Mimamori childcare in Japanese and Norwegian early childhood education

In this article, we explore the concept of mimamori and its impact on early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Norway and Japan. Mimamori is a teaching method whereby teachers refrain from giving children direct instructions, which is in line with the Froebelian approach to pedagogy. It is interesting to investigate how this Japanese concept also manifests in Norwegian ECEC. We have reanalysed previous data and analysed new data from Norwegian and Japanese studies to answer the following question: How does mimamori or mimamori-like practice in a Norwegian and a Japanese ECEC context influence the interaction between teachers and children in ways that support social inclusion in the children’s community? Our results show that mimamori can be found in ECEC in both countries, but that the way it is practised involves exercising paedagogical tact and wisdom. There is no set way of practising mimamori. However, there seems to be an understanding in both countries that children should learn how to cope for themselves and be given opportunities to test their own competence, but at the same time have enough support from the teacher so as not to fail and lose confidence.


Introduction
The aim of this study is to learn more about how a particular Japanese educational risk prevention strategy, mimamori, manifests in two countries with different traditions of early childhood education and care (ECEC): Japan and Norway. We will explore how mimamori can influence how teachers interact with children. We are interested not in finding 'best practice', but rather in

Mimamori
Mimamori is an everyday Japanese word used in general, common situations including ordinary childcare, education and care of the elderly, as well as in preventive measures against possible risks, such as anti-social behaviour or even criminal activities. This means that, as a technical term in Japanese ECEC, mimamori is derived from the general term and shares a large part of its meaning. Mimamori means taking a wait-and-see attitude to children, and an indirect socialisation practice without direct interference by adults, although the teacher watches the children attentively (Bamba and Haight, 2011). Mi means to watch, while mamoru means to guard (Hayashi, 2011: 109). When the children know that the teacher is watching, they also know that there is a safety net, which means that they know that the teacher will intervene if the situation becomes dangerous or too risky. Hence, the children maintain their subjective integrity, without being distracted by the teacher. The teachers, on the other hand, can maintain their external surveillance to safeguard the children. Thus, mimamori comprises an ontogenetic history of trusting relationships between teachers and children, like a vague sense that 'the teacher knows me, what I will do, and what will happen to me'. Hayashi and Tobin (2015) emphasise that mimamori is embodied in the teacher's practice, through touch, gaze, posture or keeping their distance from the children. The teacher needs to develop his or her paedagogical skills to be able to assess the situation expediently. This skill cannot be taught academically, it needs to be developed through experience and mentoring (Hayashi, 2011: 109-110). Based on interviews with Japanese teachers, Hayashi (2011Hayashi ( , 2019 underlines that Japanese teachers seem to be focused on the inner, active aspects of mimamori practices. Japanese education and care include building an environment and relationships over time without instructing children in the moment. For the teacher, it might be difficult to know how to manage these complex dimensions of education. According to van Manen (1991), a teacher needs to have paedagogical tact. By this he means that teachers need to have an awareness of how to behave in special educational situations, and in relation to different children: 'To exercise tact means to see a situation calling for sensitivity, to understand the meaning of what is seen, to sense the significance of this situation, to know how and what to do, and to actually do something right' (emphasis in original) (van Manen, 1991: 146). Paedagogical tact could be said to be a matter of attitude. Rogoff (2003) also pointed out that the focus on instructional interaction tends to overlook other forms of children's learning. She proposed the concept of guided participation whereby children learn as they participate in and are guided by the values and practices of their cultural communities. For example, instead of direct instructions such as 'It's reading time' or 'Let's sing together', Japanese teachers could guide a child's awareness indirectly by saying 'Do you know where the picture book is?' or by starting to play the piano and producing children's interaction. In this regard, we find it interesting to look at how mimamori can play a role as an alternative to early interventions based on standardised programmes and standardised assessments.
Recognising education as a cultural phenomenon, it is necessary to take into consideration the traditions of early childhood education and care in Norway and Japan, respectively.

The Norwegian ECEC tradition
Norwegian early childhood pedagogy builds on the philosophy of the German pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852). He was influenced by the Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), among others. They both regarded the child as good by nature and regarded play as the most important element in children's lives. According to Greve et al. (2014: 19), these viewpoints were considered rather radical at the time. The dominant paedagogical philosophy was that children were born sinful and that their thinking should be shaped by adults.
According to Balke (1995: 12), Jean Jacques Rousseau emphasised that young children should learn things by themselves, while teachers or adults should arrange the environment in order to inspire the children, but not interfere directly. Balke further claims that Fröbel thought that children needed to be guided by an adult to trigger a process within the child itself (Balke, 1995: 96). According to Balke (1995: 99), this view of education is strongly linked to Fröbel's understanding of play. Play and taking part in a play community is by far the most important activity for children in the Norwegian ECEC tradition. The legacy of Fröbel is further evident in the Norwegian ECEC in its emphasis on being out in nature. Playing in sandpits, climbing trees and sliding down steep slopes in winter enable the child to manage risks and to learn coping strategies.
According to Norwegian pioneers of early childhood education, Fröbel emphasised that the child should be at the centre of all activity, the child should lead the way. The teacher should be 'active inside, and passive outside' (Noack, 1937: 69). This means that the teacher should be active in observing the child, but should not take action or intervene unless necessary. One of Fröbel's aims, according to Johansson (2004: 261), was that children should be able to reflect for themselves and to have freedom of thought. The Norwegian pioneers of early childhood education were formally trained at institutions in Germany, Sweden or Denmark, at what were known as Fröbel academies (e.g. Das Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus in Berlin, Fröbelinstitutet in Norrköping or Fröbelhøjskolen in Copenhagen). Hence, the pioneers were influenced by and educated in Fröbel's ideas. Although the concept of mimamori was not known to or used by Fröbel, the idea of carefully watching (observing) and not interfering in children's activities unless necessary was well known. Teachers should create a safe atmosphere and 'open up their eyes, their ears -and their hearts' 1 (Rifbjerg, 1960: 48). Thus, observation has been regarded as a central paedagogical tool in Norwegian ECEC (Balke, 1976:53), and still is. However, ECEC teachers are supposed to take many different aspects and ways of acting towards children into consideration.
Since 2003, the United Nation (1989) has been implemented in the Norwegian Kindergarten Act. This convention states that children have the right to express their opinions, and children's right to participation has gained an important place in ECEC.

The Japanese ECEC tradition
In 1840 when Fröbel founded the kindergarten, Japan was in the Edo period (1603-1868) and sealed off from the outside world under the country's isolationist policy. According to Emori (1984), who studied Japan's domestic and international historiography during the Edo period, children were already valued and treated considerately and with respect, and teaching strategies without corporal punishment were recommended and practised. At this point in time, children were accepted just as children who become absorbed in their play. Parents and teachers were expected to praise children (Emori, 1984). These attitudes in Emori's views seem to be followed by the modern, but also traditional, attitudes in Japanese ECEC whereby teachers emphasised the subjectivity of children and the practice of mimamori.
In the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912), following the Edo period, Japan opened to the world and began to absorb information from abroad (Yukawa, 1984). Shirakawa (1975) pointed out the similarities between Japanese traditional singing with gestures and Fröbel's musical play, and Fröbel's strategies were therefore accepted naturally and integrated into Japanese ECEC. And while Japanese ECEC developed, assimilating different ideas, the principle of respecting the child's subjectivity seemed to emerge. For example, in an ethnographic study of Japanese childcare by Smith and Wiswell (1982), traditional Japanese childcare was described as a culture where adults spoil children, and where rude and wild behaviour by children was tolerated. Makino's (1995) international survey showed that Japanese parents set low discipline goals in their childcare. This suggests that Japanese children could be allowed to behave with fewer parental restrictions.
When Nakatsubo (2014) interviewed Japanese teachers, one of the teachers who practised mimamori in connection with a fight between children said it was important to maintain a certain distance from the children without being noticed. Based on the interviews, Nakatsubo suggested that the idea of teachers assuming a position that enables them to oversee all the children was widely shared among Japanese ECEC teachers.
The idea underlying the concept of Japanese mimamori childcare is that teachers should watch children empathetically and minimise giving them direct help and instructions (Goto, 2000). This idea is based on teachers showing respect for children's autonomy, self-motivation and spontaneity rather than giving direct help and instructions. Teachers need to have empathy with children and be able to imagine the challenges children face in order to protect them, while the children remain unaware of any risk. In order to practise mimamori, teachers try to observe the situation from the child's perspective and predict what the child will do and what may happen to the child in the next moment, while at the same time maintaining their own perspective as an adult to protect them. In other words, teachers are required to have the ability to imagine what a child doe and does not notice. Teachers might not just watch children in the present, but also take into consideration what they might do in the future. Accordingly, teachers might be expected to wait for the child to notice what might happen to her/him and possibly change her/his behaviour before intervening in the situation.
Teachers build a safe environment for, and a confidential relationship with, each child in order to enable them to exert their autonomy and self-motivation. As Pellegrini et al. (2007) mentioned, a safe environment is crucial for human children, and play gives young children opportunities to develop by playing and coping with challenges in a novel or uncertain environment. This environment is based on them having a confidential relationship with their teachers and parents. Along the same lines, emphasis in Japanese early education and care is placed on environment-building and relationships.

Methods
In this article, we have reanalysed data from previous studies in Norway (Greve and Løndal, 2012;Løndal and Greve, 2015) and analysed original data from Japan. The data from Norway were collected from a study of friendship relations among 2-year-olds in a Norwegian day care centre (ECEC) (Greve, 2007). The researcher used video observations of children's free play over a period of 10 months, comprising 38 hours of video (27 hours indoors and 11 hours outdoors in the playground or in the woods nearby the institution). The sample consisted of all the children in one class: 10 children under the age of three, and four teachers, all from the same setting. Before the investigation began, the researcher obtained the informed consent of all the parents and teachers. The children were too young to give written consent, but throughout the observation period the researcher paid attention to the children's attitudes and tried to be aware of any expressions of discomfort. The researcher made sure not to disturb the children's play activities and turned off the camera if the children seemed reluctant to be filmed. The names of the participating children and teachers have been changed in order to protect their privacy and confidentiality. The examples from Norway used in this article have previously been cited in two articles (Greve and Løndal, 2012;Løndal and Greve, 2015). For our purpose in this article, the data from the Norwegian study were reanalysed to investigate how mimamori might be expressed in everyday life in a Norwegian setting. Hence, we were looking for examples where teachers watched the children carefully without intervening or interrupting them in situations that might be challenging for them, such as potentially risky situations where the children could hurt themselves or where there was some sort of conflict between the children.
The data from Japan were collected by participatory observation with a video camera among 2-and 3-year-olds in a day care centre in a suburban area of Japan. Before the investigation began, the head of the day care centre gave oral and written consent. Ordinary group activities and free play, rather than special events, were observed over 3 days between July and August 2018. The videotaped recordings comprised a total of 2 hours, 38 minutes, 1 second of interactional scenes between teachers and children. The second author sampled two scenes of a teacher's indirect interruption as mimamori.
We were looking for examples that could shed light on mimamori or mimamori-like attitudes. This means that there were many other examples where mimamori did not occur. Our agenda in this article, however, is not to explore to what extent mimamori is present, but rather to point out how mimamori or mimamori-like practice influences interactions between teachers and children.

Results
The analyses in this project are deductively driven in the sense that we examined our data looking for examples where social inclusion were at stake in the situations, and where mimamori-like practice could be observed. We then tried to find episodes from the two countries which seemed similar and which could shed light on different mimamori-like attitudes towards children. Rather than performing a comparative analysis between the two countries, we used the data to find examples that could broaden our understanding of mimamori as a way of interacting with children. Since we did not have access to each other's data, the two sets of data were analysed separately: the Norwegian data by the Norwegian author and the Japanese data by the Japanese author. Hence, we discussed the different examples in light of the three concepts of qualification, socialisation and subjectification according to Biesta (2014: 4). The first example is from an outdoor playground in Norway.
Five children (aged one to three) and one teacher (Dorothy) are in the playground. Dorothy suggests that they should go to the sandpit. 'Look here', she says, 'Wow'. All the children head for the sandpit. Eskild, 17 months old, is the last child to arrive. He hesitates to climb over the rather high timber frame around the sandpit, Dorothy encourages him, saying: 'Come on, you can manage. Hold on like that'. She shows him how to put his hands on the timber frame and helps him to climb into the sandpit. She gives him a bucket and spade, talks with all the children, commenting on what they are doing, encouraging them from a distance without interfering physically. (Løndal and Greve, 2015: 11) This teacher displays an encouraging and inspiring attitude towards the children. She inspires the children to come to the sandpit by shouting 'wow' and 'look', but without insisting or forcing anyone. The teacher seems to want the children to stay together, participating in the same activity, and that no one should be left out. When the young boy Eskild arrives as the last child, the teacher recognises his efforts by supporting him verbally, and shows that she is confident in his ability to climb over the timber frame into the sandpit. She does not interfere by lifting him and carrying him into the sandpit. However, she does encourage him and shows him physically how he can manage on his own, where to put his hands and feet to be able to climb into the sandpit. She supports his subjectification by the way in which she steps back in a mimamori-like way, even though she qualifies him by suggesting what to do so that he can figure out for himself how to gain access to the sandpit. This is in line with Vygotsky's (1978) notion of the zone of proximal development. The teacher is scaffolding the boy's efforts to climb over the timber frame. Furthermore, she expresses a desire to include him in the social community. We see this to align with Biesta's (2014: 4) understanding of education as subjectification, qualification and socialisation.
The next example is from Japanese ECEC practice among a group of 2-to 3-year-olds (G child centre, 17 July 2018).
There were 10 or more children playing in a sandpit. One boy, Ken, came to the sandpit and stopped right in front of it, calling out 'Can I play too?' with the unique prosody of Japanese children. [Young Japanese children use this melodic speech when they count numbers, enter a play group or borrow toys. Especially when children want to join their friends, this question-answer prosodic speech is widely used by Japanese children. The effect of this prosody is so strong that each child behaves semi-automatically. Thus, the prosodic speech could facilitate their communication.] The other children there were too focused on playing to notice him calling out and did not answer. Ken started to walk around the sandpit and neither entered it nor called out again. The teacher in the sandpit noticed that Ken was confused, but did not help him directly. She just said aloud, 'OK, come in!' with the typical answer prosody. But the child did not enter the sandpit and just walked around it. The teacher's voice got louder: 'Come in, join us'. But the other children still did not answer, while the teacher's voice made them look up. Finally, the teacher stopped asking the boy to come in, stood up, and approached the child to take care of him directly.
The teacher neither gave direct instructions to the boy nor told him what he should do when he could not join his friends. Nor did she tell the other children to let him join. However, the teacher encouraged the child to join the others, and for them to notice the child's voice by using proxy talk, which is generally observed in parent-infant communication. It is a form of speech in which adults produce utterances expressed in infant voices (e.g. Okamoto, 2015;Okamoto et al., 2019). Such proxy talk is also commonly used by teachers in asymmetric relationships between young children and teachers. In the above example, if the teacher had said with authority: 'Notice him and let him join' to the other children or 'Say it again: "Let me join"' to the boy, things would probably have been resolved. However, the teacher avoided direct instructions by using her own voice and allowing time to wait. The teacher apparently did not want to force the child to act by giving instructions but instead wanted the child to act spontaneously. In this situation, the teacher's proxy talk could be her way of practising mimamori. By interacting with the children in this way, the teacher acknowledges the child's integrity and supports the child's subjectification (Biesta, 2014:4).
Ten children and two teachers in a Norwegian ECEC setting are present in the classroom, and it is time for free play. One of the boys, Ola, is often involved in conflicts with the other children: Ola (32 months) has been reading a book with one of the teachers. He carries the book while he runs towards the sofa where Curt (25 months) is taking big pillows to make a house 'Don't spoil it', Curt says when Ola arrives. Ola goes over to one of the walls of the house. 'No, don't spoil it', Curt repeats. He is carrying a new mattress. 'Maybe he can join you?' the teacher says to Curt. 'Because you are making a really big house'. 'Make', Ola says with enthusiasm and runs to the sofa to get another mattress. The play goes on for 10 minutes. The boys are playing on their own without any interference from the teacher, who nevertheless watches them carefully from a little distance. The house is knocked down and rebuilt, and Ola is involved in all of it. (Greve and Løndal, 2012: 10-11).
The teacher, as well as the other child, is well aware that Ola very often ends up spoiling things for other children. But instead of stopping him, the teacher in this example just suggests that Ola can participate in Curt's house-building activity. The teacher is nearby, watching, but not interfering. By keeping some distance and not interfering directly, we would say that her attitude is mimamori-like. The boys manage to cooperate on building the house on their own. The teacher has trust in their competence to cope together. Her mimamori-like interaction with the children supports their subjectification (cf. Biesta, 2014) in acknowledging their way of solving the housebuilding on their own. At the same time, the children seem to be aware that the teacher is paying close attention and in this way ensuring that no serious conflicts arise. This is in line with an indirect socialisation practice (Bamba and Haight, 2011). The children might experience that they manage to play together, which is important for their socialisation.
Here is another example from a Japanese ECEC setting. We follow Mako, a 5-year-old girl. The children are supposed to do physical exercises together: In a playground, a teacher called on the children in his charge to join in exercise, 'Hey, kids, stand up. Let's exercise together!' The children came together. One girl, Mako, was close to the children but was crouching with her back to the other children, drawing on the ground with a thin wooden stick in her hand. She made no attempt to join or turn and face the others, as if she could not hear the teacher's voice. The teacher spoke louder to the other children who had already assembled, 'Ok, make a space. Girls, hands up' and walked close to Mako who still did not join them. She turned around, but then looked down and started to draw again. The teacher did not pay attention to her, but encouraged the others to exercise. 'Keep your knees up. Ok, one, two, three. . .' Then, the teacher waited for more than a minute before giving further instructions to the children, apparently because he waited for Mako to join them. Another teacher said to Mako: 'Hey, could you help me to carry this [a mat], Mako? Hey, Mako'. The child stood up and looked at the second teacher. The second teacher waited and showed her the mat: 'Help me. It's heavy. Let's carry it together'. As soon as the child walked to the second teacher and touched the mat, the second teacher started to walk away, saying 'Oh, heavy. One, two, one two'. Mako followed the teacher, trying to hold the mat with her hand.
The first teacher practised mimamori in relation to the girl drawing on the ground. He called out to the whole class but did not point out the girl even when he spoke louder. According to Wertsch's (1991) notion of addressivity, there is always an actual or imaginary audience of listeners. That is, each utterance has its addressee(s). Here, the teacher's mimamori consisted of addressing his utterances to the whole group, not just to the girl. Although the teacher expected the girl to notice what the children were doing and join in the group activity, the girl did not. As we understand it, the teacher's intention was to support the children's socialisation by doing exercises together. By practising mimamori, he also respected Mako's subjectification by allowing her to continue with her own activity (drawing). The other teacher, however, had another approach. Still respecting Mako's agency and subjectification, the teacher asked Mako for help. This interaction with the child was more direct, and Mako followed the teacher's request for help. Although we cannot tell the teacher's motivation for intervening in this way, it seems like the teacher wanted to give Mako an opportunity to keep her integrity by respecting her will not to participate in the joint exercises, while at the same time take part in another social activity, that is, helping the teacher to carry a heavy mat.

Discussion
Despite the different cultural contexts, the Norwegian and Japanese teachers in the examples presented above both appear to emphasise children's agency and to tone down the instructions given to the children. They adopt a 'wait-and-see' attitude (mimamori). The difference in how this attitude is expressed may be linked to cultural differences, although it is not possible to conduct a comparative study with our limited data material. Some of the teachers are more likely to see whether the children can cope on their own, while other teachers seem to be more involved in finding solutions for the children. Furthermore, some of the teachers provide encouraging and direct comments to the children, such as 'Come on', while others use more subtle strategies such as changing the prosody of their voice.
The analyses show, however, that despite different ways of doing mimamori-like practices, these practices influence the interaction between teachers and children in ways that support social inclusion in the children's community. In line with Vygotsky's (1978) notion of zone of proximal development, teachers have to navigate the tension between helping a child too much, with the result that the child is not given an opportunity to test his or her own competence, and, on the other hand, not helping the child enough, with the result that the child fails and loses confidence. Teachers take time to wait, while also being ready to protect the children if they hurt themselves. Even when teachers decide to intervene, they try to do so as little as possible and thereby encourage children's autonomy and spontaneity. Japanese childcare guidelines (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2017) mention that teachers should have not only professional knowledge and skills, but also professional judgement, which they are required to exercise in changing contexts. Thus, mimamori seems to be similar to the 'outside passive, inside active' practice found in Fröbel's approach to early education and care (Noack, 1937: 69).
Following Biesta (2014), children should achieve qualification, socialisation and subjectification through their education. In the Norwegian example, we see that Eskild is taught how to use his hands and feet to climb into the sandpit. In the last example from Japan, the other children learn to exercise, while Mako refuses to join them. Mako thus loses the opportunity to exercise, but on the other hand, she may well have learned something else. According to Biesta, education is also about socialisation and subjectification. Mako in this example could act as a subject, showing her subjectification. For her, it was probably more important to finish her drawing than to join the others, and the teacher accepts this by not intervening, but instead practising mimamori and adopting a waitand-see attitude.
Socialisation can be identified in all four examples. Eskild wants to join the other children in the sandpit, and is encouraged to do so. The Japanese boy, Ken, also wanted to join the other children in the sandpit, although the other children appeared not to notice him or invite him in. Ola expresses his interest in playing with Curt, and the teacher encourages his efforts. Finally, Mako prefers to finish her drawing, but starts to help the other teacher to move a heavy mat in a way that the teacher uses to support her socialisation.
Cultural beliefs may form the basis for what kind of learning each teacher's mimamori focuses on. As we have shown in our examples from Norway and Japan, mimamori can be regarded a result of paedagogical tact, as described by van Manen (1991: 146). There is no set recipe for how to practise mimamori, and our results show that the wait-and-see-attitude is practised in different ways in the two countries, just as it could probably be practised in different ways within the same country. As Hayashi (2011: 109-110) underlines, mimamori cannot be taught academically; rather, the teachers develop their mimamori skills through experience and mentoring. When Eskild wants to climb into the sandpit or when Mako prefers to continue drawing instead of joining the other children doing exercises, the teachers need to use their paedagogical tact in order to decide what to do. Supporting children's social inclusion in the children's community does not imply that all children must participate in the same activities all the time. There is also a need for children to say no and hence protect their agency as a subject. According to the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, children have a right to express their opinions, which includes being in opposition and deciding who they want to play with. We see this to align with Biesta's (2014) concept of subjectification. This places great demands on the teacher, who must both safeguard the individual child's integrity and right to decide and ensure that all children be included in the social community. When, if and how to practise mimamori are questions of paedagogical tact and paedagogical wisdom regardless of nationalities.