Japan may have a low birth rate — certainly far fewer than what the authorities would prefer — but that doesn’t mean caregiving is easy. Especially for families for whom balancing work and parenting is a constant uphill struggle. To tackle this in some communities across the country, a notion has begun to take root: the yonakigoya, or “night crying cafés,” spaces where parents (primarily mothers) can go when their babies won’t give them a break, letting them ride out a night spent awake amid tears and loneliness.
In the yonakigoya, people don’t just find places to sing lullabies without disturbing other family members who must rise early for exhausting workdays. The idea is also for these spaces to function as support networks, reaching the places where the formal authorities aren’t able to reach.
“Cry Cafés”? Exactly. They may sound like science fiction. And it makes sense that they do, because the concept originated from a manga published in 2023, a work that portrays a place called Yonakigoya (‘House of Night Crying’) that serves as a refuge for mothers overwhelmed by their babies’ crying. Straits Times says the author drew from her own experience and first shared the idea on social media in 2017. The reception was so strong that the author decided to reserve a space for it in her work.
More than fiction. Beyond when, how, and where the idea emerged, there is no denying that the yonakigoya concept has penetrated Japanese society enough to jump from fiction into reality. This has been revealed by Kyodo News, one of the country’s most widely read news agencies.
A few days ago, its reporter Maki Shinozaki published a feature on how the phenomenon of “night crying cafés” is expanding across the country. The piece has been picked up by media outlets worldwide, from the Japanese newspapers Sanyo Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun to the British The Times.
Between Toasts and Books. The yonakigoya cafés seem to function more as support networks than as businesses profiting from a baby’s tears and parental anxiety. In fact, in Hokkaido, the service is offered at a café that specializes in French toast and has decided to open certain nights each month to help mothers; in Tokushima there is another support center that organizes monthly “cafés for crying children,” and in Aichi a bookstore has joined the effort by hosting evening events for babies.
In the first case (the café), the venue opens for free from 9:00 p.m. on Sunday until 6:00 a.m. on Monday, and in the latter (the bookstore), the service runs with volunteers such as teachers or midwives from 6:30 p.m. to midnight. Although Kyodo News and other Japanese outlets report only on specific cases (suggesting this isn’t a mass phenomenon), a quick Google search shows that the concept is attracting interest and spreading.
For Babies… and Adults. In the Hokkaido French toast café, mats have been installed so babies can crawl and (hopefully) sleep, along with dedicated spaces for nursing and changing diapers. Yet the yonakigoya spaces aren’t only about the children. They also serve the adults who arrive with them.
The aim is to provide support to caregivers, mainly women, who are the ones who use these spaces most, especially during maternity leave, while their husbands sleep through long workdays ahead.
Although the country has taken steps toward a model of work–life balance, at the end of 2024 the government released a report showing that 10.1% of men and 4.2% of women work more than 60 hours per week. The country has even made the notoriously apt term ‘karoshi’ — death from overwork — something of a byword.
A Refuge. Madoko Nozawa, the owner of the French toast café that doubles as a yonakigoya on Sunday early mornings, told Kyodo that she decided to embark on the project inspired by her own experience. She is also a mother and recalls nights spent awake while her baby cried, knowing her husband had to rise early the next day. “I want this to be a refuge where people can feel they are not alone in their struggles,” she shares.
“While I was trying to lull my children to sleep, I couldn’t move and felt utterly overwhelmed,” says another mother cited by Chunichi Shimbun in an interview at the Aichi prefecture’s library-yonakigoya. “I still don’t have many people with whom I can talk openly about raising children. A place like this represents a source of support.”
A Critical Note. While the yonakigoya show Japan’s ability to build supportive networks, their success also invites critical interpretations. For a start, the fact that those who use them are predominantly women reveals that child-rearing remains largely falling on their shoulders.
Not new. In 2022, the Japanese Association of Medical Schools published a study on childcare among physicians that revealed a substantial gender gap: 31.8% of female doctors with children acknowledged shouldering 100% of childcare, and 55.2% estimated they took on more than 80% of the tasks. Among men, those percentages were 8.4% and 14.5%, respectively.
In the Thick of the Crisis. Kaori Ichikawa, a professor at Tokyo’s University of Information Sciences, notes the paradox that in the midst of a demographic crisis and despite the enormous resources the government is deploying to promote birth rates, it falls to private and community initiatives to tend to mothers at night.
“Government support tends to be limited at night, on weekends, and on holidays, so public and private sectors must collaborate to create places like these night cafés where people can seek help when they need it,” she argues.
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