Two-year-old Miro has two missions: Deliver an apron to her father, a soba chef, and pick up her mother’s watch at the jeweler. She sprints down a street of her bustling town, barely stopping to chat with the shopkeepers who cheer her on, and drops the apron off with her grateful father. But on the way home, she gets distracted and walks straight past the watch shop.
Miro wanders around, unable to find the store. When she arrives back home, she bursts into tears. When her mother offers to get ice cream for the two of them, Miro starts crying even harder. “I’ll go, Mommy!” she screams, snot dripping from her nose. “I want to go!” Determined, she eventually goes back to finish what she started — and pulls it off.
Since 1991, Nippon TV’s reality series Old Enough!, which follows Japanese children ages 2 to 5 as they run their first-ever errands alone, has captured the joy and turmoil of the kids (not to mention their parents) ready to take their first steps toward independence. Since the show hit Netflix globally on March 31, conversations have taken over social media as many international viewers have discovered the show for the first time. The show has also brought up discourse around cultural differences in parenting, as Japanese culture largely encourages nurturing children’s sense of responsibility at a young age. But, despite decades of filming Old Enough!, the show doesn’t always go off without a hitch (or a few tears).
So how exactly does the crew handle tough times with toddlers? Executive director Junji Ouchi and producer Naoko Yano are here to answer your biggest questions — for example, if the production team is allowed to help children like Miro who get stuck. (Hint: They usually don’t.)
How did the idea for Old Enough! come about? It all started with a thought — there has always been this widely accepted practice in Japan of asking a child to run an errand. What if we [film] a child when they’re sent on their very first errand, without them being aware of what we’re doing? Perhaps we might find something in the footage that’s worthy of television. With that, we started conducting simulations and learned that for every 10 errands we shoot, about one will be television material. To this day, we just focus on recording those first errand moments and 1 out of every 6 to 10 gets aired.
How do you find the children? Who selects the errand that they’re assigned? We choose those that are going to [be asked] to run a first errand anyway, regardless of whether they will get filmed or not. It’s not the same as looking for candidates to cast for television game shows. We don’t feel like we’re making a show for television — this is more of a documentary, and we try to find families who will allow us to record their stories. Family situations have changed drastically over the 30-plus years since we started this, yet in Japan, the tradition of sending children on errands remains. Our hope is to document the “errand tradition” before it gradually disappears.
The families decide what errand they want their child to run — we don’t tell them what to do. We actually share stories of failures that happen throughout the years and offer advice on how to get their child to feel motivated about their task. Oftentimes, they will suggest that the child should decide what they want to buy, but that’s not an errand — that’s just shopping. It’s when they run an errand that their true strength comes out. It’s difficult for a child to persevere until the end unless they’re doing it for someone. For the first time ever, a child who has had everything done for them until now gets to experience the joy of doing something for someone.
Does the camera crew have instructions to hide from the kids at certain spots? The camera crew wear costumes and pretend they are passersby so they don’t need to hide. We tell them to act normally, but new camera crew members tend to want to hide. They know that when a child talks to them, they need to deal with the situation like an adult would, and they are instructed not to initiate conversation with the child.
Is it hard to keep a straight face when the kids address you during their errand? Sometimes a child will ask, “What are you doing?” We simply return the question and say, “What about you, what are you doing?” They will say “errand!” proudly and start talking about what they’ve set out to do. They forget they had a question to begin with and go on with their task. At that age, they can only think about one thing at a time, and we take advantage of that when we shoot.
Children younger than 5 years and 3 months don’t realize they are being followed. They just come home and tell their mom, “The electrician” — really a staff member in costume — “was running too!” Children around that age develop at different rates when it comes to being able to think of several things at once, so we play it by ear.
When are you allowed to help the kids? How often do you have to? There’s no short answer for this one because it’s on a case-by-case basis. Nothing is more important than accepting a child’s personality, so we treat each child as an individual and try not to hurt their feelings. All we really want is for the child to have an amazing day full of memories they will cherish through life. This is what the adults need to ensure for the child, from the family to the staff and the people we meet during the errand. Sometimes, we have to play the bad guy to encourage the child to become independent. “Is it really what’s best for the child if I help them kindly right now? Would it have a negative effect?” When grown-ups help a child out of kindness, could it be because they don’t see them as an equal? A child’s strength comes from their desire to do something for others and their self-esteem. We try to make sure they don’t feel as if they’re being treated like a baby again.
Do you keep in touch with any of the children now? Our intention is to have a lifelong relationship with every family we film. It’s a two-way street, of course, so the family has to be willing as well, but we reach out to them to say when they’ll be on air, and we send New Year’s greeting cards annually. We also hear from them about the latest things happening in their family. Even the families that didn’t get aired connect with us to share that their child started school or got married. Some even invite us out for a meal when they come to Tokyo. We get quite a few of these heartwarming updates. When we reunite, sometimes I ask how they were really feeling during filming, and the answers turn out to be valuable information that helps us in future shoots.
Each season, we feature new children, but there are also episodes where we create a “years later” segment that looks into how that day changed the child. In doing so, the story comes full circle. There was also a child on the show who became a parent years later and decided to send their child on their first errand. Two generations being documented on their first errand!
The show has been running for 30 years. How has it remained so popular? We’re not doing this to create a show. Because we feel we are simply documenting what Japan is like today, we don’t see ourselves continuing a long-running program. We hope to have lifelong contact with the families that cross our paths, and it means a lot for us to be able to see that they stay well, even though we do it from afar. The international reaction is quite an honor, and I hope those watching will feel a connection to the fond memories the families created when their child ran their first errand. I speak on behalf of the production team when I say that it’s not about longevity, popularity, international exposure and whatnot. We are merely documenting the sentiments of the families we meet as the times change.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
