How Japanese Cities Enable Toddlers To Roam Independently

Henry Grabar comments on the urban design differences that enable Hajimete no otsukai, a long-running Japanese television show that follows toddlers in big cities going on errands alone (followed by a camera crew, of course). “In the first of the 20 episodes made available to Netflix subscribers, a 2-year-old travels to the town convenience store to buy groceries for Mom. In the fourth, 3-year-old Yuka crosses a five-lane road in Akashi, a city the size of Cincinnati, to get to the fish market.”

“But the Japanese are not so different from us,” Grabar writes. “They’ve just made policy choices that make it possible for kids to run their first errand a decade before their American counterparts get to do the same.”

Typically, Japanese children don’t actually run errands for Mom and Dad in the city at 2 or 3 years old, [Hironori Kato, professor of transportation planning at the University of Tokyo] notes, as they do in the show. But the comic, TV-friendly premise exaggerates a truth about Japanese society: Children in Japan have an unusual degree of independence from an early age.

Grabar attributes this independence to several factors: “Drivers in Japan are taught to yield to pedestrians. Speed limits are low. Neighborhoods have small blocks with lots of intersections.” Additionally, “Many small streets do not have raised sidewalks but depend on pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers to share the road. Curbside parking is rare, which creates better visibility for drivers and pedestrians and helps give the smaller streets of big Japanese cities their distinctive feel.”

Rebecca Clements, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, says “the show is evidence of how Japan gives children a ‘right to the city.’” E. Owen Waygood, a professor at Montréal Polytechnique, says the culture of independence doesn’t only liberate children: “Japanese kids ages 10 and 11, Waygood found, make just 15 percent of weekday trips with a parent, compared with 65 percent of trips for American kids. A city that frees children also frees their parents.”