The women work hard, sleeping only a few hours a night, as they juggle the demands of caring for their children and doing housework — all while suffering from poverty.
The award-winning independent documentary film The Ones Left Behind, released last year, tells the story of such single mothers in Japan, weaving together interviews with the women and experts, and showing the other side of a culture whose ideal is for women to get married and become stay-at-home housewives and mothers.
“This is a topic that no one wants to really touch. In Japan, it’s very taboo,” Australian filmmaker Rionne McAvoy said Tuesday. “I think it’s a very apt title because I feel that single mothers and their children have really been left behind in society.”
Photo: AP
One woman in the film says she works from 8:30am until 7:30pm, while earning less than 200,000 yen (US$1,350) a month.
Tomiko Nakayama, another woman in the film, says: “I have to do everything on my own.”
Despite being one of the world’s richest nations, Japan has one of the highest rates of child poverty among OECD countries, with one in every seven children living in poverty. About half of single-parent households live below the poverty line.
Japanese society also tends to favor full-time male workers, and women often receive lower wages and fewer benefits, even when they are working full-time and overtime.
Another woman in the film is near tears as she describes how her child stopped asking her about take-your-parent-to-school days. She knew her mom was too busy and couldn’t attend.
McAvoy’s wife, Ayuri, who produced the film, was formerly a single mother. But both deny that’s why Rionne McAvoy made the film. Initially, she wasn’t interested in getting involved in his filmmaking.
What makes the story so “Japanese,” according to Rionne McAvoy, is how the country’s conformist culture makes many women accept their hardships, too ashamed to ask for help, “keeping their public face and private face separate,” he said.
The Ones Left Behind was the Best Documentary Winner at the Miyakojima Charity International Film Festival last year and an official selection at the Yokohama International Film Festival.
Despite repeated promises by the Japanese government to provide monetary assistance to people with children, action has been slow, said Akihiko Kato, a professor at Meiji University who appears in the film.
That’s partly why the birth rate is crashing in Japan from 1.2 million births in the year 2000 to below 700,000 today. Japan also lacks a system that can force fathers to pay child support, according to Kato.
In the past, grandparents, neighbors and other members of the extended family helped look after children. In the modern age of the nuclear family, the single-parent household is often on its own.
What this means for the children is sobering, said Yanfei Zhou, a social science professor at Japan Women’s University who appears in the film. The gap between the haves and have-nots is growing, and the children are destined to inherit the cycle of poverty, she said.
The story of the underclass, including those who are forgotten and don’t have a voice, has long fascinated McAvoy. His next film will be about young people driven to suicide in Japan. He said that being an outsider allows him to tell stories with a fresh perspective and without bias.
“It’s one thing we can do more of in society: to try recognize people’s cries for help,” McAvoy said.
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way. The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established
Sept. 9 to Sept. 15 The upgrading of sugarcane processing equipment at Ciaozaitou Sugar Factory (橋仔頭) in 1904 had an unintended but long-lasting impact on Taiwan’s transportation and rural development. The newly imported press machine more than doubled production, leading to an expansion of the factory’s fields beyond what its original handcarts and oxcarts could handle. In 1905, factory manager Tejiro Yamamoto headed to Hawaii to observe how sugarcane transportation was handled there. They had trouble finding something suitable for Taiwan until they discovered a 762mm-gauge “miniature” railroad at a small refinery in the island of Maui. On
When Sara (names in this story are changed to protect the sources’ identities) takes her daughter April out anywhere in Taiwan, she’s frequently asked the same question: “Is your husband Taiwanese?” Sara is white, and April has unmistakably Asian features. “My wife is Taiwanese,” she replies. If asked, she may then clarify that April is her biological child, Taiwanese by blood, and has two moms. This often creates more confusion, but it is a difficult reality for Sara, her wife Dana and April. While Dana has adopted April, the child does not have Taiwanese (Republic of China) nationality despite both of her
RSS