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lilyginnyblackv2 · 1 year

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Social Issues that Help with Understanding Buddy Daddies

Here are some political, social, and cultural aspects of Japanese culture that I think is important to keep in mind when watching Buddy Daddies. Please note: this is a super long post, with lots of pictures.

1. Human Trafficking - Slave Labor

In Episode One, we learn that Miri’s birth father was involved in labor based human trafficking involving Southeast Asian individuals. This is currently a very big issue in Japan, since Southeast Asian immigrants (among others) are viewed as a cheap labor option and usually experience slave labor like conditions.

From The United States Department of State website:

Men, women, and children from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage and are subjected to sex trafficking. Traffickers use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry of women into Japan for sex trafficking in bars, clubs, brothels, and massage parlors. Traffickers keep victims in forced labor or commercial sex using debt-based coercion, threats of violence or deportation, blackmail, confiscation of passports and other documents, and other psychologically coercive methods.

2. Drugs in Japan

When I was living and working as an ALT in Japan, two ALTs (in a different district, but within the same company of my own), got caught with drugs. It was a big deal and ended up in the newspapers. The company I worked for had to do a lot of PR work with the elementary and junior high schools that they had contracts with, to ensure that the contracts would remain. As for me and the other ALTs? We had to sit through like five separate meetings within like two months about drugs and drug laws in Japan.

The barebones takeaway is that, in Japan, weed is viewed as being on the same level as hardcore drugs. Charges can be steep and strict. Even just knowing that someone has drugs, and you don’t say anything to law enforcement about it, can get you in trouble. There is a grey area with drugs, which is stuff like bath salts and the like. Since the selling of things like that cannot be prohibited, so they are easily accessible to the public.

Japan still has a very “90′s D.A.R.E.” approach to drugs. It’s catchphrase is 「ダメ。ゼッタイ。」or “No! Never.”

(Image from a Web Magazine called Nagasaki Press.)

When celebrities are caught with (what’s usually) weed, it can basically be the end of their careers, since recreational drug use of any kind (excluding alcohol, of course), is still negatively looked down upon in Japanese society. This is why it is still heavily left in the hands of the yakuza and drug kingpins, etc. Though there has been a recent increase in protests and ideology surrounding the idea of legalizing weed. Still, not much acceptance for recreational use is likely to come yet. However...

There may soon be some revision to the laws, which will allow for medical use:

Legislation changes scheduled for 2023

In 2021, the MHLW established an expert committee to review the Cannabis Control Act, and it is expected revisions will be proposed in a bill to be submitted in 2023. This will most likely allow for the use of medical cannabis. 2022/12/02

From: Euromonitor

So, something to keep in mind when Kazuki talks about a drug kingpin here is that this drug kingpin is likely not just dealing with super, hardcore drugs, but also softer ones too, like weed.

3. Child Protection Squad

There is this misconception in Japan that really young kids, like Miri’s age, can just roam free all around Japan and no one will find it odd. In Episode 1, we do see Miri roaming around the city without anyone really taking notice, but she also wasn’t in an area where there would be people that are trained to take notice.

In the above image she is at a park, which is likely close to a school somewhere. The man that approaches her here has a band around his jacket sleeve that says こども見守り隊 (kodomo mimamori-tai), which gets translated to “Child Protection Squad.” Basically, these are like crossing guards, in a way, because they do play a similar role to that, but they also do more than that as well:

(Image from the Japanese website: Nice Senior).

This people basically ensure that kids stay on the right paths on their way to school. Most of the time, when elementary school children head off to school, they will go in groups (with the 5th or 6th graders being the leaders) and there will often be older people outside their houses on their way in, keeping an eye on the children to make sure they get to school okay.

And that’s talking about elementary school aged kids. For ones that are around Miri’s age, usually the parents (mostly mothers) will bring them by bike:

Or they will get picked up by a bus:

This one looks pretty boring in comparison to some others you might see though, like these:

(Image from the Hiyoshidai School Website)

Sometimes the daycare workers will also take them on little excursions outside using big strollers for the kids to travel around in:

(The image is obviously from a stock photo site called fotostock, but yeah, I’ve seen these before when I lived in Japan).

But a little toddler just sitting on her own at a mostly empty park with just a guy sitting at a park bench nearby watching her? That would raise attention and an eyebrow from someone who is essentially a crossing guard and whose job is to ensure the safety of kids as they travel to and from school.

The rest is under a Read More.

4. Police in Japan

I saw a comment somewhere (maybe it was over on Youtube) about how the cops are portrayed here in Buddy Daddies. The comment was basically that Japanese cops wouldn’t be that aggressive with a child. But, well, cops in Japan have issues like everywhere. Though, the main issue with cops recently has more so been with racial profiling:

(Excerpt is from a Japan Times article entitled: 60% of people with foreign roots questioned by Japanese police, survey finds).

Of course, this situation is different from the one we see happening with Miri, but the Japanese police have issues with corruption too. So this happening wouldn’t seem too out of the realm of possibilities to me. The anime Tiger & Bunny 2 Part 2 also recently had some moments in the season where there was some anti-cop (ACAB-type) sentiments expressed by a character (though that series is also meant to take place in a city based on NYC).

5. Issues Surrounding Reproductive Rights, Contraception, and Abortion

“Took advantage of me” is fairly vague wording, but considering the type of guy he was, and the fact that Miri’s mother is caught in another abusive relationship, it wouldn’t surprise me if Miri’s conception wasn’t fully consensual one. People like to talk about how safe Japan is, but Japan has a lot of sexual violence that goes unreported:

(From an article entitled: Many sexual violence victims in Japan do not report assaults to police, support groups: survey - The article was posted on November 24, 2020 over on The Mainichi news website).

There is a lot of societal pressure in Japan, that can cause a lot of judgement as well. Especially around issues of reproductive rights. From a Japan Times articles entitled: Pandemic provides an opportunity to improve access to contraception, posted on January 30th, 2022, we can get a little insight into the issues surrounding contraceptives:

The article also talked about the judgement that can come with contraceptives. The last line also talks about abortion, which comes with its own set of issues in Japan:

(From The Japan Times article: Abortion legal and apolitical in Japan, but cost and consent present barriers)

So abortion was likely an option that Miri’s mother didn’t think was really viable, especially in her situation.

7. Being a Single Mother in Japan, Adoption

In Ep.3 we hear Kazuki parroting a lot of the stuff you usually hear when it comes to women in children, like it is meant to be a natural and innate thing. There is a societal pressure for a woman to give birth and care for the child, even when they aren’t in the best situations to do so. Miri’s mother was, for all intents and purposes, a single mother. Since I doubt the abusive man she is currently with had any hand in helping Miri.

Being a single mother anywhere can be a big challenge, but especially so in Japan. Some issues that single mother’s face in Japan, according to the article “Why Most Families with Single Mothers in Japan are Living in Poverty” from a site called The Borgen Project:

From that same article, we learn that joint-custody and child support doesn’t exist in Japan. So Miri’s mother was likely under a lot of societal and financial stress, along with possible Post-Partum Depression, and (also probable) burnout. This doesn’t mean that her behavior or attitudes are okay, but that they are likely a result of a failed system.

I’ve seen some people bring up adoption, but adoption doesn’t automatically mean that a child will have a better life either. My grandfather’s mother was force to give her children up to the state, so my grandfather spent a good chunk of his life in an orphanage. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. And the probability that Miri would have been adopted had her mother gone through the actual system is, sadly, extremely low. From an article entitled: “The state of orphans in Japan and how to help” found on the site Zenbird.Media is this bit of information:

And even if Miri had been in an orphanage, Misaki (Miri’s mother) would still be her legal guardian.

So an option like that would be unappealing for Misaki, because she doesn’t want anything to do with Miri.

7. LGBT+ Individuals Being Viewed as “Not Productive”

Finally, we have the last thing I briefly want to talk about. The main backbone of Buddy Daddies, which is these two hitmen taking care of a child. Last year, a Japanese politician was in the news because she retracted some previous statements she made in 2016 and 2018. We are going to focus on her 2018 statements, which were:

Her comment received a lot of backlash and was big news. Her retracting her statements also brought a lot of news and talk too. The above information comes from The Japan Times article: “ Japanese lawmaker retracts past remarks on LGBTQ and other minorities.” Her other comments are awful too, but it should be noted that her one about sexual-minority couples stems from the issue of Japan’s declining birthrate. Even though many people in Japan are supportive of LGBT+ rights, there are people that hold a similar viewpoint as this.

Buddy Daddies is pretty directly challenging this ideology, especially with how they have been handling things. So that’s pretty cool and revolutionary in its own way. It makes me interested in seeing how this continued topic as well as any future social issue topics will be handled or touched upon in Buddy Daddies.

If you read this all until the end: thank you so much! I put a lot of work into this write up and I hope it can help (I learned some things too while researching!).

#Buddy Daddies #Kazuki Kusuru #Rei Suwa #Miri Unasaka #Misaki Unasaka #social issues in Japan #long post #meta post #image heavy post

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