3. Free Space En is managed by NPO Tamariba, an alternative education facility and free school which children attend instead of regular school, a so-called ibasho (Tanaka 2021: 7).

4. Music studio

5. Kawasaki City children’s meeting room

There is also a garden and farmland on the outside and multiple rooms available for rent and use.

From here on, we will use the umbrella term ‘Yume Park’ to refer to the entire facility.

Management and Children’s Participation Rules in Yume Park

A banner at Yume Park bears the message ‘No prohibitions’. Children are encouraged to do whatever they like provided that they do not harm themselves or others. No strict rules are universally applied in Yume Park, but rather rules are created within relationships and situations, and negotiated by participants within those situations. The interviews with the playworkers highlighted that people always question the reasoning behind newly established rules and form a habit of critical thinking, rather than blindly accepting the opinions of others. For example, if one group is playing ball games while younger children also wish to use the space, the older children understand that they must accommodate smaller children.

The Playworker’s Role Includes Facilitating Children’s Participation

Playworkers perform the facilitating role in the adventure playground. They are involved in the day-to-day management as well as event planning and preparation. They welcome visitors and make them feel at home in addition to stimulating the children’s play. As Nishino mentioned, children do not always express themselves verbally, therefore non-verbal communication can be considered participation too. Therefore, children’s play in Yume Park is any act of participation.

At least once a day, playworkers attend reflection and planning meetings, where they discuss the children’s condition, equipment maintenance and risk management. These meetings are sometimes held indoors in the ‘staff only’ rooms, but more frequently outside, so that the children do not miss the opportunity to participate in them (see Figure 6.4). The interviews suggest that this ‘flexible’ system is taken as a given, with no formal guidelines recommending that they ‘include the children’s voices, which would make it necessary to hold the meetings outdoors’. These participatory meetings were described as occurring naturally, when appropriate, or even spontaneously. The general culture of Yume Park (as a facility committed to the Convention on the Rights of the Child) involves close communication to understand children’s needs, and assistance in needs fulfilment by all employees.

The playworkers’ routine at Yume Park also includes daily journal entries about the day’s occurrences. This system was designed to keep all playworkers working various shifts informed and to facilitate continuity in communication with the children. For example, if Playworker A worked on Monday and learned something important about a child’s personal life, feelings and challenges, they could record it in the journal so that Playworker B, working on Tuesday, would be informed about the context. This system ensures continuous support for the children who visit Yume Park on a regular basis. This ‘diary’ allows the playworkers to record the joys and burdens of the day on paper, thus clearing their minds, as well as allowing them to communicate indirectly with one another.

Playworkers sitting around table in adventure playground with laptop and papers

Figure 6.4 Daily reflections of playworkers outside; children join naturally

Photo courtesy of Kawasaki Kodomo Yume Park, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Although the Yume Park facility is a designated children’s space, it is managed mainly by adults. However, children are considered among the facility’s stakeholders, and are invited to express their opinions on various issues and to manage spaces. It thus appears that children’s participation can be facilitated when adults can provide adequate risk management and a safe environment. One of the main roles carried out by the playworkers is risk management: they eliminate hazards and provide a safe space for children’s free play. Children can manage risks by themselves; however, hazards (unexpected physical dangers above a certain threat level) must be removed.

However, when adults do not know how to ensure safety, it becomes difficult to create a space suitable for children’s play. The director, Nishino, said that Covid-19 offered an opportunity to renew relationships between adults and children because neither group had pandemic experience, and both ‘stood at the zero level’. Some might disagree, arguing that adults lost the psychological confidence required to manage the situation, including their primary role of ensuring safety. However, Nishino likely sought to interpret the negative situation in a positive light in a bid to keep spirits high during difficult times and to try to frame the crisis as an opportunity for people to become closer to one another.

In the next section, to contextualize Yume Park’s achievement in protecting the child’s right to play, we will first offer an overview of Japan’s Covid-19 timeline and the local government’s response, before characterizing children’s play and the general circumstances of Japanese society during the pandemic.

Reflections on Yume Park’s Actions to Ensure Freedom of Play

Our contribution focuses on the beginning of the pandemic (March to August 2020), when there was general confusion around how to perform usual activities within a Covid framework. The absence of a clear understanding of how to behave is of the greatest interest in our analysis. Therefore, we have not described autumn 2020, when Yume Park implemented its annual festival or the period post-2021, when the situation stabilized.

Timeline of Actions in Yume Park

Timeline showing chronology of activities in and perceptions of Yume Park by month in 2020 in relation to pandemic restrictions in Japan

Figure 6.5 Timeline of Yume Park, 2020 (based on data from Kawasaki City)

Created by Mitsunari Terada, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

At the beginning of March 2020 in Japan, the government imposed restrictions on activities in public facilities in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19. The closure of public schools was among the first responses. Because Yume Park is a public facility, it too was under consideration for closure. Through the concerted effort of Yume Park representatives and city officers, the facility was kept open as a ‘last resort’ (see discussion topic A below), with several changes to its rules and functions as preventive measures (see discussion topics B, C and D below). This decision was based on an understanding of Yume Park’s importance as a place for Kawasaki’s most vulnerable children and families. Yume Park’s director also used various media—television, newspapers, social networks—to emphasize the importance of supporting children with such facilities during the pandemic. Under the first emergency call, the number of users declined compared to the usual figures, but some children continued to visit, as it was their ‘space’.

From the end of Golden Week—a series of holidays clustered and observed at the end of April and beginning of May in Japan—the number of visitors to Yume Park increased (see Figure 6.5). Once the school year started, the number of visitors stabilized. However, with the hot summer that followed and pandemic-related regulations—including the advice to stay home—people turned to Yume Park as an accessible recreational space. Playworkers perceived this tendency as a misuse of Yume Park, believing that it was being treated as a holiday ‘resort’. The playworkers were risking their lives supporting children’s play in the context of the stressful restrictions (see Section C below). Yume Park had to impose measures to prevent overcrowding and adjust its ethos accordingly (see Section D below).

Discussion of Topics Emerging from Interviews

The discussion that follows is based on four themes (A–D) that emerged from interviews with Yume Park’s playworkers and leaders.

A. Should Children’s Facilities Be Open for Play Rights in Uncertain Times?

As we mentioned in the introduction, many public facilities for children were closed, especially in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. This is an understandable measure to avoid spread of infection. Within these circumstances, the attempt to ensure safety for all by imposing stay-at-home policies posed the risk that some children would become unsafe.

Therefore, Yume Park’s solution was to remain open to support children’s rights. This decision is also supported by the International Play Association, which underlines the importance of play in crisis as a coping mechanism (International Play Association 2020).

In March 2020, as Japan was formulating its emergency measures, Yume Park was preparing to keep its doors open. It was clear to Nishino that those children whose need for care and support was greatest might lose a place where they could go and talk. He argued that Yume Park should be kept open as ‘the last resort’ (saigo no toride—literally, ‘the last fortress’) in an interview with NHK, Japan’s public media channel, that was later quoted in newspapers (NHK 2021). Nishino understood that children and parents were facing a particularly difficult situation, and many caregivers told playworkers that Yume Park was the only place in which they felt safe. In the Group Gendai documentary, one mother told the camera, ‘The children wanted to play outside. They were quite aggressive, having to stay home, punching the walls. It was difficult’. Another female visitor told the camera, ‘The apartment owner told us off because we are so noisy as a family. It was difficult, so we decided to come to Yume Park from time to time. So if there were no place like this, that would be just unbearable’. Considering society’s failure to acknowledge children’s needs to play, to make noise and to simply be, whether in their apartments or outdoors, Yume Park offered a crucial source of support during the pandemic. Interviewees often mentioned ‘other people’s eyes’, which, in Japanese, means the attention and pressure from other community members.

Director Nishino pointed out in his interview,

Children usually cannot ask for help by words, so they give us signals by their body language—strange movements or irritation. So when the environment turns against children, as in the case of Covid restrictions, we had to keep the place open, in order for children to have a place to be. Because, as I said, children can’t ask for help or advice by words, usually, you know, so if they just have a place to be, where someone listens and pays attention to them, that’s the way to help them.

With this argument, he described his determination at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 as follows:

At the end of February, when I heard that the government planned to close public schools, I went to the city office and spoke to the officers: ‘We need Yume Park open now more than ever before’. They understood. Because it was established in accordance with the Child’s Right to Play Article, they accepted my request.

Some playworkers were hesitant at the beginning of 2020, as the growing panic and uncertainty caused much confusion. Announcements (Japanese cities have speakers installed throughout them for such announcements in case of disasters) sounded daily, with the message urging citizens to ‘PLEASE STAY HOME’. However, learning directly from children and parents, the playworkers gradually acknowledged the need to keep Yume Park’s gates open:

During Covid times, children reported increased abuse from parents, and parenthood difficulties were reported by parents. We created a time and space for people to come and talk about these issues in their family—parents in trouble, children in trouble. There was a news report about a son who attacked a family with a knife, so it was very scary to hear.

Some playworkers shared Nishino’s determination from the outset.

The discussion about the necessity to keep Yume Park open relates closely to the following two themes: making new rules and the burden of working during the reality of a pandemic.

B. Controversy of Encouraging Interactive Play within Social Distance Requirements

During the pandemic, playworkers shouldered a heavy burden. First, they risked infection while working ‘in the field’ with visitors, and second, they were responsible for comforting the children. At the time, no one considered that the burden for playworkers might be too great. One of the playworkers reflected:

When the coronavirus struck, we all suddenly became more distant, because we had to keep our distance, as the officials recommended. We did not have experience of pandemic situations, so we relied on recommendations like wearing masks, not talking, keeping our distance. So, we found ourselves quite isolated—less personal communication took place between staff, and a kind of alienation developed.

Three of the playworkers interviewed had worked at the park for four years, while the others had worked there for ten and six years. Regardless of their age, they were experienced playworkers.

The most difficult aspect for playworkers was losing their role of encouraging children’s play:

I felt that I had lost my very essence, to support children’s play and encourage them—I could not do that. When I tried to speak to one visitor, she rolled her eyes at me—“What nonsense to speak in a pandemic!”—her face said to me. I was losing confidence in my role and the sense of meaning in being there.

It is clear that the playworkers experienced an identity crisis amid the anti-Covid measures, as their normal actions—facilitating communication between people and the environment—could cause transmission, spreading the virus among visitors. They were losing their role. Additionally, as the new school year began in April, it was difficult to establish relationships with the new children, with fewer opportunities for talk and interaction in the context of ‘social distancing’ (see Figure 6.6).

A playworker shared her thoughts about the stress of working during 2020:

I live with my elderly parents and take the train to work every day. So, every time I put my family’s lives at risk, not only in the park, meeting visitors, but also on the way home. It was hard, constantly being afraid of getting infected and passing it on to someone else.

Another playworker who had been working in Yume Park for ten years said:

At the time, I was so scared so I was thinking it would be good to get the coronavirus quickly—I hoped to get immunity and relief from being afraid.

Another male playworker also said that he feared becoming infected because he travelled to work on an overcrowded train.

A female playworker shared her concerns about childhoods in the pandemic:

Who will take the responsibility for these children growing up without touch? We were thinking together with the children, what is it to live? We thought about it, being just a heartbeat, but without relationships with people, is that a life?

During the interviews with playworkers, we discovered that they did not discuss their own feelings much during the most hectic times. Although they continued to record daily occurrences in the journals, they never discussed their own doubts, fears, and despondencies, likely due to the diary’s public nature and its informative function. The playworkers themselves only realized retrospectively that they were psychologically exhausted.

Two images, one of a group children sliding together on water slide, the other showing widely separated individual children sliding

Figure 6.6 Children play on water slide in 2016 and in 2020 with social distancing

Photo courtesy of Kawasaki Kodomo Yume Park, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

C. The Need for New Rules at Odds with the Usual Policy of Yume Park

Supporting children’s play rights, Yume Park succeeded in staying open with zero infection in the facility. As before the pandemic, children had a place to play. However, it was crucial that facility managers reacted quickly to ensure safety and to limit some play activities without negotiating new rules with children as they would usually do. Reasons for this were: time limitations, pressure from society (all other facilities were closed), uncertainty regarding the dynamics of the virus spread, and an urge to comply with governmental policies like the ‘state of emergency’.

During spring vacation and school closures, many schoolchildren from around the neighbourhood came to play ball games, as they used to do in public school at bukatsu—(club activities in Japanese schools, from bu, ‘club’ and katsu, ‘activity’). In many public parks, especially in the Tokyo metropolitan area, there is a high rate of ball game prohibition (Terada and Kinoshita 2020: 52). However, playworkers soon realized that the risk of spreading the virus was high with up to fifty children running close together and fighting for the ball. The playworkers’ struggle to impose prohibitions is evident in the following passage:

The junior high schoolers were coming to play basketball in big groups, and when I approached them to ask them not to play and explained that many people were touching the same ball and moving closely together, they asked me, ‘why then is it ok to use the carpenter’s tools in the adventure playground?’ I did not know how to resolve this issue, and I felt it was dangerous because the number of people infected was growing by the hour at this time and I was worried that we would have to close it [Yume Park] if a virus cluster occurred. And I strongly felt it was a place for people who have no other place to be, mostly, you know, for them we keep it open, and these claims from schoolchildren who wanted to play basketball were a little irritating to hear. I had to make judgements relying on my estimation and analysis. For example, today this child needs this the most, so it is OK to allow him/her to do this and that. We had to make many decisions every day, taking responsibility. We were constantly puzzled and troubled by the necessity to decide what was good and what was bad in each situation.

Of course, it would have been easier if everything had been definitively decided all at once. However, this is not how Yume Park works. As noted above, the rules in Yume Park are flexible, situated and bound up in relationships. Typically, they are changed and acknowledged based on negotiation and reasoning. However, during a pandemic, changes to rules must be implemented swiftly: from 4 April, visitors were no longer permitted to use balls and toys, whether rented or their own. Exceptionally in Yume Park’s history, rules were changing from day to day and these changes were implemented from the top down.

For playworkers, one of the key questions was ‘Can we accept that adults should determine the rules of children’s facilities to minimize the risk of Covid-19?’ One playworker spoke of early April, before the announcement of Japan’s national state of emergency on 7 April:

It seemed that there was no choice but to accept the ‘no balls, no toys’ policy, because a state of emergency would be announced soon. Should we have asked the children’s opinions, even though there was no possibility of changing the rules at that time?

At the time, playworkers still did not know how to enforce appropriate safety measures against the virus, so the strictest safety was necessary. Nonetheless, as play professionals, they thought constantly about how best to support children’s rights to play and participate.

Amid the regulations, children began creating new forms of play in spite of the limitations. For example, they made paper balls instead of using the prohibited basketballs or footballs. Soon, paper balls were also regulated, so children started balancing on the pipe to keep their distance from each other and touching the ball with a stick, etc.

During the first months of Covid-19, from March to May, rules were swiftly decided without the children’s participation. However, in June several factors led to their re-formulation. First, children were persistent in their desire to play and were constantly questioning the rules, seeking to compromise play and safety measures, and so a series of discussions between children and playworkers took place (see Figure 6.7). Second, Yume Park’s culture prioritizes children’s voices in deciding new rules. Owing to this culture of children’s participation in rulemaking, Yume Park reinstated the mechanism for constantly updating the rules regarding balls and toys, depending on the situation.

Children and playworkers sitting outside on grass and on wooden platform discussing

Figure 6.7 Children and playworkers reformulating the rules together in the adventure playground

Photo courtesy of Kawasaki Kodomo Yume Park, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

D. Dealing with Conflict: When ‘Last Resort’ Turns into ‘Just a Resort’

From the end of July, with the arrival of the hot weather, playworkers observed a growing demand for outdoor play and increased visitor numbers. As a consequence of the prevalent shaming culture, many people travelled from other prefectures, trying to escape their neighbourhoods’ watchful eyes so that they could enjoy outdoor play secretly. Others turned to Yume Park because other recreational facilities were closed, and travelling by train or plane was considered a step too far. More and more people came to have ‘picnics’, as Yume Park was officially open and welcoming visitors as a self-proclaimed ‘last resort’, whereas local Tokyo parks still advised that people refrain from visiting.

It seemed to the playworkers that Yume Park was being overused. First, huge visitor numbers prevented the formation of close relationships. Second, people’s lack of familiarity with the culture of the playground led to misunderstanding and stress on both sides: people behaved like customers in a shopping centre, asking for and ordering tools or playground features, for example. Yume Park was turning into a ‘resort’ in which a kaleidoscopic array of consumers needed to be served quickly and to their full satisfaction. Furthermore, the pandemic was not yet over and preventive measures, such as social distancing and mask wearing, were still in place.

This loss of human interaction in the adventure playground had been unpleasant but necessary. As a result, the playworkers created communication boards and duplicated the playground equipment. Signs were erected to explain the playground’s functions and rules, thereby avoiding direct communication so as to help prevent the spread of Covid. These signs reminded visitors not to eat, drink or picnic on the facility and to stay for no more than three hours at once. The duplication of playground equipment reduced the load on single structures and minimized the density of queues for each structure.

The various users had different situations: some had nowhere safe to be; others had no place to picnic and were bored at home. Everybody wanted to go outdoors and enjoy the opportunity to play freely. Demands for outdoor play should be satisfied accordingly but, in the case of Yume Park, the playworkers felt that the ‘last resort’ status was being ‘misused’. Playworkers, faced with the risk of Covid-19 infection, with up to seven hundred visitors per day, felt conflicted.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have shared Yume Park’s effort to remain open to ensure the fulfilment of children’s rights, focusing on the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 (approximately March to August). Currently, in 2022, Yume Park still has zero recorded cases of Covid-19 and successfully implemented annual events like Yume Yokocho Festival (where children create their own shops and sell products) in 2020 and 2021.

Current Yume Park director Tomokane said, ‘We don’t want to show the attitude that we cannot do things because of Covid; we want to show how we can do things, even in the pandemic. It is because children are living right now’. Play is about actively engaging with the world and creativity is about finding a way to do something. If adults find reasons to be passive because of Covid, children may as well lose hope.

School closures during lockdowns increased demand for outdoor play facilities and compelled Yume Park managers and playworkers to impose limitations and rules without the usual negotiation process during the first months of restrictions. They were then adjusted in response to the evolving situation, which enabled a re-negotiation with the children, in accordance with the facility’s human-centred culture. This was made possible thanks to the selfless efforts of the playworkers who, often neglecting their own psychological needs, continued to go to work and make decisions on the ground, within the framework of a roughly designated safety zone. Rules were developed with the children’s input based on foundational information about the virus, and measures, such as minimum social distancing between people or the need to sterilise one’s hands with alcohol, were incorporated into the park’s day-to-day running.

Covid-19 was a new challenge that forced adults to consider how they could support the child’s right to play in a new environment, for which the potential to apply previous experience was limited. The interviews with Yume Park’s managers and playworkers revealed that the park’s staff have a strong sense of its identity, support children’s rights, and are willing to endure hardship in pursuit of this mission. This was made possible through daily meetings, reflections, and discussions, in a practice and culture that had been applied and nurtured for almost two decades. The Covid emergency confirmed that a strategy that may previously be seen as highly idealistic was in fact useful when a pandemic required people to reflect and adapt regularly.

Works Cited

Group Gendai. 2021. Documentary Series about Yume Park during Pandemic, https://youtu.be/j9gRT9A_s-0

Katafuchi, Yuya, Kenichi Kurita, and Managi Shunsuke. 2021. ‘COVID-19 with Stigma: Theory and Evidence from Mobility Data’, Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, 5: 71–95, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41885-020-00077-w

Kinoshita, Isami. 2007. ‘Children’s Participation in Japan: An Overview of Municipal Strategies and Citizen Movements’, Children, Youth and Environments, 17: 269-86

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan and others. 2021. Suicide Situation in 2020, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/R2kakutei-01.pdf

Nagata, Yoshiyuki. 2016. ‘Fostering Alternative Education in Society: The Caring Communities of “Children’s Dream Park” and “Free Space En” in Japan’, in The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education, ed. Helen E. Lees and Nel Noddings (London: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 241-56

National Centre for Child Health and Development. 2021. National Online Survey of Children’s Well-being During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan, https://www.ncchd.go.jp/center/activity/covid19_kodomo/report/digestreport_en.html

NHK [Japan Broadcasting Corporation]. 2021. Children’s Dream Park: About Children Who Do Not Attend School, https://www.nhk.or.jp/shutoken/yokohama/article/000/66/

International Play Association, 2020. Play in Crisis, https://ipaworld.org/resources/for-parents-and-carers-play-in-crisis/

Tanaka, Haruhiko. 2021. ‘Development of the Ibasho Concept in Japanese Education and Youth Work: Ibasho as a Place of Refuge and Empowerment for Excluded People’, Educational Studies in Japan, 15: 3-15, https://doi.org/10.7571/esjkyoiku.15.3

Terada, Mitsunari, and Isami Kinoshita. 2020. ‘Research on Local Governmental Restrictions for Ball Play in Block Parks’, Landscape Research Japan Online, 13: 52–58, https://doi.org/10.5632/jilaonline.13.52

Terada, Mitsunari, and Hitoshi Shimamura. 2020. ‘Finally Got Free Time? Could Public Spaces Reverse Children’s Play-Deficit in Post-Pandemic Japan?’ Unpublished conference paper presented at the ‘IPA-World Play and Public Place Seminar, 4: State of Play in Cities’

1 We would like to thank the Yume Park manager Daisuke Tomokane, the Director of NPO Tamariba Nishino Hiroyuki, and the playworkers who made it possible to organize interviews and investigate activities in Yume Park during Covid-19. This work was supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant Number 22K14912.

Children in Japan during Covid-19

Data Acquired

Historical Background

Facilities and Organisation

Outdoor

Indoor

The Playworker’s Role Includes Facilitating Children’s Participation

Discussion of Topics Emerging from Interviews

A. Should Children’s Facilities Be Open for Play Rights in Uncertain Times?

B. Controversy of Encouraging Interactive Play within Social Distance Requirements

Conclusion