Comfort Zone One Women’s Group-supported children’s home in Tokyo is working hard to provide the abused and abandoned with a caring environment within which to grow up. by Ulrica Marshall Photos by Yuuki Ide
Hisami Nakamura
T
ucked away beside the new, opulentlooking Omani Embassy in Hiroo is children’s home Fukudenkai. Its rundown, 40-year-old wooden buildings and narrow concrete paths winding their way through the mud are in stark contrast to the marble and fountain centerpiece next-door. Under the supervision of Hisami Nakamura, some 40 children, ranging in age from 3 to 17, live at Fukudenkai. Nakamura’s popularity with the children for whom she is responsible is unmistakable. As she walks
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through the living quarters, a child embraces her and refuses to let go, burying his little face in her shoulder. Others are keen to show her their creations from school. Such a scene of simple affection would be an idyllic one were it not for the fact that the children are here because their parents have abused them, are too sick to look after them or have died. Sharing the premises with Fukudenkai is Miyashiro Gakuen, a home for 30 mentally disabled children whose parents are unable or
unwilling to care for them. This is a rarely seen side of Japanese society. “The parents don’t want anyone to know that their children are in a home,” says Nakamura, who has worked at Fukudenkai for five years. According to her, 30,000 children live in such homes across Japan, with about 10 percent in central Tokyo. A further 10,000 live with foster families, a figure the current government would like to see increased in order to reduce the number of children in homes.