Shin-Childcare #3 “Expert Meeting on the Problem of Excessive Quality in Japanese Housework and Childcare”

The Penance of Baby Food

As of May 9th, my son is about 11 months old.
He is right in the middle of the late stage of weaning.
I love cooking, so much so that I even attended the famous “RIZAP COOK” school.
(Whether that training actually committed to improving my cooking is... currently unknown.)
So, I want to try making baby food myself.
That’s why, when the early weaning stage began, I took a quick look at baby food books at a bookstore.
And I thought from the bottom of my heart,

“Japanese mothers, you’re trying way too hard!!!”

So today, I’m going to write on the theme: “Is all that effort put into housework and childcare really necessary?”

The Problem of Excessive Quality in Childcare

I think there were about eight baby food books I glanced at that time.
Most of them teach the basics and specific recipes of baby food in great detail, but as I flipped through them, I had an intuition.
“This is an impossible game...”

Like the character bento (kyaraben) that was popular for a while, the baby food is colorful (you don’t need to plate it like this...)
Ingredients are carefully mashed using a mortar (why do it by hand? Just use a hand blender...)
There are so many delicious-looking recipes listed (it’s impossible to remember all of these...)

I don’t want to be misunderstood; I don’t want to criticize all the baby food books in the world.
I also think everything written in these books is correct.
However, if asked for my honest opinion, “Is it reproducible?”... No!
If asked if it’s efficient... No!!
If asked if it’s realistic... No!!!

Even if it’s just one meal in the early stages, if you try to reproduce this for 2-3 meals a day (the number of times they eat per day), your day will definitely end with just baby food.
In other words, I feel the required quality is too high.
Is this because I am a man, a father, that I feel this way?
Thinking that, I asked my wife, “Don’t you think this is an impossible game?”
After a short pause, my wife gave me a silent, straight-faced look that said, “(Shut up, I know that even without you telling me.)”
...Yeah, it’s definitely too much.

Excessive Quality in Housework Too

This is a bit of a digression, but couldn’t this be said for housework in general, not just childcare?
Clothes worn should be washed the same day.
The toilet and floors should always be clean.
Bento boxes should be made every day.
Should, should, should, should! Must, must, must!

Is that really the case?
For example, laundry. You don’t sweat as much in winter as in summer.
Even so, is it necessary to wash clothes you’ve worn for half a day every day?
Doesn’t excessive washing just wear out clothes faster?
(As an aside, according to a book by the “Laundry Brothers,” a professional laundry group that handles clothing cleaning exclusively for Crazy Ken Band, it seems that a 1-3 minute spin cycle in the washing machine is enough. Anything more than that just seems to damage the clothes.)

This may also be due to national character.
Japanese products boast the world’s highest quality due to that perfectionism.
A culture that considers cleaning based on Zen philosophy a virtue.
Of course, it’s a culture to be proud of to the world, and I don’t think Japanese people should lose it.
But it shouldn’t be brought excessively into daily housework and childcare...

Encountering Three Gospels

When I was harboring such vague dissatisfaction, I encountered these books.
1. “Katsuma-Style Super Logical Housework”
2. “Baby Food & Toddler Food Complete BOOK”
3. “Shin-Standard”

1. “Katsuma-Style Super Logical Housework”

1 is a book by Kazuyo Katsuma, a well-known economic critic.
She actually applies that outstanding sharpness you see on TV to housework (amazing...).
The content is, as the title suggests, super logical.
From cleaning, laundry, and cooking to makeup, it is packed with know-how that is “highly reproducible (though it costs a little money).”
Perhaps the value of this book is not in the specific know-how, but in the way of thinking.
For example, “You don’t actually need to dry socks with clothespins.”
“Huh? Then how do you do it? ...I see, that’s a way to do it!”
It is full of perspectives that question common sense and ways of thinking that consider methods from zero-base. As expected of a top business school lecturer. Housework is also full of Kaizen (improvement).
・Cannot manage housework well
・The day ends with housework
・Just want to be freed from housework
It is a book I strongly recommend to everyone who has such worries.

2. “Baby Food & Toddler Food Complete BOOK”

2 is a baby food recipe book I found recently.
What makes this book different from the others?
It is extremely systematic.
In other words, it explains baby food structurally, so if you just keep 1 or 2 essences in your head, you can apply them to various recipes.
My worry was that specific recipes were just listed, and I couldn’t get away from cooking with a recipe book in hand. This is truly grateful. (This is the kind of book I was looking for!)

To briefly introduce the content, for example, in the late weaning stage chapter:
・Decision-making criteria for starting late weaning
・Daily meal schedule and estimated amount per meal
・Basic framework of the menu (staple food + main dish + side dish)
This is common content, but on the specific recipe pages:
・All-in-one meals where you can get the above basic framework at once
・Recipes where you can make clear soup or miso soup just by adding soy sauce or miso to a base Japanese-style soup
The content is devised so that if you keep the basic structure (essence) in your head, you can make multiple recipes.

I have browsed many recipe books in bookstores, including those for adult meals, but there are very few recipe books that are this systematic. I highly recommend this book to those who are tired of the world’s baby food that is too high-quality and full of variety.

With that, I encountered books that handle housework and childcare (baby food) realistically and efficiently,
and I became somewhat more relaxed, but I still haven’t broken away from the fundamental Japanese perfectionist ideology.
“Wait, is housework and childcare overseas also this difficult (high quality)?”
Just as I was thinking that, I encountered this book.

3. “Shin-Standard: Japanese People Find Life Difficult Because They Only Know Japanese Common Sense”

Oh, what a spot-on subtitle.
The author is Takahisa Taniguchi, who has traveled around the world and has experience giving speeches at the United Nations.
His background of moving to Germany and starting a business for environmental activities conveys a strong field-oriented activist spirit.
Reading this book, you can clearly see that Japanese housework, childcare, and even work are excessively high-quality beyond imagination.
High quality is a good thing, but the field is screaming to maintain that quality.
But because that is “normal,” everyone is gritting their teeth and doing their best.
But from the outside (overseas), it seems the reality is, “Huh...? That’s abnormal, are you okay??”

Japan is an island nation with little interaction with foreigners or other ethnic groups, and because it is a single-language nation called Japanese, it is difficult for overseas information to enter. On top of that, all infrastructure is in place, so there is no need to rely on the outside (except for resources and manpower).
It is becoming a Galapagos as it should be, and that is having a very large negative impact on the aspect of household management called housework and childcare.
In addition, these days there is little neighborhood interaction and it is a nuclear family, so there is little interaction with other child-rearing families (in our home, both sets of parents live far away, and there is almost no interaction with neighboring child-rearing households).

This is Galapagos OF Galapagos.
How stoic are you, Japanese people!
Wouldn’t it be okay to be a bit more casual here?
Tighten where you need to tighten.
But if you tighten everything every day, it’s obvious that you’ll go crazy eventually.
Do it loosely. That way, the stress in the field will be less, and the children can be more relaxed.
Wouldn’t things flow more efficiently as a result?

A steering wheel without play is dangerous.
Reading the books 1-3 introduced in this article, doing housework and childcare in a casual, efficient way,
while simultaneously destroying your own common sense. That is my current ideal and what I want to ask the world.

That is all for this article. Before I knew it, it became a long text.
Well, let’s get back to housework.
Fold the laundry neatly and put it away, and wash the cloth diapers carefully...
(...Hey!)