Soup kitchens have sprung up to provide meals for some of the estimated 3.5 million children officially living in poverty in one of world’s richest countries

The smell of beef stew wafts from a kitchen as a brigade of volunteers put their cooking skills to use on a recent Saturday evening in Tokyo’s commuter belt.

In an adjoining room, children chat and make paper cutouts while they await the arrival of what, for some, will be their only proper meal of the day.

Kawaguchi children’s cafeteria is one of hundreds to have sprouted up in Japan in recent years in response to a problem few associate with the world’s third biggest economy: child poverty.

An estimated 3.5 million Japanese children – or one in six of those aged up to 17 – are from households classed as experiencing relative poverty, defined by the OECD as those with incomes at or below half the median national disposable income.

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Japan’s relative rate of poverty has risen over the past three decades to 16.3%, while the rate in the US, though higher at 17.3%, has fallen.

Few of the 20 or so children eating dinner in Kawaguchi, a city of just over 500,000 north of the capital, are living in abject poverty. Several, though, come from families who cannot afford to feed them properly, according to the cafeteria’s founder, Masashi Sato.

“The global economic turmoil sparked by the Lehman shock in 2008 hit women in their 20s and 30s particularly hard,” said Sato, who opened the cafeteria in March 2016.

“Those in full-time work were forced to take irregular or part-time jobs with low pay and no bonuses or annual pay rises. In some cases, these women have to borrow money, sometimes from loan sharks, and then end up working in the commercial sex industry to pay off their debts. It’s easy for them to get trapped in a negative cycle.”

It’s not right that in a country like Japan there are still children who have to go to bed with an empty stomach.

Their plight is a rarely seen consequence of Japan’s struggle to steer its economy out of the doldrums after more than two decades of stagnation and deflation. Four years after Shinzo Abe became prime minister for a second time, campaigners say the rise in poverty is evidence that his grand plan for growth – known as Abenomics – has failed to deliver for many families.

Japan now has some of the worst wealth inequality and highest rates of child poverty in the developed world, according to a Unicef report released in April that ranked Japan 34th out of 41 industrialised countries.



Of the 3.5 million children who are eligible for state support, only 200,000 actually receive any – a low take-up rate that campaigners blame on the stigma attached to living on social security.

“The poverty rate that we see today demonstrates just how difficult life has become for children in Japan over the last 25 years,” said Yasushi Aoto, chairman of the Japan Association of Child Poverty and Education Support Organisations. “The poverty issue in Japan is completely neglected. We are a long way behind countries in the west in the way we tackle it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hisako Yoshida and her daughter wait for dinner to be served at a children’s cafeteria in Kawaguchi. Yoshida has struggled to provide for her three teenage children since a cancer diagnosis forced her to quit her job two years ago. Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian

The popularity of children’s cafeterias reflects a wider problem that Japanese policy makers are struggling to address. Although the government passed a child poverty law in 2013, experts say programmes to help needy children are underfunded and held back by bureaucratic inefficiency and political apathy.

“I do not believe that Abe has any interest in child poverty, or poverty in general … for the simple reason that it’s not a vote winner,” Aoto said. “Politicians only seem to think about the short-term. They’re unable to think about the lives of children today and the people they will become in 40 or 50 years from now.”

More than 300 children’s cafeterias have opened around Japan in the past four years, more than half of them in the past 12 months. In 2013, there were just 21. About half of the cafeterias feed children for free, while others typically charge between 100 yen [70 pence] and 300 yen, with parents paying slightly more than their children.

The Kawaguchi cafeteria survives on cash donations from local businesses and food provided by farmers and some of the families themselves. Of the 50 or so children who eat here every month, about a third come from single-parent families.



Hisako Yoshida and two of her three children were among those eating dinner at the cafeteria. The divorcee started struggling financially after a cancer diagnosis two years ago forced her to quit her job at an estate agency.

Yoshida, 43, says most of her monthly benefits go on her children, who are all in their early teens. “I don’t mind admitting that I’m poor, but a lot of people would never describe themselves that way because of the stigma Japanese society attaches to poverty,” she said.

“I’ve got two daughters and a son, and they’re at that age when they have growing appetites. I cook at home but I can’t give them much. If we didn’t have this place to come to life would be much harder.”

Chieko Kuribayashi, chief director of the non-profit WakuWaku children’s cafeteria network in the Toshima area of Tokyo, decided to take action after coming across children who were getting by on one small meal a day.

“I even met children in my neighbourhood who hadn’t eaten all day,” Kuribayashi said. “Others have about 500 yen (US$4.20) to buy a bento lunchbox, and that’s all they have for the whole day.

“The government should be doing far more to alleviate poverty. But at least people are now discussing the problem and acknowledging that it exists. This is an opportunity to think properly about our children’s futures.”

Fear of being seen as disadvantaged in a society that values the appearance of financial security means poverty in Japan is largely hidden from view.

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Struggling families go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their children are properly dressed and able to take part in expensive school excursions, but have to cut down on food and other essentials to make ends meet. The situation is particularly hard for single-parent households, about half of which are living below the poverty line.

For single mothers such as Yoshida, whose name has been changed at her request, the Kawaguchi cafeteria, though currently open just once a month, offers her children a vital lifeline, and a reminder that they are not alone.

“My children have to eat,” she said. “I brought them here for the first time a while ago, and they loved it. They’re not at all embarrassed about coming here and eating until they’re full. It’s not right that in a country like Japan there are still children who have to go to bed with an empty stomach.”