A changing picture of fatherhood in Japan
Fathers across Japan are stepping more fully into family life. Government data show a record share of men taking paternity leave, and surveys indicate younger dads want fewer hours at the office so they can spend more time with their children. At the same time, many workplaces still expect long days and last minute overtime, and the result is a growing strain for families. Japan is witnessing a shift in daily life at home, yet the pace of change on the job remains slow.
Are more fathers taking leave?
The most recent national survey for the last fiscal year found that the percentage of fathers who took paternity leave exceeded 40 percent, the highest level ever recorded. That represents a sharp break from the past. A decade ago, very few men took leave at all, and in 2019, the share was still in the low single digits. Men in Japan have access to one of the longest paid parental leave schemes among high income countries, but many who do take leave keep it brief and return quickly. That gap, generous legal rights on paper but short leaves in practice, reflects pressure to keep pace at work and to avoid burdening teammates.
Attitudes are moving as well. In a national survey of 20,000 workers conducted by the Cabinet Office, 34.1 percent of men said they wanted to reduce their working hours and more than 40 percent of both men and women said they wanted more time with their families. Younger fathers voiced the strongest desire to be at home, but they also listed real barriers: heavy workloads, staffing shortages, and a workplace habit of rewarding the person who stays late.
The rise of ikumen
Public campaigns and a new vocabulary have supported change. The term ikumen, a play on words meaning child caring men, entered everyday language in the late 2000s. Nonprofits such as Fathering Japan have promoted the idea that parenting is a skill men learn by doing, and that managers, sometimes called iku boss, should support employees with children. On city streets it is increasingly common to see men in suits carrying a briefcase and a diaper bag on the way to daycare. The cultural signal is plain, caring for children is a father’s job too.
Long working hours collide with childcare
Even with a changing mindset, long hours, long commutes, and a rigid office culture make it hard for fathers to be present. Research using a large national data set of more than 27,000 families found that when fathers work longer hours, they spend less time with their children on both workdays and rest days. Longer commutes have a similar effect, shrinking time for stories, baths, daycare pickups, and evening routines that help families run.
What studies show about time and involvement
Quantitative studies of working families in Japan tie fathers’ availability directly to the structure of their workday. When daily hours climb, the share of child care tasks handled by fathers falls, and the drop is not limited to weekdays. The pattern holds even when mothers are employed. These findings indicate that for many households the barrier is not motivation but the clock. If a company expects late nights, parenting hours vanish.
Commutes and workplace size matter
Commuting time drains energy and reduces flexibility. The same national analysis found that longer commutes were linked with fewer child care activities and less time with children. Workplace size also played a role. Men in very large organizations tended to spend less time with children than men in smaller firms, an effect that may reflect more layered hierarchies, stricter norms about staying late, or less autonomy to shift schedules.
Why overtime still gets rewarded
Survey findings underscore persistent incentives that keep men at their desks. Among male employees aged 20 to 39 who put in heavy overtime, nearly one third said people who work late are rated more highly. Another third said colleagues or bosses do not understand when they try to reduce hours. Almost half cited heavy workloads, and many pointed to labor shortages. These responses help explain why short leaves are common even when fathers want more time at home.
Mental health of fathers enters the conversation
As men take a larger role at home, a topic that was long viewed as a mothers only concern is coming into focus for fathers too. Postpartum depression in men is real, and doctors are beginning to address it. Last year a hospital in Nagano Prefecture opened the first clinic in Japan dedicated to fathers’ perinatal mental health after staff treating mothers noticed that many husbands were struggling as well.
Murakami Hiroshi, a perinatal mental health specialist at Shinshu University Hospital, sees about 20 fathers each year in the outpatient program. He developed the service after mothers receiving care raised concerns about their partners’ health, and he argues that support for dads must grow in step with policies that bring men into parenting.
Murakami said, “When men take a bigger role in parenting or go on childcare leave, their mental health can be strained. Policy and clinical support need to advance together.”
For some, the trigger is a specific trauma. After their first child was stillborn, Ito Yoshiki and his wife, Rena, faced grief and mounting stress. Ito tried to support his wife as her physical and mental health worsened, but he also developed insomnia and other problems. He now visits the clinic while the couple prepares for the birth of another child.
Ito said, “I felt pressure to be strong and not show weakness. Without these visits, I may never have opened up.”
Qualitative research with fathers and supervisors points to a wide set of influences on the decision to take leave. At the individual level, some fathers fear career damage, while others see leave as a chance to grow as parents. At home, a mother’s request for help or a baby’s health issue can tip the balance. In the office, a supportive boss and flexible schedules encourage leave, while fear of burdening colleagues pushes in the opposite direction. Social norms matter too. As active fatherhood becomes more visible, more men see leave as normal. Evidence from public health also shows that when fathers are involved early, children benefit and mothers’ recovery improves.
Culture at the office still lags behind
Policy on paper does not change habits overnight. Some fathers still encounter a reflexive no when they try to use leave or when a child is sick. Kawanishi Keiji, a father of three who handles daycare pickup on weekdays, sought a job with less overtime when his first child was born. Yet when he took time off to care for a sick child, his supervisor signaled disapproval and suggested men should not do that. He changed jobs again to ease the strain on his wife.
Kawanishi said, “It was implied that men are not supposed to take that kind of time off.”
Others are making different choices without quitting. Career services that cater to parents report growing interest from men who are either changing roles to gain flexibility or asking for new terms where they are. One provider says about 30 percent of its users are men, a number that would have surprised recruiters a decade ago. Its founder, himself a father who once struggled to keep up at home and at work, argues that companies that rethink schedules, staffing, and evaluation will keep talent and reduce burnout.
Research on workplace environments backs that view. Survey data from fathers in both large and small companies show that when a workplace accommodates parental needs and gives men more control over how they do their jobs, fathers participate more in child care. In high stress settings, involvement tends to drop. That pattern fits with what many families report, that the day to day tone set by managers matters as much as a written policy.
Some firms are testing hands on ways to change behavior. Kirin Holdings built a month long simulation called Nari Kirin Mom and Dad Training to let employees experience the time pressure of parenting. In the pilot, participants were told to cancel meetings when a pretend call came from daycare about a fever and to hand tasks to colleagues using a clear handover plan. Overtime fell sharply during the trial, and confidence among future parents rose. As the program rolled out, the company reported sustained gains: women taking childcare leave and returning to work at near 100 percent, and the share of men taking childcare leave rising from 29 percent in 2017 to 50 percent in 2021. The exercise changed expectations on teams, and that change persisted after the exercise ended.
Policy experiments and the bigger debate
Public policy is moving, though not always in one direction. The Work Style Reform Law passed in 2018 capped overtime and promoted the use of paid time off. The government has since expanded parental leave options and introduced a special postpartum leave for fathers to promote early involvement. Tokyo’s metropolitan government also began offering a four day workweek option to its own staff and created a partial childcare leave that lets employees reduce their daily hours. The goal is to make it easier for parents to stay on staff without sacrificing care at home.
Broader proposals are on the table. One leading economist who studies aging and population trends has called for mandatory paternity leave, citing the effect of father quotas in Scandinavia, where a non transferable slice of leave prompts higher uptake by men. He also suggests a larger role for older workers to cover staffing gaps when younger employees take leave, and he points to new technology and better workflow design as tools to keep productivity steady.
Workplace culture experts urge changes in pay rules. A proposal from a professor at Kyoto University argues that raising overtime pay rates would nudge firms to hire more staff or invest in digital systems, so routine tasks do not depend on excessive hours. This could reduce the norm of staying late for its own sake and make shorter days more accepted for parents and non parents alike.
Advocates also stress the manager’s role. Nonprofits such as Fathering Japan promote the idea of the iku boss, a supervisor who expects good work and respects parenting time. When leaders model that behavior, parents use leave, coworkers step in smoothly, and teams still hit their goals. That is the level where culture tends to change fastest.
The demographic backdrop
All of these efforts sit inside a demographic crunch. Japan’s total fertility rate fell to 1.20 in 2023, far below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable without immigration. The number of births has fallen for nine straight years, dropping to 720,988 in 2024, according to the health ministry. Deaths reached 1.62 million in the same year. The population is shrinking and aging, and the median age is near 50. Marriages have also declined, falling below half a million in 2023 for the first time in about nine decades.
Countries with very long working hours, including Japan and South Korea, tend to have lower birth rates. When days run late, parents postpone children or stop at one. Women in Japan still do far more unpaid care than men. International labor statistics show men in Japan average about 68 minutes per day on household and family care, while women average about 242 minutes. Reducing that gap requires both a different split at home and shorter, more predictable days at work.
The state has a long list of responses, from subsidies for childcare, to expansion of daycare places, to pilot programs such as public dating apps. Yet the experience of families suggests that unless long hours ease and office culture accepts active fatherhood, the impact of cash incentives and new services will be limited. Parents also say that the quality of care matters as much as the quantity. When daycare is reliable and flexible, it makes a full workday possible for both parents without crisis calls tearing up the plan.
What will move the needle now
The heart of the issue is time. Companies that reduce unnecessary meetings, plan staffing to cover school events and sick days, and set clear handover routines make it easier for parents to stay focused and productive. Teams that judge output instead of hours free fathers and mothers to handle pickups and bedtime without asking for special favors. Managers who plan parental leave as early as a pregnancy announcement, instead of waiting until the due date, make transitions smooth for everyone.
Practical steps are available. Employers can track how often teams work late and ask managers to explain spikes. They can shorten commutes by allowing remote work a few days each week. They can publish clear guidance for covering a teammate’s leave so that a father who takes a month, or three, returns to a team that never missed a beat. They can also train supervisors on paternity leave basics, including simple scripts for how to encourage leave rather than react to it.
Health services need to evolve too. Screening for paternal depression, basic counseling, and support groups can be offered alongside services for mothers. Hospitals and clinics that already support mothers after birth can invite fathers to sit in on classes and provide a path to care if sleep problems, anxiety, or grief appear. The early evidence from Nagano suggests that when clinics welcome fathers, men who might wait in silence are more likely to speak up.
Policymakers can keep reshaping incentives so parents do not carry the cost alone. Family friendly tax and benefit rules should not penalize second earners. Overtime rates can discourage long days as a default. Public sector employers can continue to test shorter weeks and shorter days, then publish the results to encourage private firms to copy what works. Above all, the measure to watch is not only how many fathers take leave, but how long they stay out and how involved they are after they return. Durable change will be visible in the evening routines at home and in how teams plan work so parents never have to apologize for picking up their kids.
The Bottom Line
- A record share of fathers in Japan took paternity leave in the last fiscal year, exceeding 40 percent, but many leaves are short.
- Surveys show one third of men want fewer work hours, yet heavy workloads, labor shortages, and overtime friendly evaluations keep days long.
- Large national studies link longer hours, longer commutes, and large workplaces with lower father involvement in childcare.
- Japan’s first clinic for fathers’ perinatal mental health is treating men for postpartum depression and related stress.
- Workplaces that accommodate parenting and give employees autonomy see higher father involvement, while job stress reduces it.
- Corporate pilots such as Kirin’s parenting simulation cut overtime and raised men’s childcare leave uptake over several years.
- Tokyo has introduced a four day workweek option and partial childcare leave for its staff as part of broader experiments.
- Experts propose measures such as mandatory paternity leave and higher overtime premiums to shift behavior and hiring.
- Japan’s fertility rate fell to 1.20 in 2023 and births dropped to 720,988 in 2024, heightening the urgency to support families.
- Progress depends on shorter days, supportive managers, reliable childcare, and sustained father involvement after leave ends.
