What a Netflix hit shows about Japan’s risk-taking

Japan has been a little bemused to find that a long-running family-favourite TV show, known here as 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.” NPR 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 here 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 salarymen at rush hour.
But it’s 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 Old Enough. The show isn’t really about children innovating their way around tough challenges. It’s more about how to become functioning members of society — through the proverbial school of hard knocks. If anything, Old Enough — which first aired in 1991 — reflects some long-established societal precepts, which 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.
Not that civil service jobs are particularly attractive. They’re tough to get and pay only a little above the national average.
National broadcaster NHK reported 30% 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 labour market. In the US, workers are more transient: 23% have been at their jobs for less than a year, according to one survey. In Japan, that figure is 8%. Those with more than 20 years of service made up 22% of workers in Japan, and just 10% in America. 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. The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has bemoaned the lack of startups in the country, pointing out 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, allowing foreign rivals to sneak in and take control of industries like electric vehicles.

—Bloomberg