Agence France-Presse
Tokyo, June 3: The abandonment of a seven-year-old Japanese boy on a mountain road for misbehaving has sparked a national debate, with some expressing anger and others sympathy for the pressures parents face in disciplining their children. Yamato Tanooka was discovered alive and well early Friday after spending nearly a week sheltered alone on a military base just a few kilometres from where he was forced out of the family car for misbehaving. While views outside Japan persist of a hard-working people raised under a tough samurai-style discipline, the reality is far more nuanced.
As in much of the developed world, Japanese parents too have become more indulgent towards their children in recent decades, to the point that older generations complain the country has gone soft. Japanese reacted with outrage on social media after news emerged of what happened last Saturday, with the actions of the parents roundly condemned as “abuse” and them being described as “stupid” for what they had done. And though there was a national sigh of relief after the boy’s rescue, opinions remained harsh.
“Missing boy was found and that’s all wonderful, but the parents must be disciplined such as being abandoned on an uninhabited island,” read a Japanese-language tweet. The father, Takayuki Tanooka, admitted that what he did was wrong, apologising in front of reporters after being reunited with his son, and decrying his own action as “excessive”. He and his wife had originally fabricated a story that the child got lost on a family outing in the mountains, not wanting to own up to having meted out such a harsh punishment. Among the most notable opinion leaders critical of the parents was prominent education expert Naoki Ogi.
