Seeing tiny tiny kids walking around is one of my favourite qualities of Japanese life, and on the flipside I sensed a quiet but shared responsibility/interest everyone took in making sure no harm befell the child on their journey. One the purest luxuries of living in such a high trust society
That feeling of shared societal responsibility probably has at least something to do with the birth rate. Japan is down to just 686K babies born per year from a population of 123 million.
This is why so many libraries, etc in US ban kids without parents. No one wants the slightest annoyance of even the possibility they could hypothetically be bothered to assist a child.
