nor is the perceived problems about foster parenting the only hurdle. Children interviewed by the media in Japan have said they are confused as to how to relate to their new parents. One 12-year-old boy, who lives in a children’s home after his parents fled debt collectors, said he doesn’t want to live with strangers.

There are also foster parents and children who say they hide their relationship from neighbours who show a lack of understanding for the children’s suffering. As the numbers of abandoned children rise, Sakamoto calls for proper counseling for both children and foster parents. ”More must be done by the state to take forward the process of fostering in Japan,” she said.

At the same time she admitted that this is easier said than done. Many deserted children are traumatised by their experiences at home, making it difficult for foster parents to take care of them.

The Sakamotos do all they can. With one salary assured – Yoko Sakamoto’s husband is a full-time employee with a company – they are able to care for the needs of their wards, and even the extra care that one of the children, who is handicapped, requires.

”The children we look after know we are not their real parents, but still grow up learning to love us,” said Yoko Sakamoto. ”I take them to visit their natural parents and they return to us. We talk about this openly.”

The couple sees fostering as a means of encouraging the Japanese to be more open about their personal relationships. Unless more couples take the time to find their own inspiration from ‘Grape Tree’ however, the dormitories in children’s homes across Japan are going to stay full.