The Flickr Singleparentfamily Image Generatr

Shot of a mother with her two children dipping their feet into the pool on the patio

The picture shows unknown hands reaching out to embrace the young person. The title text says, "otera [temple] oyatsu [treats] kurabu [club or initiative]." There is a smaller picture at lower right to illustrate the concept: temples around the country collect sweet or savory treats to distribute to one-parent families (more and more single-parent children can be found in Japanese society of cities and the countryside, many times with very limited income or social services to support them). Although snack foods do not erase poverty, at least the kids can enjoy some of the same treats that their peers do.

This enterprising Buddhist priest from Shiga-prefecture performs both puppets (ningyo; bunraku) and the paper-drama (kami-shibai) at temples far and wide around the Japanese islands. The stories, as with long ago traditions, carry a moral or a lesson which adults know well but children may be seeing for the first time. The production value is impressive - portable mic and loudspeaker, bright lighting, suspended black curtains and skirting for the platform, interesting props for the puppet play and fascinating puppet characters; not to mention the sound effects and voicing that the priest produces. There were about 20 or 30 attending the show, including 5-6 school age and small children. There was a time for questions and answers at the end, and several people took the time to speak to the priest to express thanks after that, as well. While he held the audience's attention, he also introduced a charitable initiative his temple was coordinating and promoting to gather up after school snacks for the increasing numbers of single-parent (most often mother, rather than father) families of limited income and thus unable to afford these comforting treats that less impoverished children are accustomed to eating or drinking. The idea is for each local temple to collect money or treats and then to distribute them discretely to those households that are economically strained. There are cases of multiple poor families such as these forming a joint-housing unit and sharing in childcare needs under one roof (so-called "share house"). But the mechanism for identifying and establishing this charitable relationship between temple and recipients is probably a delicate and difficult thing, made more complicated season by season as ever more families grow deeper in poverty without much public welfare and possibly without very much financial support of relatives for the reason of "saving face" in the eyes of one's extended family.

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