A Japanese documentary film that attempts to dispel negative perceptions about nighttime nursery schools is being released in Tokyo as a curtain-raiser for a nationwide run.
The film, titled "Yakan mo Yatteru Hoikuen" ("Nurseries Open Even at Night"), aims to highlight the truth of struggling working and single mothers or single-parent families that are faced with few options but to leave their children in nurseries at night.
A deep-seated prejudice about parents who work at night persists in Japan, due largely to the image of substandard nurseries, known as "baby hotels," which drew the public's ire in the early 1980s after a number of incidents resulted in child deaths.