Very young children in Japan: “Old Enough” and “Kimono Mom” [Media Notes 81]

Two things here, both from Japan: Old Enough, a new Netflix series based on a series of short vignettes originally filmed in Japan between 1988 and 1994, and Kimono Mom, a YouTube channel that’s a little over two years old. The first is focused on very young children while the second involves a young, and very cute (kawaii!) girl. I end with a bonus video, a performance by an elementary school band.

Old Enough

I’ve watched about ten of the episodes Netflix has uploaded so far. All are relatively short. Each episode features a child between two and four or five setting out on an errand, generally delivering something or buying something. Some episodes are set in rural or suburban areas, others in a city. The errands are challenging to the children, but they manage to succeed. Each episode has an enthusiastic and sympathetic voice-over. A passage from a New York Times article captures my interest in the series: Jessica Grose, On Japan’s Adorable ‘Old Enough!’ Show and the State of American Childhoods (April 16, 2022):

In addition to being utterly charmed by how cute the show is, my response was: This wouldn’t fly in the United States. If there were an American version, parents who allowed their children to appear would probably be framed as irresponsible, or the kids would be shown to need parental support at every turn.

You’re probably also thinking: America is not Japan. And that’s correct. Our cultures are quite different. One glaring example is gun violence [...] Another difference is infrastructure. [...] But even given these differences, we should at least entertain the idea that Americans have over-rotated on protectiveness in the past few decades and need to reconsider letting their kids do more by themselves.

Christine Gross-Loh, the author of “Parenting Without Borders: Surprising Lessons Parents Around the World Can Teach Us,” who has lived in Japan and the United States with her kids, said that she had culture shock in both directions — first when she moved to Japan, and again when she moved back to the United States. “In school and parenting, all the assumptions of what children can do and should be learning, it’s almost inverted,” she said. In Japan, there’s a focus on “teaching children to pull their own weight from an early age, having these expectations that they’re capable of being independent, being left at home alone or cooking or using knives or walking to school at 6,” she said.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at Kimono Mom.

Kimono Mom

Moe a young Japanese woman with a young daughter, Sutan. She makes videos about Japanese home cooking, but also more generally about her life and family. Sutan is with her in all the videos; her husband, Moto, is in some of them (he’s generally at work). What I find most interesting is the interaction between Moe and Sutan, the way Moe actively recruits Sutan’s assistance in preparing the dish. For example (be sure to toggle the closed captions, at the lower right):

Note that at about 2:10 she shows Sutan how to peel the shrimp – note, as well, Sutan’s remark at 2:47: “Shrimp, thank you for coming to us today”. At 4:45 look at Sutan’s style in sprinkling salt on the shrimp. At 6:48 Sutan exhibits one of her favorite skills, cracking eggs. She then proceeds to beat the eggs.

That video is fairly typical of the 20 or so that I have watched. There are some where Sutan’s attention flags, where she becomes recalcitrant for whatever reason, but Moe is invariantly patient. There’s one video where Moe explains that she tries to treat Sutan as an equal – note that this may be from a video someone made about Moe and Sutan, I’ve watched a couple of those, rather than one of the Kimono Mom videos.

While Sutan’s cooking tasks are quite different from the errands the children undertake in Old Enough, the underlying cultural theme is the same: children are capable people and should be respected as such.

Bonus: Japanese Elementary School Band

And this brings me to one of my favorite videos, of Nakagurose Elementary School Band:

When I first heard this I couldn’t believe that these were elementary school children, and many of the commenters have had the same reaction. You don’t hear bands like that in America.

What struck me was the fundamental dignity underlying their performance. They may have been children, but when they were performing, they simply became human beings making music. No more, no less. It seems to me that they same attitude underlies the errands on Old Enough and Kimono Mom’s cooking demonstrations.