In Japan, housework is still seen as a woman’s job. With COVID-19, families are spending much more time together at home, giving them more opportunities to actually see this gender gap and bringing the issue into the national conversation.

Pre-pandemic, husbands were at the office all day and didn’t think about or see what their wives were doing to keep the household running. Now they’re trying to help. But they don’t know how and end up losing their place at home, physically and psychologically.

One reason is that couples aren’t communicating effectively. In response, we developed the “Roomless Papa” concept for Panasonic’s L-Class Kitchen Idobata Style, which is designed with the sink in the center so couples can enjoy cooking while facing each other. Our goal was to strike a chord with couples as COVID-19 continued to affect daily life and to create a buzz around the “Roomless Papa” expression.

To promote the design of our kitchen system and show how it can help families connect and communicate, we focused on couples who feel they’ve grown apart as they’ve spent more time together at home. This is an issue in Japan, as 40% of couples said they thought about divorce during the pandemic.

Our dream-like film of two “Roomless Papas” wandering in a forest appeals to the Japanese love of nature and atmospheric storytelling. We set an engaging scene where the men can talk about their mistakes and think about how to be better husbands.

We felt this idea would resonate with families, especially wives, who have experienced the “Roomless Papa” phenomenon. We launched the film on “Good Couple Day,” when couples reflect on how to be better partners, and featured our kitchen in a family that is happy to be together, sharing their thoughts and feelings face to face.

We have put a name to a phenomenon in Japan: “Roomless Papas” are husbands who have had to spend more time at home during the pandemic and have come to feel that they don’t have a place there.

Our key message is that we support couples who feel emotional separation and encourage them to build a home where family members can communicate openly about what they’re thinking and feeling. We also show that we understand the gender gap in Japan and want to contribute to changing the family dynamic around housework and child rearing.

The target audience is married couples. We show husbands that they can learn how to be better partners. We show both spouses that good communication and family closeness are possible, especially if their homes are literally designed so they are facing each other in the pleasant, open atmosphere of Panasonic’s kitchen system.

We scheduled “Roomless Papa” to launch on “Good Couple Day,” marked every November, when Japanese couples earnestly reflect on how to be better partners. The day was particularly significant and poignant in 2020, when we were headed toward winter and “COVID fatigue” was more and more pronounced in many parts of Japanese society, including the family unit.

We deliberately chose this timing to release the film. We wanted tap into the spirit of “Good Couple Day” and show that we understood the pandemic has caused stress on wives, husbands, and children — and show that Panasonic modern kitchen systems, by design, create an opportunity family members to face each other and communicate openly and freely.

We simultaneously published online banners to drive the target audience (i.e., married couples) to Panasonic Showrooms across Japan so they could see our kitchen systems and purchase them directly.

On the day “Roomless Papa” launched, the film quickly had 1.2 million views online. It also drove significant traffic to the Panasonic website: We had 79,298 page views on launch day, four times the normal amount.

Furthermore, the expression “Roomless Papa” spread over social media. It “went viral” in some social networks, and activated discussion of the issues married couples have faced and continue to face during the pandemic, including emotional distance and Japan’s gender gap.

Audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive. People posting on social media related to the “Roomless Papa” concept and understood that the design of our system kitchens could help families communicate better.