After six-and-a-half years as a nursery-school teacher in Tokyo, Saki Sasamoto had had enough.
Her pay barely covered necessities and the stress of the job made her quit without even thinking what she would do next.
“I could not stand it,” she said. “It was absolutely draining.”
Illustration: Louise Ting
Sasamoto joined the ranks of 760,000 qualified nursery teachers in Japan who have opted to do something else. Low pay and a tangle of Japanese government regulations are keeping them away from a profession that is vital to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to encourage mothers to return to work and replenish the nation’s dwindling workforce.
Japan’s nursery schools are a perfect example of the government’s efforts to overcome the nation’s economic challenges. Abe is pouring money into building schools to ease a shortage of affordable places for toddlers, but has balked at tackling the bigger task of reforming regulations and policies that date back to World War II.
Those rules ensure low salaries and frustrating conditions for most teachers, forcing many to quit. The resulting shortage of places in Tokyo means some parents start planning to get a pre-school slot before their child is born.
Abe promotes a society where women can shine, but for nursery teachers, “there is no way to shine,” Sasamoto said.
At the heart of the problem is a system of subsidies that the government provides to licensed schools, both private and public. Those subsidies cover as much as 80 percent or more of the cost of running a school, making it hard for independent, non-licensed nurseries to compete. However, the state funds come with strings, including a raft of regulations that cover everything from operating times to pay grades.
Nursery teachers, most of whom are women, on average made ￥219,200 (US$2,128) per month including overtime last year, 34 percent less than an all-industry average of ￥333,300, according to the Japanese Ministry of Labor.
The turnover rate was 10 percent in 2014, the ministry said.
Sasamoto said she took home about ￥160,000 per month after tax and insurance.
Pay rises came with seniority rather than merit, and she struggled to focus on teaching because of all the paperwork, she said.
If a mother was unexpectedly delayed at work, Sasamoto was not allowed to look after the child.
“I wanted to help, but the rules got in my way,” she said.
As a result, in Tokyo there are about five openings for nursery-school teachers for each applicant, the ministry said.
A survey of 31,550 nursery workers conducted by the Tokyo metropolitan government between 2008 and 2013 showed one in five were considering quitting, citing low pay as the top reason.
“Nursery schools can be a growing industry, but unfortunately the government is keeping a lid on the potential,” said Naohiro Yashiro, a professor of economics at Showa Women’s University in Tokyo who formerly served on the government’s economic and fiscal council during Abe’s first term as prime minister.
“If there is a shortage of teachers, their wages should rise naturally,” Yashiro said.
Abe’s efforts to boost wages face budget constrains as the government tries to rein in the world’s heaviest debt burden. After delaying a 2 percent sales tax increase for the second time, he has yet to identify how to fund a promised 2 percent raise for nursery teachers.
Abe also seeks an additional ￥40,000 monthly bump for “skilled and experienced” nursery teachers without specifying who will qualify and how much it will cost.
Since Abe returned to power in late 2012, nursery teachers’ wages have risen 6.9 percent, almost half of which was supposed to offset the increase in the sales tax, according to public records.
Japanese Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Yasuhisa Shiozaki, who is in charge of nurseries, and Japanese Minister of Women’s Empowerment Katsunobu Kato declined interview requests.
To address the shortage of childcare, the government is trying to boost capacity for an additional 500,000 children by the end of March 2018. It is past halfway to that goal as it funds construction of new schools, according to the government.
The problem is the new centers will require an additional 90,000 nursery workers.
That is making competition to hire and retain staff extremely fierce, said Noriko Nakamura, chief executive officer at Poppins Corp, which runs about 160 nurseries.
Staff turnover is high and increasing workload is putting teachers under more stress, said Nakamura, who has served on government labor committees.
She said the company’s plans to expand by opening new centers have slowed because of the shortage of staff.
Poppins opened 21 schools in 2014, but this year will only open 10.
“We are making an uproar about the shortage of nursery teachers,” said Nakamura, who wants the government to ease regulations and stop controlling pay rates.
“That is not the government’s business. They should leave it up to companies to decide,” she said.
Part of the problem is that Japan’s childcare system is seen as welfare, because it was set up after the war to help look after orphans and children who had lost parents. People expect the government to provide cheap care.
“In Japan, you cannot make ends meet without subsidies,” said Aika Yasunaga, 42, head of nursery care provider Doronkokai, which with its group companies is opening about 15 sites a year and needs to hire more than 400 employees annually to staff the growing operation.
While pay raises are needed, “that alone will not solve a shortage of nursery workers,” she said at the group’s school in Itabashi ward in northern Tokyo, which has the space for children to play barefoot in the front yard along with pet goats May and Momo.
Operators need to improve working conditions, such as overhauling the seniority-based pay scale and making it easier to cut overtime and take vacations, she said.
Further pay rises for nursery workers would have to compete with other social program spending such as pensions and healthcare.
“Babies do not vote, but the grandparents do vote. They are naturally voting with their self-interests in mind,” said Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc and a leading proponent of boosting female participation in the workforce. “Many regard childcare and family support measures as a cost, but rather than costs, they should be viewed as investments.”
Pay tends to be even lower at non-licensed nurseries because they need to make up for the lack of subsidies by cutting costs and raising fees, said Hidefumi Morino, of WELKS Co, a jobs agency in Tokyo.
In Setagaya Ward, a booming part of western Tokyo, more than 1,000 children are waiting for nursery places, the longest waiting list in the nation. Even with such demand, independent school Love Clover Nursery is barely able to compete.
On the first floor of a residential block, about 20 children and seven adults share a space the size of a three-bedroom apartment.
Fees are about ￥130,000, more than five times the average for a licensed nursery in the ward. Every April, at the start of the school year, about half the children leave once they get a place at a subsidized school, Love Clover president Shiho Tomisawa said.
“Business is absolutely tough,” she said. “We struggle to hire staff in general, let alone nursery teachers.”
Setagaya sets fees on income levels and charges about ￥24,000 yen per month on average, according to Takashi Uemura, who works in the ward’s nursery coordination division. The last time it raised fees was three years ago.
“We cannot sell the idea that nurseries charge money in exchange for the service,” he said. “As far as most residents are concerned, the cheaper the fees are, the better.”
Not all parents agree.
“Of course the cheaper a nursery is, the better, but what matters is to be able to get appropriate childcare,” said Yukari Sato, 40, who keeps her two-year-old son at a nursery in Minato Ward, central Tokyo, while she works at an information technology company.
Outside of nursery hours, Sato pays a babysitter ￥2,000 an hour to mind her child.
That babysitter is Sasamoto, 29, the qualified teacher who quit her nursery job. After going freelance, her pay has doubled and her hours are shorter.
“I have no regrets,” Sasamoto said.
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