There was a un-named blog post by a Japanese mother who applied for her child's nursery school and got rejected by the city office.
In recent Japan, waiting list for nursery school has been a big social problem while lots of Japanese mothers want to work and need someone to take care of their children while working.

In this un-named blog, she cusses with very straight words.
But as one of the mothers who have looked for nursery schools I strongly emphathize with her and what she says in her blog is our honest voice.

Here are some translation of her blog post.

- Isn't it supposed to be a "All nation successful society" as the government says?
My child failed the nursery school and it means I cannot be successful in this society, huh?

I bore a baby, a new-born Japanese citizen, and now I'm trying to get back to work and pay tax.
But the government won't let me. What do they want then?

I don't care about thieir unacceptable affairs or backhander, but just make enough nursery schools! -



Like she says, the Japanese government addresses the needs of solving low birth rate and an aging population.
At the same time, the Japanese economy is troubling with labor shortage.
And now they want women to work more than ever.
In that case, deploying enough nursery schools is the first and urgent task, which seems to be very easy and simple logic.
However, the problem of nursery school shortage has not been solved at most of the cities for a long time.

I personally studied about this social problem a bit.
And so far, I believe that the reason why it has been unsolved until now is lack of sense of ownership of the assembly members of the cities and the nation.
According to some of the information sources I found, assembly members cannot be so proactive for this issue because it doesn't have much impact for their votes.

The population of those with small children is realtively small compare to that of the aged.
Therefore, they have to be more proactive for the issues for the aged population.



One of the aspects of this nursery school issue is bad working condition of childminders.
Their average payment is about 200,000JPY per month while the average payment of all Japanese population in 2015 was 345,000JPY per month.
And there are lots of childminder credential holders doing other works.

I personally would pay double or more than the actual monthly fee for my children's nursery school as long as they are  taken care of and I can keep working.
Budget is not the only problem, but for me it doesn't seem to be so difficult just to make enough nursery schools.

And for me, generally men don't want us women to be as successful as they are or as they say.
Everything in this country is made for men and women and children are something to protect in the long history.
And this cultural historical social understanding is so strong that we face so many difficulties especially in our working career.

They don't actually say, but they "mean"-

Women cannot do this difficult task like men.
Women are emotional and not logical.
Women cannot earn more money than men.


We have to hear these unspoken words all the time at work and figure our by ourselves to take care of each difficulty all the time.

I do believe that it has been getting better and better, but still it's pain in the butt.
I always think that life would have been much easier if it was completely "fair".



I wish this un-named mother can find someone to take care of her child and she doesn't have to quit her career.