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.
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
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.
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