International child abduction in Japan

Most cases involve a Japanese parent taking their children to Japan in defiance of visitation or joint custody orders issued by Western courts.

[6] The main impediment to Japan's becoming a party to the convention was that it would require a change in attitude of the legal system towards child custody rights.

Japanese family law considers issues of divorce custody, child support or alimony as predominantly private matters.

[7] In the case of Japan, CNN quoted an unnamed official in the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo who stated, "Our two nations approach divorce and child-rearing differently.

"[8] However, this statement is contradicted by several Japanese news media sources which report arrests involving parental abduction in Japan.

[9][10] The Supreme Court of Japan categorically ruled that a parental abduction in which force and coercion is used to remove child constitutes the felony of kidnapping of a minor irrespective of person's custodial right.

[15] The law, which was originally designed as an extra penalty for the kidnapping of a minor for sexual slavery in China, is now used for preventing forced abduction from Japan by a parent.

[19] As of March 2008[update], there are 29 cases of unresolved parental child abduction to Japan, the highest of any destination country from Canada.

[27] The U.S. State Department, which enforces the treaty in the U.S., has more than 2,000 active cases in 2009 involving nearly 3,000 children abducted from the U.S. or wrongfully retained abroad.

[28] The ten countries with the highest incidence of reported abductions in 2008 are Mexico (316), Canada (57), the United Kingdom (42), Japan (37), India (35), Germany (34), the Dominican Republic (25), Brazil (21), Australia (18), and Colombia (17), which together represent 602 cases out of the total of 776.

claimed that the unofficial number of international parental abduction in Japan is much higher if failed marriages between Japanese and people from other Asian countries are included.

[4] The vast majority of these marriages are with Chinese and Koreans, many of whom are second- or third-generation permanent residents of Japan, also known as zainichi, and other neighboring nations such as the Philippines and Thailand.

[clarification needed][34] In Japan, according to 2004 data from National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, mothers receive custody in roughly 80 percent of divorces involving children.

"[49] The primary custodian, or caregiver, as defined by the Japanese legal system, is the parent who has physical possession of the child at the time the case is initially brought to court in Japan.

On 8 July 2020, lawmakers of the European Union adopted a non-binding resolution calling Japan to enforce domestic and foreign court decisions pertaining the return of children, parental access and visitation rights.

The LDP's judiciary research commission responded that Japan should study other countries for alternatives to single-parent child custody.

[58] The confusion is increased by the fact that completely uncontested divorces are performed not by a court, but by the spouses simply filling out a family registry form at the city hall.

[64] In a joint symposium on child abduction held at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo in 2006, Jun Yokoyama, a Hitotsubashi University professor specializing in international private law observed that Japan did not need to join the Hague Convention when it took effect in 1980 because of the low number of international marriages at the time, which is no longer the case in the present situation.

We support ratifying and enforcing the Hague Convention, and involved in this is a sweeping change to allow divorced fathers visitation of their children.

[74] Following the Christopher Savoie incident (see "Specific Cases"), a near identical statement was reissued in October 2009 with additional support from Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Spain.

[74] In a 2009 statement, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said that Japan was considering being a signatory,[75] stating that "we are approaching the matter with an open mind, but we must also take public opinion into account.

[88] Kensuke Onuki, a prominent Japanese lawyer who handles many international divorces, was reported as saying he opposes Japan signing the convention and claims that "[i]n over 90 percent of cases in which the Japanese women return to Japan, the man is at fault, such as with domestic violence and child abuse," but admits that "domestic violence is difficult to prove.

‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion[dubious – discuss] Attorney Mikiko Otani, an expert on family law who ultimately supports joining the Hague Convention, also expressed her reservation, saying that the convention is based on the principle of returning the child and only in very extreme violent cases has the Article 13 defense been successfully invoked.

[88] On the other hand, Colin Jones of Doshisha University, while accepting that domestic abuse defense in the convention is inadequate, nevertheless argued that if Japan signed the convention, abducting mothers would more than likely resort to this defense successfully to avoid their children being returned because Japanese family court is heavily biased in favor of the mother.

According to Weiner, this stereotype dominated the U.S. Congressional proceeding for ratification and resulted in a presumption in the US that abduction is always harmful to children.

Recent statistics demonstrate that the majority of abducting parents are women, often those fleeing situation[s] of abuse and domestic violence.

There is also growing concerns regarding the correlation between incidents of child abduction and the presence of domestic violence and that the Convention does not give due consideration and sufficient weight to such mitigating circumstances in the context of a "grave risk" argument.

One of the crucial problems is that, upon return to the foreign country, abducting parents lack resources to hire a lawyer to obtain protective measures against domestic violence.

Articles 11 and 35 specifically exhort state parties to take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to combat the illicit transfer and non-return of children abroad and promote the conclusion of bilateral or multilateral agreements or accession to existing agreements and measures to prevent the abduction of children.

[98] A Missing Part is a 2024 movie about a French taxi-driver working in Tokyo trying to find his daughter that his Japanese partner abducted 9 years before.