Injya comments

Societal support? Someone has missed the idea that in Japan to be different is to be stigmatized. This poor lady was taking care of her child since she was thirty years old! She probably endured finger pointing, laughter and dieu knows what else. If she asked for someone to take over his care after her death, how long world that queue be? Likely zero! It is an extremely sad story but she resolved it in a Japanese manner. To be a perfectly Japanese solution both would have to go together. Injya

It is a very sad story all around! I imagine that this one starts with a Filipina coming to Japan to work. She ends up with children, living basically alone in an environment which is often NOT gaijin friendly, becomes homesick but doesn't have money to take the whole family and it ends up like this. The mother thinks that she can get away from the stress of Japan and does so.

A fourteen year old should be able to provide basic care to a three-year-old. But the the little girl may have been ill or any number of things could have happened to cause the childs death.

Isn't the real proplem one of imigration policy which allows the disgusting recruitment of foreign women to work here? Think of all the sad stories: Lucie Blackman; Lindsay Ann Hawker and who know how many others like this little girl who are colateral damage. It would be nice if Japan had some kind of safety net for women in the position of the mother in this story but it probably doesn't.

The entire story is not yet known and it may never be. I hope optimistically that some sort of close-to-happy ending results. All we can do is to try to be kind to everyone that we possibly can, especially gaijin whose lives have lots of stressors.

Injya

When I was in Los Angeles on a shuccho, I saw a sign advising parents of unwanted babies to turn them in at any fire station - NO questions asked.

That is the humaine thing to do. Japan is different. People just don't want children not related by blood.

Usually the end of these stories are sad, in this case it turned out happily for the baby! :-)

But, the number of Nomiya were not reported. Atsukan, chodai!