Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2010

Watching Japanese TV at the moment can feel like reliving the horrors of John Huston’s Annie on repeat, thanks to a wanton proliferation of child actors. Every channel we flip to seems to be overrun with the precocious, squawking little runts. Our toes began to curl with the appearance of Nozomi Ohashi, whose star turn on the Ponyo soundtrack in 2008 has been followed by a cavalcade of TV commercials and variety show appearances that shows no sign of letting up. Then came Seishiro Kato, the face of Toyota’s ubiquitous Kodomo Tencho (“child shop manager”) TV ad campaign, and quite possibly the only 8-year-old we’d run all the way across Tokyo to avoid. Finally, just when we thought things couldn’t get any more grating, along came the Himeka Asami-fronted Volkswagen ads (above), which the CIA might do well to consider as an alternative to waterboarding. Is there no way to stop the madness?