The Orange Ribbon and the Pitiful Child: Investigating Child Abuse, Family Normativity and the Welfare State in Japan

Abstract

For over 15 years the Japanese government has promoted a national campaign on child abuse awareness and tasked authorities with addressing rising child abuse reports. With an orange ribbon as its symbol, a key aspect of this campaign, alongside casework, is the creation and circulation of visual-discursive representations of abused children. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on child protection practice, this paper contextualises the social construction of child abuse by critiquing the cultural and technical logics of abuse and protection discourse. Appeals to vulnerability, rights and duty bridge public and expert fields and position an image of pity as a call to action that drives child abuse prevalence as well as enduring dispositions by the state towards intrafamily normativity and a minimalist welfare state.