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Yating Yang

A Japanese influencer couple sparked outrage in China and at home after filming their two-year-old daughter locked in a hot car to boost their social media traffic.
The controversy began on May 24 when the couple, known online as “raunano_family”, with about 58,000 followers on YouTube, uploaded a video titled “My Daughter Trapped in a Car Under the Burning Sun.”
The father said he filmed the video while the mother was away when he had gone to pick up their son from kindergarten with his two daughters.
During the trip, he placed his older daughter, two-year-old Nanoka, in the back seat and closed the door.

As he was about to put the younger daughter on the other side of the back seat, Nanoka accidentally locked herself inside.
Faced with the emergency, instead of immediately seeking help, he began filming his child’s reactions, while loudly exclaiming: “It’s an emergency! Nanoka is locked in the car. The car is locked and she cannot get out!”
In the video, the toddler can be seen drenched in sweat and crying while her father tries to instruct her on how to unlock the car door – a task generally deemed beyond the capability of a two-year-old.
After capturing the footage, the father chose not to call the police. Instead, he calmly contacted a locksmith who eventually freed Nanoka.
The child was reportedly locked in the hot car for more than 30 minutes. It is unclear whether the incident had any lasting impact on her health.

The video, intended to generate online traffic, outraged Japanese viewers and made headlines in the country’s major news outlets.
“The parents are crazy. I have encountered a similar situation, and at that time, my heart was broken and I was so nervous that I felt like I wasn’t even alive. It’s amazing that someone can stay so calm to record this on their phone,” one online observer said.
“Does the money you earn from risking your child’s life make you feel good?” said another.
Following the backlash, the couple issued an apology on May 31, stating that they were “very sorry for making a video that made everyone uncomfortable”.
However, it reignited painful memories of past tragedies in Japan, where children have died after being left in cars.
In September last year, a 53-year-old grandmother in Okayama left her two-year-old grandson in the car for nine and a half hours, which resulted in his death from suspected heatstroke.
Investigators estimated that the temperature inside the car exceeded 40 degrees.

The raunano_family incident, reposted by an online media platform in China, also stirred strong reactions on the mainland.
“Should the parents not lose custody for this deliberate child abuse?” a mainland online observer asked.
“A Chinese blogger on Bilibili made a similar video but used himself to simulate being trapped in a hot car, in order to raise awareness. The difference is stark,” wrote another.
“I can never understand how someone can forget their child in a car for half a day. Even when I had a cat, I would constantly check to see where it was hiding at home to ensure it hadn’t gone out. If you do not like children, do not have them,” someone else said.
“The scariest thing in the world is that being a parent does not require an exam,” said a fourth person.


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People & Culture

Drenched in sweat, clearly upset toddler cries as father films telling her to unlock car door while joking about it being an ‘emergency’


Instead of calling emergency services when his toddler got locked in the car on a sweltering day, a Japanese father made a video of her in distress, sparking anger on social media.


Japan

Parenting: newborns to toddlers

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