Setting the Scene
We were halfway through dinner — grilled salmon, miso soup, the usual — when my 10-year-old son asked, “Mom, what’s a constitution?”
I blinked, chopsticks mid-air. My husband looked up from his rice. The TV behind us had just aired a segment on proposed constitutional revisions, something even adults struggle to make sense of. But there it was: politics, right there, crashing our Tuesday night meal.
Living in Tokyo as a mother, I’ve gotten used to balancing many things: PTA meetings, bento prep, part-time work, and neighborhood recycling rules so specific they feel like a secret test. But in the last few years, something heavier has slipped into the mix — the feeling that political shifts are no longer happening “out there,” but in here, in our homes, in our everyday lives.
Japan is often seen — especially from abroad — as a place of quiet consensus and political calm. But the truth is, under the surface, things are shifting. Fast. From declining birthrates and an aging population to the growing presence of far-right rhetoric, the Japan my children are growing up in feels noticeably different from the one I knew as a child.
And I’ll be honest — I didn’t grow up in a political household. Like many in Japan, especially women of my generation, I was taught to focus on “the personal,” not the political. We were expected to be polite, stay neutral, and keep our heads down. “Don’t talk about politics or religion at the table,” my parents would say. But now? My kids are asking questions. And staying silent feels like a privilege I can no longer afford.
That question from my son — simple, innocent — was a turning point. It made me realize how little I had prepared myself, or my family, to engage with the real questions shaping our future. What is democracy supposed to look like in Japan? Who gets to decide what values guide our laws and schools and homes? And why do so many of us — especially moms like me — still feel invisible in the process?
In this series, I want to explore those questions, not as a political expert (because I’m not), but as a mother, wife, and citizen — someone who watches the news while folding laundry and tries to explain global warming in kid-friendly Japanese over dinner.
This first part sets the stage: how politics have crept into my domestic life, often quietly, sometimes uncomfortably — and why I’ve stopped looking away.
The Conversation Gets Real
It started with that one innocent question about the constitution — but of course, it didn’t stop there.
A few days later, we were walking home from school when my son, holding my hand and dragging his randoseru behind him like it owed him money, said, “Our teacher said Japan might go to war someday. Is that true?”
I froze for a moment. There was no car nearby, no sudden noise. Just a warm afternoon, cicadas buzzing, and my heart suddenly racing.
“Why would she say that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
He shrugged. “We were learning about Article 9, and some kids said America might make Japan help in wars again.”
Ah, Article 9. Japan’s peace clause. I’d barely thought about it since high school civics class. But now, here it was, part of my son’s third-grade curriculum — and more urgently, part of his emotional world.
That night, after he was in bed, I brought it up with my husband.
“Do you think we should talk to them more about this kind of thing?” I asked.
He looked up from his phone, blinked. “Like what?”
“Politics. The constitution. The way the world is changing. War.”
He made a face. “They’re too young. It’ll just scare them.”
“But they’re already hearing about it,” I said. “And they’re scared anyway. Don’t we want them to hear it from us, with context?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I never talked about politics with my parents. It’s not really something families do.”
He wasn’t wrong. In Japan, politics often feels like a topic for professionals — old men in dark suits, talking on TV. Not something for moms in Uniqlo joggers peeling daikon in a tiny kitchen. And yet, the news keeps pushing its way in.
There’s the defense budget increase. The childcare allowance debates. The tax revisions. The daycare shortage. Immigration policy. The falling birthrate — often tossed around in headlines like a national emergency, as if I’m both the problem and the solution.
At some point, I began to notice a pattern: every time the government passed a new bill or debated a reform, it hit my life. Not in some abstract way, but in my actual schedule, my wallet, my kitchen table.
Like when the city cut back after-school care hours “to save costs.” Suddenly, I had to leave work earlier, rearrange meetings, and pray my neighbor could watch my daughter if I got stuck on a delayed train. Or when the prime minister declared plans to make education “more patriotic.” I found myself scanning my son’s textbooks, unsure if I was being paranoid or just… finally paying attention.
And then came the turning point.
One evening, my son came home from school with a paper titled “What Makes a Good Citizen?” It was part of a social studies assignment. His answers were sweet — “be kind,” “don’t litter,” “help your grandma.” But one sentence stood out:
“A good citizen trusts the government.”
I read it three times. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even surprised. But something in me shifted.
Do I believe that? Should I teach my children that? Should I teach them to question instead?
That night, I stayed up late reading articles I barely understood, watching interviews on NHK, even checking foreign media to see how Japan’s politics looked from the outside. And I realized something: my lack of knowledge wasn’t just personal. It was systemic. Intentional, maybe. Women especially had been kept out of the conversation for so long that we didn’t even notice we weren’t at the table.
Well — now we’re at the dinner table.
And we’re talking.
Not just about school lunches and piano recitals, but about who writes the rules, and whether those rules still make sense for the kind of world our kids will inherit.
When Speaking Up Feels Like Breaking the Rules
It wasn’t until the PTA meeting that I realized how out of place I’d become.
It started innocently enough — we were discussing the school festival, specifically whether to allow booths with any “political messaging.” Someone mentioned that last year, a student group had put up a board with anti-war slogans. One mother frowned.
“This isn’t the place for that,” she said. “It’s just kids playing games. We shouldn’t bring up politics.”
Another nodded. “Exactly. It’s too sensitive. Let’s keep it neutral.”
Neutral.
That word again.
It floats around every Japanese discussion about politics like a polite ghost — present but impossible to challenge without being rude.
I wanted to ask: What does ‘neutral’ mean when your child is worried about missiles from North Korea?
When you can’t find a spot in daycare because local budgets were slashed?
When your daughter comes home asking why there are no women on TV debating laws about maternity leave?
But I didn’t say anything.
Instead, I sat there, sipping my barley tea, wondering when exactly I’d become “that mom” — the one with the weird questions and the foreign-looking blog and the unreadable expression.
Was I overreacting?
Maybe.
But maybe I’d just started paying attention.
I once read that in Japan, silence is not just absence of speech — it’s a form of communication. A way to preserve harmony.
But what happens when silence becomes complicity?
I thought about that more when I attended a school safety meeting. There was a short presentation on emergency drills and neighborhood watch systems. Afterward, a father stood up and asked if the school had any protocol in case of “unrest caused by foreign residents.”
I felt my stomach drop.
There was no pushback.
Not from the teachers. Not from the other parents.
Just nods. And silence.
Later, I overheard two moms chatting. One said, “Well, I guess he’s not wrong. We have to protect our children.”
I looked down at my daughter, who was playing nearby with her best friend — a sweet, energetic girl from a Vietnamese-Japanese family. I wondered if she’d still be seen as part of “us” when things got tense.
That night, I told my husband about the meeting.
“That’s awful,” he said. “But what can you do? Japan’s always had this fear of the outside.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But now the fear is coming inside.”
And it’s not just about foreign policy or immigration.
It’s about the small shifts in how we speak, or don’t speak, to each other.
About how criticism of government decisions is quickly labeled as unpatriotic.
How conversations in the schoolyard stay safe and shallow — weather, lunch menus, homework complaints — while real concerns stay trapped behind our smiles.
The truth is, I didn’t expect to feel so alone in all this.
I thought, naively, that other moms must be thinking the same things. And maybe they are. But saying them aloud? That still feels like a social risk few are willing to take.
Even my blog — this blog — feels like an act of quiet rebellion.
Writing in English, for foreign readers, about things many of my Japanese peers wouldn’t say out loud — that comes with its own strange guilt.
Like I’m betraying some unspoken rule: Keep the laundry folded, the children quiet, and the opinions private.
But here’s the thing: if politics are shaping the schools our kids go to, the taxes we pay, the rights we have (or don’t), then parenting is political.
Silence doesn’t protect us.
It just delays the fallout.
And maybe — just maybe — our job as mothers isn’t to avoid the hard conversations, but to gently, persistently, bring them to the table. Even if that table is full of spilled miso soup, unfinished math homework, and distracted kids asking for more edamame.
Choosing to Speak, Even Softly
The next time politics came up at dinner, I didn’t freeze.
We were eating curry this time — the kind that simmers all day in the slow cooker, because I’d finally learned that shortcuts in the kitchen leave more energy for the things that matter.
My son had seen something on YouTube about protests in Tokyo.
“Do people really march in the streets here?” he asked, eyes wide. “I thought only America did that.”
I smiled. “We do, too. Not as loudly maybe. But we do.”
I told him about the women who marched against nuclear power after Fukushima. About the silent vigils. About the tiny protests outside the Diet building. About how even in a country that values quiet and conformity, there are always people — always — who speak up.
And then I surprised myself.
I told him I’d been to one.
It was years ago. I had just become a mother. I went alone, barely knowing what the protest was about — something vague about labor rights. I stood at the edge, holding my phone like a shield, too nervous to chant, too curious to leave.
I didn’t stay long.
But I still remember the feeling.
That maybe — just maybe — my voice mattered.
It’s a strange thing, living in a country that rarely encourages political discussion, while raising children who are full of questions.
You want to protect their innocence, yes. But you also want to prepare them for a world that might not.
So I’ve started small.
We talk about taxes when we’re buying groceries.
We talk about immigration when my daughter asks why her best friend’s dad “looks different.”
We talk about the environment when we separate trash, even when the rules make no sense.
And sometimes, we talk about fairness, even when I know the answers will disappoint them.
But I believe this: the more we name what’s happening around us — the more we give words to our worries — the less power they have to control us in silence.
Being a mother in Tokyo means many things. It means knowing how to pack a bento box with three colors and a tiny divider for pickles. It means holding contradictory roles: submissive in the workplace, decisive at home. It means mastering the art of staying polite even when the world feels unfair.
But it also means being the first line of education. The first storyteller. The first person our kids turn to when they ask, “Why?”
So, no — I’m not an activist.
I’m not an expert.
I’m just a mom.
But I’ve stopped pretending that motherhood is separate from politics.
Every decision I make — from where we live, to what we teach our kids, to how we show up in our communities — is shaped by the policies and values of the society around us.
And if I stay silent, I’m leaving the conversation to people who don’t know my children, don’t care about my neighbors, and don’t understand what it means to make dinner while listening to the news and feeling that quiet, persistent ache: This could be better. This could be fairer.
So I keep writing.
I keep answering questions.
I keep bringing the hard topics to the table — gently, imperfectly, but honestly.
Because maybe that’s how change starts in Japan.
Not with a revolution.
But with a mother, a meal, and a question that refuses to stay quiet.
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