Today, October 23rd, The Japan Times published an article about myself and my time in Japan, as well as the documentary. Thank you to the very talented Louise George Kittaka, who really captured the essence of both my 20 years in Japan and the documentary I’m fighting so hard for the world to see.
Original link can be found here: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2023/10/23/our-lives/single-mothers-documentary/
BY LOUISE GEORGE KITTAKA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Oct 23, 2023
Professional wrestler and documentary filmmaker may seem like an incongruous career combination, but these are just two of the hats worn by Rionne McAvoy.
It’s the latter hat that he’s been wearing recently, having completed an award-winning documentary, “The Ones Left Behind: The Plight of Single Mothers in Japan.”
The son of a martial artist, McAvoy has been training since the age of 8. After winning the Karate Queensland state title at 19, he came to Japan for the first time on a karate training trip. Wanting to delve deeper into Japanese culture, he subsequently moved back as a young adult. McAvoy is a fourth-degree black belt in aikido and an avid catch wrestler.
“My dad handed me a camera when I was 12 and told me to film his martial arts classes,” recalls McAvoy. “That’s where it really all started. I’m nothing without martial arts or without a camera in my hands.”
In 2008, McAvoy stepped in front of the camera, acting in a short film he wrote set in Japan. However, despite wanting to be an actor, he found himself up to his neck on the technical side after the American director he was working with suddenly left the project on the first day.
“It was an eight-minute film with a great cast of Japanese actors — and me,” he recalls. “I ended up having to both act and direct on my first project, and I (then) knew that I belonged behind the lens.”
Stepping into the ring
McAvoy went on to direct several other fictional shorts while also venturing into the no-holds-barred world of Japanese professional wrestling. After enduring almost a year of “good old-fashioned Japanese training, where they try to beat you into the ground and make you want to quit,” he had his debut match in early 2013.
Later that same year, he had the opportunity to take on one of Japan’s most famous wrestlers, grappler Yoshiaki Fujiwara. McAvoy lost his match against the Japanese powerhouse, but his effort earned him an invitation to join Fujiwara’s wrestling stable. He was bestowed the ring name “Rionne Fujiwara” — the first non-Japanese wrestler to receive such an honor.
“Americans are the best at putting on entertainment shows and probably also in terms of bodybuilding, but the Japanese wrestlers are known for having the best pure wrestling technique,” McAvoy says. “I was very lucky to be trained in Japan.”
Although McAvoy is still involved in wrestling, he notes that it’s “a young man's sport.” He started his own company, Japan Media Services, in 2015 and has produced well-received documentaries for major clients such as the BBC, NHK World, the Olympic Channel and the government of Fukushima Prefecture.
This success with commercial projects encouraged McAvoy to consider a documentary about the lives of single mothers in Japan — what would eventually become “The Ones Left Behind.” His initial interest had been piqued after talking with several single mothers among his acquaintances, but he quickly realized their situation was much more complex than he had initially thought.
Multiple voices
The first major challenge when filming was finding people to talk on camera. Despite reaching out to single-parent support organizations across Japan, McAvoy’s efforts garnered very few replies. Fortunately, he heard back from Mayumi Nishida, director of Tokyo-based advocacy group Heart Full Family. Nishida appears in the documentary and helped to get the ball rolling on interviews by introducing McAvoy to two single mothers.
“I drove out to Fukui (Prefecture) to meet them, and it was only after I had filmed their interviews and could start showing people parts of the documentary that I got others willing to appear,” he says. “And I don't say, ‘Japanese single mothers’ — I say, ‘Single mothers in Japan.’ We have an amazing Kenyan mother in the film, and there are a lot of foreign single mothers in Japan.”
The women who share their stories in the documentary are a diverse group. Their children range in age from toddlers to young adults, and their jobs include contract office worker, temple priestess and actress. While most are divorced, there are also women who are single by choice after unexpectedly finding themselves pregnant. What unites them all is a wish to live with a sense of self-worth and dignity, and with enough means to provide stable lives and bright futures for their children.
Documenting the mothers’ lives was just one half of the equation, however. McAvoy soon realized he also needed to dig into what it is about Japanese society that makes life as a single mother such a challenge.
“I needed to research the historical aspect of things and find out what it means to be part of a Japanese family,” McAvoy says. “I found Professor Akihito Kato from Meiji University, who is perhaps Japan's leading professional researcher on the nuclear family.”
It was also important to McAvoy to include input from academics and professionals who could “back up the stories” he was hearing. Journalist and author Robert Whiting talks in the film about how Japan has changed since World War II, while other interviewees include Professor Yanfei Zhou from Japan Women's University, who has written about Japan’s single mothers, and Dr. Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan, a frequent commentator on Japanese society in the media.
Japan’s ‘hidden’ poverty
In the course of filming, McAvoy was shocked to learn that a wealthy country like Japan has a high rate of child poverty: 70% of single parent-households here make less than ¥2 million (about $13,300) a year, which is about a third of the national average for two-parent families raising children in Japan. This isn’t due to a lack of a desire to work: Among the 38 OECD countries, Japan has the highest employment rate for single parent households, sitting at 85%.
Japan’s culture of long work hours and an inherent bias toward hiring women with children for career-track roles mean that single mothers are often limited to low-paid and part-time employment.
Tax deductions originally introduced to support families of salaried workers in white-collar jobs, which encourage married women to limit their earnings and stay home to raise the children, have further contributed to the country’s gender pay gap. While government benefits for single parents exist, the application process is complicated and humiliating, as several of the interviewees in the documentary testify to. Those who are still legally married are ineligible for welfare programs, placing women who are separated but not yet divorced in a particularly vulnerable situation.
Another mitigating factor is Japan’s divorce laws, which typically give sole custody of a child to the primary caregiver — generally the mother. While critics also blame this system for effectively shutting out many divorced fathers from their children’s lives, single mothers suffer in a different way: Only 28% of eligible single-mother households consistently get child support from their former partner.
Changing attitudes
As a first step, McAvoy suggests that the Japanese government could improve the system for obtaining support payments from noncustodial parents, shifting responsibility from the courts to government welfare agencies in line with some other countries.
“Because of the koseki (Japan’s family register system), the government knows who the fathers are,” McAvoy says. “There is no reason why these fathers shouldn’t be paying child support. However, there’s also a need to educate the mothers as well, since many refuse to be involved with their ex-husbands after divorce.”
McAvoy is humbled yet proud that “The Ones Left Behind” may play a part in raising awareness of the issue. Despite the challenges along the way, he believes he has been able to delve into this subject to a degree that might have proven harder for a Japanese filmmaker. “There is this idea that everyone in Japan is middle class or above — which is all smoke and mirrors — as well as the aspect of people refusing to admit that they're struggling,” he says. “This is why nobody knows about these problems. I’ve lived here for 20 years and I had no idea. Anyone who watches the film will say the same thing.”
Ultimately, McAvoy hopes to shift the common perception that these women should be pitied.
“Single mothers are warriors,” he says. “They are fighting with everything they have, every single day, but we need to support them better. We can do more.”
“The Ones Left Behind: The Plight of Single Mothers in Japan'' will be shown on Nov. 5 as part of Kyushu's Rising Sun International Film Festival. For more information on the festival screening, visit risingsunfest.com/home. For future screenings, visit onesleftbehind.com.
Congrats on this! Have you seen some of Kore-Eda's films? At least one or two are almost exactly about this topic and many others are about the reality of inequalities of modern Japan, a far cry from the image that many western foreigners get, I think. To me, he's one of the greatest living film masters.