ABSTRACT
In May 2014, the Tokyo office of Human Rights Watch published a 129-page report entitled ‘Without Dreams: Children in Alternative Care in Japan.’ The representational logic surrounding very young children focuses predominantly on the neurology of embodied interpersonal relationships. Scholars who pay attention to ‘social determinants of health,’ the ways that social factors impact holistic bodily life, are often attuned to the power of embodied social relationships to impact wellbeing. The HRW report is uniformly critical of the Japanese child welfare system as a whole, which is known in Japanese as ‘social care’. The chapter suggests that social relationships literally matter in shaping subjectivity and wellbeing, and further, that normative expectations surrounding ‘proper’ kinship relationships and ‘normal,’ unmarked embodied subjectivity have unintended and long-lasting consequences. Even young people who prefer institutional care recognise that it is difficult to create durable relationships in an institution, where staff members work in shifts and turnover is high.
