If after reading this you feel emasculated as a man you have my father to blame. If, on the other hand, you feel enlightened, emancipated, encouraged, and empowered, you can thank my father. A trend previously unseen in Japan is now visible. I saw it on the subway again just this morning. Men in Japan are changing.
Twenty or so years ago when our son was a baby, the item in question was called a Snuggli. I don't know how new parents refer to it today. Twenty or so years before our son was born, babies in Japan were strapped to the backs of mothers, a criss-cross of thick cloth holding down the baby tight. Today, this modern-day Snuggli is more often than not worn by fathers, holding their babies and toddlers close to their chest. Gone are the strap-contraption of four-plus decades ago. Snugglis today have elastic in the right places, are adorned with bright colors and stripes, come with a hoddie to protect the child from the hot sun. Missing are portable misting fans and umbrellas. Aside from these add-ons every parent with a stroller might take for granted, these Snugglis are state-of-the-art. And, more importantly, worn by fathers.
Back in the day when men worked outside the home and women stayed in, care of children was the mother's job, and only the mother's job. Real men didn't burp babies, change diapers, or take an overt and active role in the day-to-day rearing of children. This was, as I said, four-plus decades ago. In today's Tokyo subways it's common to see a father feeding a bottle to a child as it is the mother. What happened? What's changed?
More than forty years ago, my father walked around Tokyo with me strapped to his back causing people to do a double-take not just because foreigners were a rarity back then, but because men didn't do what my father did. What was at one time a curiosity-factor decades later has turned into the norm. Today, many fathers do change diapers, burp babies, and take an active part in the raising of their children.
Perhaps I give my father too much credit. Perhaps one foreign man carrying a baby on his back did not cause a revolution in the role of fathers in this country. Then again, perhaps he did. All I know is this: Japanese men wear their Snugglis openly, proudly even. Babies content, mothers with free hands and baby-free for even a few hours make for a change in scenery in Tokyo, if not Japan as a whole.
Who said one person's actions can't and won't cause social change? Blame him or be proud (I choose the latter, obviously), my father's choice to take part in making me who I am started with showing people he was not ashamed to be seen in public with a baby tied to his back. Whether young men in Tokyo today know what this foreigner who walked the same streets forty years ago did for them--paving the way to choose--I know. Now you do, too.
