Japan caught in a day-care dilemma

Long waiting lists for places but many residents against building of more centres
The Straits Times, 11 Oct 2014

TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to help women juggle work and family are hitting a roadblock: opposition to building new day-care centres from residents who fear noise from children playing will spoil their quiet neighbourhoods.

The number of Japanese children is falling due to a low birth rate but many pre-schoolers are nonetheless on day-care waiting lists because of a shortage of facilities.

Mr Abe has vowed to fix the problem as part of plans to get more women working to offset a shrinking, ageing population and boost economic growth.

Doing so, however, may not be easy given that locals often greet plans for new day-care centres with Japan's version of the Nimby ("not in my backyard") phenomenon, which is frequently associated with facilities such as military bases or prisons.

Take Setagaya ward in western Tokyo, which has the longest day-care waiting list in Japan, with more than 1,000 children.

"We are trapped between parents who are crying out, 'We want day-care centres built as soon as possible', and those who say, 'We don't need day-care centres in our quiet neighbourhoods'," wrote Setagaya Mayor Nobuto Hosaka in a recent blog entitled "Are children's voices noise, or the sound of hope?"

Setagaya ward needs to build between 70 and 80 new day-care centres over the next four years to accommodate an estimated 6,500 additional children who will need day care, said Mr Kota Tanaka, head of a 15-person team set up to speed up the process.

But complaints from noise-allergic residents are an obstacle.

"They say children's voices are too loud and are wrecking their quiet neighbourhoods," Mr Tanaka said.

Some residents elsewhere in Japan have filed suits seeking compensation for "noise pollution" from nearby day-care centres, prompting Mr Hosaka, a former Member of Parliament, to suggest that Japan learn from Germany and change laws to prevent such lawsuits.

"The number of children is declining so people think day-care centres have nothing to do with them and see them as something that could cause unpleasantness in their lives," Kansai University's Professor Fumiharu Yamagata told NHK public TV.

The noisy-children problem could, however, resolve itself if steps to boost the birth rate fail.

Japan's total fertility rate is 1.34, way below the rate of replacement, which is 2.1. The country's population shrank by 0.17 per cent last year, declining for the third year in a row.

Given present trends, Japan's population will decrease from 127 million today to 87 million by 2060, at which point about 40 per cent of the population will be older than 65.

REUTERS