What is the Old Enough Japanese TV show on Netflix about?
15.04.2022 - 20:03
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Would you let your toddler out alone to run errands? Do you think they could do the shopping on their own?
That's the premise of Old Enough, a Japanese TV docu-series that sends toddlers aged two to five out into the world unaccompanied. The show has been on air in Japan for decades but it was recently acquired by Netflix.
Now, 20 episodes are available on the popular streaming service, which calls it “the most wholesome show you’ve ever seen” in which Japanese toddlers are sent on simple errands, with “pure” results.
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It pushes the boundaries of children's independence, examining what they are capable of without parental supervision. Children as young as two and old as five are followed by the camera crew as they brave the big city alone, tasked with, for example, dropping off clothing at the dry cleaners, buying groceries from a list and delivering lunch to a parent at work.
It's strange viewing for British audiences, who aren't used to seeing toddlers riding public transport or trying to buy fish from the market. But the children are never truly alone – there is a camera crew with them, of course – and either way, this is normal practice in Japan.
Japanese children are encouraged to be independent from an early age. This is part of the culture, helped by the fact that Japan has a low crime rate for a city and parents trust members of the community to look out for each other.
This was observed in a 2011 research paper published in the Global Studies of Childhood, which compared the independence of children aged 7 to 15 in Japan, South Africa, Tanzania, and Australia. Only Tanzanian youngsters matched Japanese kids in terms