IDEAS FOR GOODKizuna Mail is an email support service that provides assistance to pregnant women, mothers raising children, and their partners. Yukio Oshima, the director of the Kizuna Mail Project, explains the issues surrounding single parenting in Japan and how this service provides support.
Oshima shares that parents deal with feelings of uncertainty when raising a child for the first time. This is on top of pressure to remain happy and meeting expectations.
Very often in Japan, there are no assistance for mothers who have lost their husbands. Neglect and child abuse have also grown into a serious problem within the country.
What kind of support does Kizuna Mail offer?
Kizuna Mail provides support for woman who are pregnant or already have children up to the ages of three. This assistance can also last for up to four years.
“Maternity Kizuna Mail” and “Parenting Kizuna Mail” form the two types of mails available. Maternity Kizuna Mail sends daily information to expecting mothers, containing advice pertaining to the fetal growth process and life during pregnancy. On the other hand, the Parenting Kizuna Mail is sent out after the birth of the child.
Kizuna Mail was founded in Japan in cooperation with local governments and medical associations. Each email sent to parents free of charge. In addition, development to leverage on the social networking app LINE has already began and is expected to launch in July of this year.
Kizuna Mail is currently in its seventh year. According to Mr Oshima, approximately 30,000 mothers subscribes to the service and has exceeded over 120,000 readers. With Japanese birth rates exceeding over 900,000 people annually, it is estimated that approximately 1% of mothers are already reading Kizuna Mail.
Inspiration for Kizuna Mail came from founder Oshima’s wife
Kizuna Mail’s inception began when Yukari Matsumoto, the wife of founder Yukio Oshima, was deeply moved by the contents of The Pregnancy Journal. The Pregnancy Journal is a foreign language magazine she discovered through a friend when she was going through her first pregnancy.
Matsumoto became fascinated with the wonders of this book that introduces the growth process of the fetus on a daily basis. She believed this would be a great book to introduce to Japan. So her proposal to translate the book herself gave Matsumoto to collaborate with a publishing company. Three years after the birth of her first daughter, the Japanese edition of The Pregnancy Journal was published.
In 2008, Matsumoto realised that sending pregnancy advice through an everyday mobile email would be better than finding information in a book. A year later, Oshima resigned from his position at a publishing company and transferred over to a web project production company.
There, he learnt how creating the structure for an email delivery system had become incredibly cheaper over the past few years. It had becomed easier and cheaper to deliver information in the form of a newsletter. After giving it considerable thought, the couple founded the Kizuna Mail Project in 2010.
The single parenting issue in Japan
The Kizuna Mail Project raises awareness the problems of parents who are independently raising a child or are pregnant through the slogan “single parenting”. Although this service was created based on individual experiences, the many parents in Japan who are making ends meet on their own define the support of the services.
Oshima began thinking about what the meaning of family was while watching a news story related to child neglect.
”If you look through human history, the circumstance where mother and child are together 24 hours a day is unique. So there aren’t many people who can remain calm under those conditions for an extended period of time. Furthermore, this isn’t limited to child rearing. Because people are beginning to live alone more, we have entered into an era that is witnessing a drastic change in how we handle communication and interact with one another. We could easily become isolated if there isn’t a sense of awareness on our part.”
Single parenting can be lonely for mother where they often spend their days in their apartment rooms. There is limited contact with their neighbors and weak connections with the community. On the other hand, Kizuna Mail delivers useful and kind information daily to smartphones to mothers. This then relieves anxiety and heals the mind.
A father’s first connection with history
There is no doubt that pregnancy and birth are precious events for a mother. However, a father’s point of view may differ. For Oshima, it seems there was a huge mental change when experiencing the birth of his first child.
”It deeply impacted me when my wife was pregnant. Up until that point, I that I was living in the present moment. However, I suddenly realized that I was also connected to the history of humankind.”
For most of us, the year 2050 is a distant future. However, for children born today, it will be the year they’ve turned 30 years old. That distant future will be vital for our children. Too often we have overlooked the issues of the environment and society thus given little thought. Yet, in an instant, these have been laid out in front of us because of our children.
Because of this, the single parenting problem should not only be of concern to mothers, but also to the fathers and the surrounding community.
“Kizuna” means “bond” or “link” in English. Although the “kizuna” in Kizuna Mail can be interpreted as the bond of families and the bond of community, Oshima and his wife have been able to express this meaning through their services.
Couples have been able to create a discussion thanks to the content provided by Kizuna Mail. Families are connected to local governments and medical institutions through its existence. The benefits of the mailing system will spread to not only mothers, but also their partners and the community. Furthermore, it is currently laying down the foundation to prevent tragic events before they happen. These reasons are why Kizuna Mail exists.
The importance of respect
According to Oshima, it is important to create a trusting relationship with readers by delivering content for those who are worried about the big events associated with pregnancy and birth. Moreover, there is mutual benefit to have an underlying foundation of respect for those receiving this services.
The contents sent through Kizuna Mail pays special attention regarding the reliability of its information. Matsumoto, who is in charge of handling the content, works with a group of nine specialists and nutritionists including gynecologist, pediatricians, and family physicians. The team works together in order to produce, supervise and guarantee accurate information disseminated through Kizuna Mail.
Oshima and Matsumoto have gone through great lengths in order to deliver content each day while holding the utmost respect for their readers. Therefore the couple receives many emails of gratitude from subscribers when their subscription have ended.
The future of Kizuna Mail
Kizuna Mail operates as an NPO, relying on its strength to continuously support parents all over the country. Their secret lies within the project’s independent business model.
Newsletters usually have two options regarding general business models, which are advertising and user billing. But Kizuna has created a unique Business-to-Business-to-Customer model. It provides content to its readers at no cost by using the money received from local governments and medical institutions (who are also viewed as the service’s customers).
Information related to child rearing used to come from books or medical specialists only. Now they are easily accessible to anyone by email, thus easing the troubles of being a single parent in Japan. Kizuna Mail has also created a bridge between families and surrounding communities.
“But let’s not call it a newsletter.”
However, Oshima prefers not to call this service a “newsletter”. He believes that the rigid definition of a newsletter would cause we to lose the chance to create new opportunities. In order to cement this belief, Kizuna Mail has begun moving into new territory with distributing their project through LINE. In addition, four local governments have already adopted the service. With this support and these new services, the Kizuna Mail team is confidence of the service’s growth.
Moreover, Oshima explains that although he doesn’t stick to the one-way email information delivery system, Kizuna Mail will not be taken in by the trend of interactive communication. When asked what some successive interactive services are, it is quite difficult to immediately think of a name. In the world of the internet, there is a tendency to rush the building of a community. However, for Oshima, it is important to thoroughly think about what it means to be interactive.
Although Kizuna Mail does not have an existing interactive service, it receives many emails of gratitude from their subscribers. Even though there were no conversational exchanges between both parties, the creators have conveyed their feelings to their readers. The service wants to show how important it is for them to be useful and to be trusted by mothers and readers. As such, Kizuna Mail is effectively building interactive relationships.
Creating something that a community needs
As with the iPhone, people in society do not know what they want until they actually try and use it. Therefore that drives innovation. That’s why Kizuna Mail would like to create something beautiful for the unknown future while properly defining each and every word.
The profound respect of words emanates from Ohisma’s ideas and veteren writers. Undoubtedly, Kizuna Mail has the power to reach into the hearts and minds of those in need.
This article was originally published on IDEAS FOR GOOD
Translated by Maurice Skinner
