The San-ikukai hospital in Tokyo’s Sumida ward is much like any other in the Japanese capital, save for one special feature. It has had, since March of last year, a small room on the first floor with a cradle (and nothing else), where mothers can anonymously deposit their babies, never to see them again. The hospital accepts babies up to four weeks old. They are then cared for until foster families or infant homes can be found. In July, the hospital announced it had just received its twentieth baby, most of whom had been left within 24 hours of birth.

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The scheme is the first in the capital but not the first in Japan. Since 2007, the Jikei hospital in Kumamoto City has been accepting unwanted babies in its ‘Storks Cradle’ programme (modelled on the German ‘Babyklappe’ scheme) and claims to have ‘saved’ 170 babies. If San-ikukai is deemed a success, more ‘baby hatch’ programmes are planned, with Osaka next on the list for later this year.

The initial impetus for both the Jikei and San-ikukai programmes was an alarming increase in unwanted pregnancies, abandonment and sometimes fatal child abuse (cases of which have tripled in the last ten years). Sociologists generally attribute this to the atomisation of society, shrinking families and a weakening of community bonds, leaving isolated parents with no one to turn........

© The Spectator