Infanticide growing problem in Japan

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 6

Infanticide growing problem in Japan

(By

MARK MURRAY,

in Tokyo, for the Observer Foreign News Service)

Despite the ready availability of cheap abortions, infanticide remains a baffling and growing problem for Japan. Now the Government has decided one of the reasons may be that young girls no longer know how to cope with the problems of caring for infants. It has also decided that it is time to do something to help.

In recent years around 200 babies have been murdered before reaching their first birthday, most within hours or days of birth. A favourite method was to leave the child to die in a left luggage

locker. Since police cracked down on use of the lockers ir. mid-1975, however, there have been no further cases. According to Matsuo Murata, a children’s affairs officer, “deserting and killing children is an old practice, but the latest trend shows a distinct lack of respect for human life as society becomes more selfish.”

A psychiatrist Noriko Sato says: “With the readiness of abortion, women no longer have the same feeling about killing their babies. It’s just an easy way of solving a problem. Their babies are not human beings and command no more feeling than if it is an empty can or bottle we are disposing of.” In the old days Japanese farmers faced with bad crops and food shortages used to lessen the number of mouths to feed at home by abandoning their daughters on mountain slopes to die. In the cities, poor children were left in the streets in the hope someone else would take care of them.

But sociologists say that only a small percentage of today’s infanticides are for economic reasons. Many are simply due to a woman’s unwillingness to care for children. It all seems to stem from the break-up of the traditional Japanese family unit. In the old days a girl continued to live with her family after marriage or moved in with her in-laws. There was always an older woman around with considerable experience in child-care to advise the new mother and take part of the load off her shoulders.

That is no longer the case. In today’s overcrowded urban conditions, a couple strikes out on its own, and while the husband is away working all day and probably drinking with his cronies half the night, the inexperienced wife is left at home to fret over her problems.

The Health and Welfare Ministry says that, as a result, many worry themselves into suicide or kill the child in a fit of nervous breakdown. A Justice Ministry survey shows that at least 30 per cent of infanticides are clearly committed by neurotic mothers of this type. A Health Ministry survey also shows an increasing

number of brutalities committed on children, either outright violence or refusal to feed them to the point of endangering their young lives. It finds 92.4 per cent of the offenders in these cases suffered from physical and mental disorders attributed to the worries of childcare. And 41.4 per cent of the mothers involved loathed the very idea of childbearing. As a first step, the Health Ministry is planning to start a pilot child-care consulting service for young mothers in April. In the first year a total of 685 cities,, towns and villages will get the service of a team of paediatri-

cians, public health nurses, nutritionists and other experts. ‘A DOMESTIC MATTER’ This sort of help has not been available before partly because social welfare is still underdeveloped in Japan, but also because of a longstanding belief that child-care was a domestic matter of experience passed down from one generation to the next. With about two million births annually, the Ministry expects between 20 and 30 mothers to visit one of the centres daily for help on everything from weaning to changing nappies. But some critics feel this only scratches the surface. Because of the difficulty in obtaining the contraceptive pill, abortion is the only backstop for the vast majority of girls who accidentally become pregnant. And for a number of reasons some are missing out, perhaps changing their minds when it’s too late. Other experts also feel sex education has been sadly neglected and that unless this aspect is tackled no amount of training in child care is going to help overcome the problem of women having babies they do not want.

One bizarre result of this has been a sudden proliferation in door-to-door sales ladies offering homedelivered condoms, complete with a gorgeous catalogue case full of samples. Children’s officer Murata, however, feels that the real problem is that “as long as the present civilisation continues to emphasise selfish consumption and waste, this phenomenon (infanticide) will continue to grow.” — O.F.N.S. Copyright.