is a Japanese pejorative term which translates literally as 'education mother'. The is a stereotyped figure in modern Japanese society, portrayed as a mother who relentlessly drives her child to study, to the detriment of the child's social and physical development, and emotional well-being.Kriman, Alfred. "SBF Glossary: Jo. to J-2". 10/25/07
The is one of the best-known and least-liked pop-culture figures in contemporary Japan. The is analogous to American stereotypes such as the stage mother who forces her child to achieve show-business success in Hollywood, the stereotypical Chinese tiger mother who takes an enormous amount of effort to direct much of her maternal influence towards developing their children's educational and intellectual achievement, and the stereotypical Jewish mother's drive for her children to succeed academically and professionally, resulting in a push for perfection and a continual dissatisfaction with anything less or the critical, self-sacrificing mother who coerces her child into medical school or law school.
The stereotype is that a is feared by her children, blamed by the press for school phobias and youth suicides, and envied and resented by the mothers of children who study less and fare less well on exams.Tobin, Joseph J., David Y.H. Wu, and Dana Davidson. Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China and the United States. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.White, Merry I. Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Factors influencing development of kyōiku mama In the early 1960s, part-time women's labor began at a few major corporations in Japan and was adopted by other companies within a decade. It became popular among married women in the 1970s and even more so by 1985.
Women's return to the workplace is often explained two-fold: by financial demands to complement the family budget, and by psychological demands to relate themselves to society.
Child-rearing women in the 1960s inspired the media to produce the idiom kyōiku mama, which referred to "the domestic counterpart of sararii-man" (salaryman). This encompassed a major responsibility to "rear children, especially the males, to successfully pass the competitive tests needed to enter high school and college".Kato, Etsuko. The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-presenting the Past. London: Routledge, 2004. No such idiom emerged that deemed men "education papas"; it was "mamas" who became a social phenomenon.
The education system
The education system and larger political economy it serves influence why mothers become obsessed with children's education. Social prejudices influence media stereotypes of kyōiku mamas that blame women rather than political conditions. Getting a good, steady job in the future very much depends on getting into a good university, which depends on attaining high scores on the national university exams in a student's last year of high school. Ordinary people, including mothers, feel powerless to change this system.
As a result, there is a clear map pointing students to the right nursery school that leads to the right kindergarten, the best elementary school, junior high school, and high school, all of which may be associated with prestigious universities. To ensure these results, some parents have been known to commit unethical or illegal acts to promote their child's success.
In one case, a restaurant owner paid a $95,000 bribe in an attempt to get his child enrolled in Aoyama Gakuin, a prestigious kindergarten for children who are three or four years old. Because of the kindergarten's affiliation with an elite university, parents are willing to go to extreme lengths to get their children enrolled. Aoyama Gakuin has room for 40 new students a year. Every year, it receives more than 2000 hopeful applicants. The tests the potential students take are known to be extremely difficult.Hills, Ben. Japan Behind the Lines. Rydalmere, New South Wales: Hodder Headline Australia Pty Limited, 1996.
The issue is compounded by the notion that most important job positions in business and government are held by graduates of the University of Tokyo. In addition, which university a student attends is believed to affect one's choices for a future spouse. Because a child's life appears to be determined by what schools he or she attends, many mothers take extraordinary measures to get children into good schools.Collins, Robert J. Japan-think, Ameri-think: An Irreverent Guide to Understanding the Cultural Differences Between Us. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
Changing family structures The older generation of Japanese grew up in larger households than those normally found in Japan today. Back then, ikuji (, "child-raising") included a larger surrounding environment, made up of more relatives and extended family, and more children: siblings and cousins. Children who grew up in that time learned responsibilities through the care of younger siblings. These children relied on themselves in the outside world through much of their childhood lives. In those days, child-raising was more of a private matter, handled only by the child's surrounding family.
In the 1970s, men's wages decreased and women left home earlier to find jobs. These women "considered themselves free" after the child's junior high education. The previous generation did not feel this until after the child had finished high school.Ochiai, Emiko. The Japanese Family System in Transition. Tokyo: Yoshikaku Publishing Co., 1994.
In contemporary Japan, couples are having fewer children and teaching the children self-reliance. This involves consulting child-raising professionals. This new need in professional advice is commonly termed "child-raising neurosis" by professionals. Reliance on professionals has largely created a new generation of young mothers with low self-confidence in their child-raising abilities. Indeed, most Japanese mothers today grew up in smaller families with only one or two children. Their mothers provided them with everything they needed and gave them little to no responsibilities involving their siblings. Thus, that generation of children has grown up to become mothers who have no idea how to raise their children.
In addition, in contemporary Japan there are mothers who completely devote themselves to child-raising. Another subtype, described by Nishioka Rice, is the kosodate mama (), who adds psychosociological elements into child-raising. In addition to providing for her a good education, she develops an emotional and psychological relationship with her children. One way to do this is through "skinship"—being in constant close physical contact with her children. This could, for example, involve carrying her child on her back wherever she goes or bathing with her children every night. Through skinship, ittaikan () is achieved, a "one-ness and balanced, positively valenced dependency" between mother and child.
Societal views In Japan, a mother who works is commonly seen as selfish in a society where child-raising is linked directly with the physical closeness between mother and child. This emphasis can be a cause of the development of a kyōiku mama who always worries about her children's education success. This produces children that society views as lacking self-reliance, antisocial, and selfish.
When compared to American mothers, Japanese mothers have a stronger belief in effort as opposed to innate ability. Japanese children see their efforts as necessary to fulfill a social obligation to family, peers, and community. Children are forced to focus on their effort, seeing it as the cause of success. According to society, if a child does not succeed, they were not trying hard enough. This is unrelated to the child's grades; children always need to put forth more effort.Elliot, Julian. Bempechat, Janine. Learning in Culture and Context. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002 Mothers pressure children because they are held strongly accountable for their children's actions.Elliot, Julian. Bempechat, Janine. Learning in Culture and Context. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
It is very hard to find daycare in some parts of Japan, and it is socially looked down upon if a mother sends her child to one. The mother is seen as insufficient, not having the skills to raise a child on her own, or selfish, giving her child over to a caretaker while she pursues her own separate goals.
The term kyōiku mama became used in other similar contexts. For example, the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry was dubbed kyōiku mama for its approach and initiatives in guiding industrial growth,Vogel, Ezra, Japan as Number One, Harvard University Press, 1979, p. 70 in a manner similar to the definition of a nanny state.
Media Housewives are surrounded by popular media that encourages their actions. Daytime television, magazines, products, and services for mothers are largely focused on improving the home and raising the children. Thus, the job of motherhood is taken very seriously by mothers in Japan. A common description of a mother's free time is “three meals and a nap.”
Class distinctions Kyōiku mamas, preparatory preschools, and heavily academic curricula exist in Japan, yet they are relatively rare and concentrated in urban, wealthy areas. Kyōiku mamas are prominent in the middle classes. Middle-class women train the children, the next generation of the middle class. In a speech at the 1909 Mitsukoshi children's exhibition, First Higher School principal Nitobe Inazō asserted, "The education of a citizenry begins not with the infant but with the education of a country's mothers."
In the post-World War II era in Japan, the mother was the creator of a new child-centered world stamped with middle-class values. The mother was linked with the success of the child's education. A woman was expected to be a "good wife, wise mother" and became the single most important figure in raising the child to become a successful future adult. Mothers needed to put their efforts into raising and teaching their children. Through self-cultivation and rearing of the children, the woman was crucial to a family's ability to claim a place in the so-called middle stratum.
As education credentials became the recognized prerequisite to social advancement in the early 20th century, kyōiku mama actively looked to the education system, especially admission into middle school for boys and higher school for girls, to help improve the family's social position. The competition to pass the entrance examination to middle school and girls' higher school became intense, creating the social phenomenon known as shiken jigoku (): examination hell. While risshin shusse (), or rising in the world, was the clarion call of the mass of the middle class, there was no risshin shusse without a kyōiku mama. For the education mother, making the child into a superior student was a concern that began with the child's entrance into elementary school at age six and extended to all aspects of the child's education.Jones, Mark Alan. Children as treasures: Childhood and the middle class in early twentieth-century Japan. Diss. Columbia University, 2001. ProQuest Digital Dissertations. ProQuest. University of Texas at Austin Libraries 30 October 2007