Japan has been a little bemused to find that a long-running family-favorite TV show, Hajimete no Otsukai (My First Errand), has suddenly achieved international fame on Netflix as Old Enough!
The program, which features preschoolers running errands by themselves, has triggered worldwide debate about parenting standards.
One article in the UK blasted the reality TV show as “bizarre,” quoting a child psychologist who described it as “exploitative and dangerous.”
Illustration: Yusha
The US’ National Public Radio felt compelled to warn parents not to let their offspring emulate kids on the show lest they run foul of local laws.
The Japanese are tickled that the heavily scripted show, which has aired for three decades, is seen as “dangerous.” After all, this is a country where children frequently ride trains solo to get to elementary school, squeezing in among the office workers at rush hour.
However, it is wrong to conclude that the Japanese are more risk-tolerant than the West’s helicopter parents. Foreigners and the Japanese take away different lessons from the show.
Old Enough! is not really about children innovating their way around tough challenges. It is more about how to become functioning members of society through the proverbial school of hard knocks. If anything, the show, which first aired in 1991, reflects some long-established societal precepts that are only now beginning to change.
Take career expectations. According to a recent survey, the top choice parents and grandparents want for their kids and grandkids is a job in the national civil service. Number two? The local civil service. The country’s largest company, Toyota Motor Corp, was third.
STABILITY AND SECURITY
Not that civil service jobs are particularly attractive. They are tough to get and pay only a little above the national average. National broadcaster NHK reported that 30 percent of civil servants in their 20s were doing 80 hours of overtime or more a month, a level of endurance that contributes to Japan’s cases of death by overwork.
So why is that work so popular with parents? The answer: stability and security. They are jobs for life for those who can stick with the rigors of it.
In Japan, people stay in their jobs for a very long time rather than risk going back into the labor market. In the US, workers are more transient: 23 percent have been at their jobs for less than a year, one survey found.
In Japan, that figure is 8 percent. Those with more than 20 years of service made up 22 percent of workers in Japan, and just 10 percent in the US. That reluctance to change jobs is among the main reasons salaries have been depressed for the past three decades.
College graduates are also less willing to strike out on their own. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration has bemoaned the lack of start-ups in the country, saying that the largest group of listed companies in Japan were formed in the decade after World War II, including Sony Group Corp and Honda Motor Co.
The same lack of adventure is evident elsewhere: Much less money is invested in higher-risk assets such as corporate equity and mutual funds than is the norm in other countries. Companies are often afraid to commit much spending to innovation, enabling foreign rivals to sneak in and take control of industries such as electric vehicles.
The risk-off attitude is seen too in the softly-softly post-COVID-19 approach to letting tourists back in, a conservative process that has broad public support, but enrages the business community.
However, there are some promising developments. Kishida is right to note the lack of start-ups, but the nation’s venture capital scene is growing. Funding raised by Japanese venture capitalists is projected to be a record nearly US$7.7 billion, a figure that stood under US$1 billion less than a decade ago. While still relatively rare, more young students are now likely to join or found a start-up than a generation ago.
GRADUAL CHANGE
While sticking to one job is still the ideal, the rate of switching among people in their 40s and 50s last year surged to five times the level of 2013. Increasing competition for talent is likely to propel this trend, especially if companies take advantage of the weak yen to return manufacturing to Japan.
While parents might want their kids to become civil servants, fewer young people desire a job for life. The number who said they would prefer to stay in one job fell 8 percentage points in 2018 from five years earlier, a government survey found.
Just 4.4 percent said they would stay in the same job even if it was tough, the second-lowest percentage of seven major countries surveyed.
As for that list of top career destinations for the nation’s progeny? After the bureaucracy and Toyota, the most popular options were Alphabet Inc and Apple Inc.
While they are hardly the riskiest options, the same list a decade ago was dominated by airlines and train operators, with no foreign companies in the top 10, even though they typically pay more for talented workers and have superior benefits.
The Japanese should rewatch Old Enough! and learn different lessons. Yes, the show is about the tough love that lets kids stand on their own two feet, but that strength has to lead to navigating risk, escaping drudgery and innovating to make life more rewarding. Now that the world is watching, Japan should take that to heart.
Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg News senior editor covering Japan. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion
of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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