Japan's parents are struggling with the never-ending cycle of preparing three meals a day

Responding to this, among other things, culinary expert Kentesu Koh went so far as to apologize for previously suggesting that “loving, home-cooked meals are what makes children grow” in a recent online interview with the Asahi Shimbun.

“The closures showed how hard it is to make three meals a day from scratch,” Koh says. “I mean, I do this for a living, but even I was worn out.”

In late March, Koh launched a YouTube cooking channel titled Koh Kentetsu Kitchen that was inspired by his own experiences following the school closures. Like many at the time, Koh had started working from home and discovered that coming up with three recipes for his three children every day was hard work. And that’s even before you get to preparing and cooking the food, as well as cleaning up.

“My wife works as my agent, so she was also busy,” Koh says. “Things got pretty chaotic.”

Koh Kentetsu Kitchen focuses on simple meals that require only a few ingredients and little time. The first recipe Koh posted was a stove top cheese on toast, made in just a couple of minutes and requiring nothing more than a slice of bread and a handful of shredded cheese, with a smidgeon of butter as an optional ingredient.

With schools slowly reopening and some parents returning to work, it might be time to reassess the proportion of work Japanese mothers put into creating meals each day.

Close to 60 percent of households in Japan now operate on double incomes, but surveys show that women continue to shoulder the burden of housework. Although it’s true that the amount of time men spend on housework has tripled over the past 30 years, they only manage to rack up a fraction of the time that women spend in terms of cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and caring for children.