Posted in Divorce on May 30, 2013
Japan’s parliament voted unanimously to join an international child custody treaty this week. The country has long felt foreign pressure to change their current laws, which more or less allow Japanese mothers to take children away from their non-Japanese fathers without question.
The upper house of parliament approved joining the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction. It was passed last month by the more powerful lower house. Japan was the only Group of Seven nation that had not accepted the convention. A spokesman for Japan’s Foreign Ministry stated that the convention will probably take effect later in the fiscal year because other steps, such as the passage of an implementation bill, must be taken first.
France, the United Kingdom, the United States and other nations have been urging Japan to participate in the convention for a very long time. It is meant to protect the rights of access of both parents and to require custody decisions be made by courts in the nation an abducted child originally lived.
Japanese mothers have been able to bring their children with them to Japan and prohibit foreign fathers from sharing custody or visiting. Japan often defended the decision not to join the convention by citing examples of women fleeing abusive husbands. It has been a point of tension in otherwise friendly relations between Japan and the United States, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying it was a huge issue that needed to be resolved.
Japan has historically only allowed one parent to retain custody following divorce, almost always the mother; this has kept foreign and Japanese men alike from seeing their children until they are of legal age to make their own decisions. Japan’s adoption of the convention will not change Japanese family law, but it will require that a central authority be put in place to deal with petitions by the foreign parent to locate or visit their child, and to help the parents settle disputes. If this is unproductive, Japanese family courts will take over. The convention will not apply to past cases, only those that occur after it is adopted.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, “Japan’s Parliament Approves Hague Treaty Ratification,” Toko Sekiguchi, May 22, 2013.
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