Less than half of divorcing parents complying with revised Civil Code visitation/child support requirements

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120914003660.htm

 

Child care left undecided in divorces

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Less than 50 percent of divorcing couples have planned for such matters as child support and visitation rights since the revised Civil Code was implemented in April, which requires couples with small children to do so, according to the Justice Ministry.

As local governments accept divorce applications without making couples declare such arrangements, the effectiveness of the revision has often been questioned.

The ministry collected its first statistics on the issue during the first quarter since the revision came into force. The results reflect the difficulty couples face in reaching an agreement on child-related matters.

In tandem with the implementation of the revised code, the ministry in April added items to the divorce application form asking couples with young children to verify they have come to an accord on certain issues. This includes whether they have agreed on visitation arrangements for the noncustodial parent and how child support will be handled.

According to the ministry, 32,757 couples with young children mutually consented to file for divorce from April to June. Among them, 15,622, or 48 percent, indicated they had made arrangements regarding visitation for the noncustodial parent, and 6,843, or 21 percent, had not. The remaining 31 percent did not check any boxes.

Concerning payment of child support by noncustodial parents, 16,075 couples, or 49 percent, had made a decision on the matter, while 6,316, or 19 percent, had not. The other 32 percent left the boxes blank.

In 2011, about 235,700 couples got divorced, with about 90 percent of them doing so by mutual consent. Still, there have been many problems concerning the handling of these child-related matters after divorce.

“It’s necessary for couples to reach an accord [on such matters] for their children’s sake,” said Noriko Mizuno, a Civil Code professor at Tohoku University.

“In Western countries and South Korea, couples are not allowed to get divorced unless they agree on a plan to raise their children and the plan is approved by the court. In Japan, it’s not sufficient to simply check whether parents have come to an agreement on such matters. We must also create a system to verify their decisions really serve the best interests of the child and enforce them if so.”

(Sep. 15, 2012)

Diet ends session without taking action on Hague Convention

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120908a2.html

 

Saturday, Sep. 8, 2012

 

 

Outta here: Lower House members leave the chamber Friday as the Diet effectively ended all business for this legislative session before it concludes Saturday. KYODO

 

Rocky, extended Diet session over; bills, treaties left in lurch

Hague, vote-value, deficit bond measures fail to clear grudge fest

 

By MASAMI ITO

Staff writer

The extended 229-day Diet session closes with a whimper Saturday, with piles of important bills and treaties left unaddressed and voters left only with an image of lawmakers engaging in political maneuvering for their own goals — particularly those over the contentious sales tax hike and over the next Lower House election.

And now both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party are focused on one thing — the presidential elections for both parties to be held this month to choose the leaders who will guide their parties in that next general election.

Political insiders and observers believe Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s re-election as DPJ chief, to be determined Sept. 21, is pretty much a given, especially since popular Environment Minister Goshi Hosono announced Friday he does not intend to run.

But pundits are quick to note that the DPJ has a slim chance of retaining control of the lower chamber amid the falling public support for Noda’s Cabinet in media polls.

Voters have grown disenchanted over the DPJ-led administration’s inability to overcome the political chaos in the divided Diet and deliver on campaign promises it made for the 2009 Lower House election that brought it to power for the first time.

Noda has also sparked public resentment for his unpopular drive to raises taxes, as he has failed to show any vision of how the increased revenue will be used to support the aging society and snowballing social security costs.

During the ordinary Diet session, Noda tried to execute leadership by putting “an end to on-the-fence politics” and passing the bill to double the 5 percent consumption tax by October 2015.

But during the process, DPJ kingpin Ichiro Ozawa, who opposed the tax hike, left to form a new party, deepening voters’ impression that the existing parties are more interested in wrangling over political power than getting anything done.

“The DPJ had no outlook on how to maintain power after the tax hike, focusing only on trying to come out with as little damage as possible. And now it is in a situation that if an election were to take place, the DPJ would lose badly and be forced out of power,” said Sadafumi Kawato, a professor of political science at the University of Tokyo.

Noda is the third DPJ prime minister since 2009, when the party wrested power from the long-ruling LDP.

But since then, the DPJ has drawn criticism from the public for blunders over key issues, including failing to move the contentious Futenma air base out of Okinawa and enacting the tax hike bill after promising during the 2009 campaign not to raise the unpopular sales tax over the next four years.

The support rate for the Noda Cabinet has been steadily moving downhill, finally falling below 20 percent for the first time in August, according to a Jiji Press poll.

“Can the DPJ lawmakers devise a last-ditch plan to remain in power? I don’t think so. All they can do is postpone the election as long as possible,” said Tomoaki Iwai, a political science professor at Nihon University.

Meanwhile, LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki is also on shaky ground and his re-election is in doubt. The party plans to hold its presidential election Sept. 26, less than a week after the DPJ.

Often regarded as being weak-kneed when it comes to power politics, Tanigaki tried but failed to execute strong leadership by demanding over and over that Noda dissolve the Lower House and call a snap election.

Tanigaki managed to get Noda to vaguely promise to dissolve the chamber “soon” in exchange of supporting the consumption tax hike.

But he later turned around and submitted a censure motion against the prime minister in the Upper House even though the DPJ and LDP have few disagreements over key policy matters, most notably the tax hike.

Tanigaki’s about-face led the voters to believe the LDP is trying to force Noda to dissolve the Lower House while the DPJ’s support rate is dwindling, and giving little attention to substantive policy matters that directly affect voters.

“I think Tanigaki became anxious and acted hastily. He knew he would have difficulty being re-elected so he decided to have a showdown with Noda and tried to write a scenario to force Noda to dissolve the Lower House,” University of Tokyo’s Kawato said. “And now, even many veteran lawmakers have decided not to support him.”

Political experts believe Noda probably won’t be able to postpone dissolving the Lower House and he is unlikely to implement any more new contentious policies, given the divided Diet and his weakened power over his own party members.

Meanwhile, some critically important bills didn’t make it through the divided Diet, most notably one to issue special deficit-covering bonds to cover a large portion of the fiscal 2012 budget and one to partially correct the vote-value disparity in general elections.

These two bills must be dealt with in an extraordinary Diet session that may convene in October.

“There is no way that the bond bill can go without being enacted because without it the government won’t be able to operate. It is already affecting the budget,” Kawato said. “I don’t think the next Lower House election should be held without at least some sort of revision” on the electoral system either.

Without the enactment of the bond bill and legislation to rectify the vote-value disparity, which the Supreme Court ruled as being in a state of “unconstitutionality,” critics say the results of any elections could eventually be judged as unconstitutional.

During the current Diet session, which started in January, only 66 percent of newly submitted government-sponsored bills cleared both chambers.

Political squabbling took center stage last month when the nonbinding censure motion against Noda was approved by the Upper House, stopping almost all Diet deliberations.

Thus the government also failed to live up to its promise to the international community to pass a bill to endorse the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction to prevent estranged parents from spiriting a couple’s children across borders.

Noda also couldn’t gain Diet approval of the proposed commissioners for the new nuclear regulatory agency to be launched this month and will be forced to make the unusual move of appointing them under his authority.

“Confrontation between the DPJ and the LDP and New Komeito have risen clearly to the surface. The two sides are now in direct opposition and closed the Diet without deliberating on various bills,” Kawato said. “Noda will just have to be happy going down in history as the prime minister who raised the consumption tax.”

Another child abducted to Japan from Seattle

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Charge-Unhappy-with-parenting-plan-Seattle-mom-3788325.php

 

Charge: Unhappy with parenting plan, Seattle mom took daughter to Japan

Mom latest of several such parents to face such charges in King County

BY LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Published 11:10 p.m., Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A Seattle mom accused of fleeing the country with her young daughter during a custody dispute is now facing felony charges in King County.

Prosecutors there claim Ryoko Fukuda absconded with her daughter the day she was supposed to hand over the girl’s Japanese passport.

According to charging documents, the girl’s father rushed to Sea-Tac Airport in an attempt to retrieve her. But prosecutors say Fukuda and the child were already flying to Japan.

Writing the court, Senior Deputy Prosecutor David Martin noted Fukuda had been ordered not to take the girl out of the country hours before she did exactly that.

Fukuda and the girl’s father dated but had broken up by the time Fukuda gave birth to the girl, Seattle Detective Jason Stolt told the court. The girl’s father and Fukuda each took out domestic violence protection orders against the other; the man told police he didn’t learn his daughter existed until 2009.

A parenting plan was first ordered in 2010. The plan gave the girl’s father visitation rights and required that either parent let the other know if their daughter was going to travel out of Washington.

On May 16, Fukuda, 34, and the girl’s father met with a King County court commissioner to discuss Fukuda’s plan to take the child to Japan. The girl’s father objected to the move.

The commissioner ordered both parents to surrender their daughter’s passports to Fukuda’s attorney for safekeeping until a final decision could be made. Stolt noted Fukuda had the girl’s Japanese passport.

At 2 p.m. the following day, the girl’s father called 911 to report that his daughter failed to arrive at her Broadview neighborhood elementary school that morning. Nor was the girl or Fukuda at their apartment.

Meeting with police an hour later, the man said Fukuda had failed to turn over their daughter’s Japanese passport. He said he was concerned Fukuda was preparing to flee the country, and he worried he’d never see his daughter again.

Leaving the meeting with police, the man drove to Sea-Tac Airport hoping to learn whether his daughter had been flown out of the country. With the help of Port of Seattle police and State Department officials, the man determined Fukuda and his daughter left the country at 2 a.m. that morning.

The detective told the court he has since confirmed that Fukuda and the girl are in Japan.

Fukuda has now been charged with first-degree custodial interference.

If similar cases filed in recent years are any measure, prosecutors will have a difficult time getting Fukuda before a King County judge.

Similar charges filed separately against two other Japanese women alleged to have fled the Seattle area for Japan have gone nowhere so far.

In 2009, Mayumi Ogawa fled the country weeks after a Superior Court judge approved an parenting plan stating that her son would split his time between his parents. The boy’s father has since been awarded sole control of the child, Ogawa remains at large and charged with first-degree custodial interference.

Michiyo Imoto Morehouse, 44, was charged with the same crime in 2010 after fleeing the country with her son. Her ex-husband had been awarded sole custody of the child; she remains at large.

In recent years, U.S. authorities have seen an increase in the number of international custodial child abductions. Watchdogs on the issue say there are currently more than 1,000 such open cases involving U.S. parents whose children have been taken overseas.

Speaking with seattlepi.com in 2009, Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said custodial child abduction is on the rise.

Unlike the United States and 80 other countries, the Japanese government has not ratified the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. The 29-year-old United Nations accord requires that member countries honor custody agreements made outside their borders unless doing so threatens the child involved.

Allen said that even when the country in question has signed on to the Hague Convention, a child’s return is not assured.

“The cases where we don’t get children returned aren’t just from places like Iran,” Allen said in March 2009. “There are a host of horror stories out there.”

Another recent case has had something of a happy ending.

After months of work, the Redmond mother of a boy whose father had taken him to Morocco was able to retrieve her son and return him to Washington. Still, the boy’s father, Mouad Aimane Elbou, has not faced the charge against him.

Check the Seattle 911 crime blog for more Seattle crime news. Visit seattlepi.com‘s home page for more Seattle news.

Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.

Key U.K. jurist hopeful of Japan’s Hague entry

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120731a9.html

 

Key U.K. jurist hopeful of Japan’s Hague entry

 

By WILLIAM HOLLINGWORTH

Kyodo

LONDON — Japan’s plan to sign an international treaty on cross-border parental child abductions has been welcomed by England’s most senior international family law judge.

Lord Justice Sir Mathew Thorpe said recently it is a “positive move” that Japan is going to join the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The convention seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of being spirited by an estranged spouse across international boundaries by providing procedures to bring about their prompt return to their home country or country of habitual residence.

Thorpe, who is head of international family justice for England and Wales, said: “The campaign was led by the United States and Canada . . . and I think they will be hugely relieved to see the global law extending into the Far East. It needs it. It’s already in Hong Kong and Singapore.

“It will bring Japan into treaty relationship with 87 other countries, and that enables people to recover to Japan children who have been wrongly removed from Japan by one or other parent.”

Thorpe, whose office deals with legal inquiries, correspondence from judges, lawyers and other officials in the field of international family law, said the convention has been a “huge influence for good” by providing legal remedies where none was previously available.

“It (abduction) is an extraordinarily abusive thing to do to a child. And from the 1960s and 1970s, with the increasing mobility and decreasing price of air travel, you see the emergence of a global problem for which the global community felt bound to seek a solution and the end product is the 1980 convention,” the jurist said.

Thorpe and judges from other signatory countries regularly meet to review how the treaty operates and look at ways to improve both judicial and administrative performances.

The issue of international parental child abductions has been a growing problem in Japan due to the increasing number of international marriages.

The media have reported several cases where Japanese women living in the West, and unhappy in their relationship, have decided to take children to Japan without getting court permission.

Often they make this decision because they believe — often misguidedly — that the court will deny them their application to relocate with their child.

Or they may be relocating to another jurisdiction in the hope that the court in that country will reverse previous custody decisions.

Thorpe describes any act of international parental child abduction as “irresponsible and wrongful behavior” and urges all parents to go through the courts and seek permission before removing their children from the country.

At the moment, because Japan is not part of the convention, non-Japanese parents, many of them fathers in Western countries, have little chance of getting their abducted children returned to their country of habitual residence. And this is why many countries have been pressuring Japan to join.

However, once Japan has signed up to the convention, it will have to set up a “central authority” that will work to locate abducted children and initiate legal proceedings to get them returned.

The central authority will also act as a point of contact for Japanese parents seeking the return of their children abducted by an estranged foreign spouse.

Speaking at his room in the Royal Courts of Justice, Thorpe said: “Japan must have an effective and efficient central authority. That’s the cardinal prerequisite. And they should have concentrated the jurisdiction to deal with Hague cases to a small number of courts at a high level within the justice system. The judges need to be prepared and trained for the work.”

As it stands, the convention is not retroactive, but Thorpe holds out some hope for the British fathers whose children have been abducted.

“At the moment, British fathers are dependent on consular endeavor and the Foreign Office will continue to handle their cases. But once Japan has acceded, maybe there will be a much higher degree of cooperation at a diplomatic level,” he said.

“It would be perverse of the Japanese foreign office not to offer aid in those cases only because the abduction predates Japan’s accession. I would have expected the Japanese foreign office would say, well, they are tantamount to Hague cases and we will give diplomatic aid,” Thorpe said.

“They (Japanese diplomats and academics) have researched Hague exhaustively. Government officials, academics and diplomats have all been carrying out the most profound investigations, talking to judges, central authorities, academics, not just in this country, but in the United States, Canada and Europe. The Japanese could not have prepared the way more painstakingly,” he said.

Left behind by Japan: Clive France online photo exhibit

http://socialdocumentary.net/exhibit/Clive_France/1584

 

Photographer’s Statement:

I have been documenting the plight of Japan’s so-called Left-Behind Parents, of which there are believed to be over 2 million, since 2011. A recent exhibition of these images at Tokyo’s Foreign Correspondents Club, Japan drew wide media interest in a problem that is generally overlooked in Japan, where it is seen as something that only happens in international marriages or to “other people.” On the contrary, it is an issue that affects families throughout the country, as well as overseas.

High numbers of married men in Japan claim to be victims of spousal abuse

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120710zg.html#.T_3wn93Yk3X

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

 

THE ZEIT GIST

Japan’s battered men suffer abuse in silence

Equality bureau turns a blind eye as growing ranks of husbands claim mistreatment at the hands of their wives

 

By MICHAEL HASSETT

As in many surveys, numbers and percentages are abundant. But for me, it was that little 3.4 at the bottom of page 21 that stood out more than any other: 3.4 percent of married men in Japan say that their spouses have forced them to engage in sexual relations against their will. And that is down from 4.3 percent reported three years ago. Improvement is apparently being made: Married men in Japan are essentially being raped less by their wives.

 

The abused or the abuser?: The Gender Equality Bureau’s emblem against violence is unlikely to reassure male victims of spousal abuse that the agency is looking out for their interests as well as those of battered women.

 

This survey, conducted by the Cabinet Office every three years, sampled 5,000 men and women across the nation in November and December of last year. About 6 percent of all marriages in Japan now involve a non-Japanese partner.

Most of the reported findings, which were released in April, are alarming: 32.9 percent of married women in Japan claim to be victims of spousal violence; 25.9 percent say they have been punched, kicked or shoved.

The assertions made by the other gender are nearly as troubling: 18.3 percent of married men in Japan are now claiming to be victims of spousal violence, with 13.3 percent of all married men in the sample claiming to be victims of violence that entailed punching, kicking or shoving.

These numbers are far higher than those often cited in the U.S., where one in four women is reported to have experienced domestic violence (DV) over a lifetime, and 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence are women. Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes violence from current or former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, including same-sex relationships. Domestic violence includes IPV in addition to violence from other family members, such as in-laws, siblings, parents or children.

In the Cabinet Office survey, 8.7 percent of married men subjected to physical, emotional or sexual violence indicated that it was so intense that they actually feared for their life; 13.4 percent of married women reported the same. In fact, 5.5 percent of married men apparently found the abuse so intolerable that they decided to end the relationship, which interestingly is nearly identical to the 5.6 percent of married women who did the same.

For those who stay in these abusive relationships, the question must be “Why?” Men reported staying mostly for the children. In fact, a greater percentage of male victims (65.0 percent) than female victims (57.3 percent) cited the children as their reason for staying. Men also indicated worries about keeping up appearances and concerns for their partner’s needs far more than women when asked why they stayed.

Men more than women recognized DV as consisting of slapping, kicking or causing a bodily injury, whereas a greater percentage of women said DV also included behavior such as ignoring the partner for a long period of time, calling the partner a “good-for-nothing useless person” (kaishō nashi) or shouting in a loud voice.

The percentage of respondents who were unaware that a DV-related law exists — i.e., the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims (2001) — has actually grown to 22.5 percent over the 19.3 percent recorded in 2005, with most of the uninformed being men between the ages of 20 and 39.

A tone that is fairly prevalent throughout the report, though, is an emphasis on the suffering by female victims over that of men. For example, even though the raw data shows that 76.1 percent of married men who had been victims of spousal violence over the past five years did not seek assistance or guidance in response to the abuse they were subjected to, the heading given to this section of the report emphasizes that help had not been sought by about 40 percent of women. While the assertion about women is certainly true, turning a blind eye to the apparent hidden shame of abuse being borne by a far higher percentage of male victims seems to indicate the leanings of the Gender Equality Bureau, which is tasked with producing this report for the Cabinet Office.

Moreover, nine pages of the 57-page report are dedicated to the 14.1 percent of married women who claim to have been forced to engage in sexual relations against their will. Not one word is given to explaining the 3.4 percent of married men who claimed the same, or the 4.3 percent who claimed it three years ago.

The survey seems to indicate that the apparently passive men and women who comprise the stereotypical family in Japan may not be as docile as thought once the front door closes. Nearly 1 in 5 married men in Japan is now claiming to be a victim of spousal violence, up from 17.7 percent in 2008 and 17.4 percent in 2005. The percentage for married women making the same claim has actually decreased slightly since 2005, but remains 1 in 3.

Why would spousal violence against married men in Japan be steadily increasing? The peer-reviewed European Journal of Scientific Research tackled a similar question in 2010 in a research article titled “The Relationship between Jealousy and Aggression: A Review of Literatures Related to Wives’ Aggression.” The article mentions an oft-cited study by professors Richard Felson and Maureen Outlaw based on an analysis of data obtained through the National Violence Against Women survey conducted in 2000. The journal reports, “Individuals who are controlling of their partners are much more likely to also be physically assaultive, and this holds equally for both male and female perpetrators.”

When asked whether abusive men or women in Japan could possibly be characterized as controlling of their households and partners, a representative of the Gender Equality Bureau declined to comment. The bureau representative answered some questions, but she said she was not able to respond to others, such as how the bureau would explain the progressive rise in spousal violence claims by men.

Moreover, spousal violence against men in Japan has interestingly been ignored by the mainstream English press. The Daily Yomiuri and The Japan Times (www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ed20120513a2.html) both reported the claim of spousal violence by 32.9 percent of married women. Neither mentioned the reported abuse of 1 in 5 married men. Both newspapers reported that 14.1 percent of married women had been forced to engage in sexual relations with their husband. Neither paper reported on the marital rape of 3.4 percent of men. Both newspapers reported that 41.4 percent of abused women suffered in silence. Neither reported the silent suffering by a much higher 76.1 percent of abused men.

Why? Why is spousal violence against men seemingly being ignored by the press and the government bureau that conducts this survey? When I put this very question to the Gender Equality Bureau, I was told that even though men are included in the sample, the purpose of this research is to protect women from DV. Women.

And DV against women in Japan is obviously a problem, even though the latest data in this survey clearly shows that claims by women are trending slightly downward, and claims by men are trending upward.

Several of the questions I had for the Gender Equality Bureau concerned the composition of their organization: How many men and women work there? How many men and women were involved in the writing of this survey analysis?

Even though corporations often publish data on employee demographics, I was surprisingly told that the government bureau tasked with ensuring gender equality was unable to specify the gender makeup of its own organization or those who crafted this survey analysis.

With the bureau apparently giving no attention to its own data indicating an increase in the spousal abuse of the nation’s men — men who mostly classify abuse as physical assaults — one must wonder how the bureau would respond if more men subjected to nonphysical forms of abuse began to make claims, thus resulting in a rapid surge in the overall percentage of men reporting abuse. Would the bureau continue to ignore the men, leaving so many to suffer in silence as they do now? Or would it begin what may be a much needed campaign to help women in Japan better recognize, control and eliminate their own abusive behavior?

If the claims in this data can be trusted, Japan clearly has a developing DV epidemic on its hands. And it’s not rising because of any increase in violence against women. Rather, it’s the women who are increasingly charging into battle against the nation’s men.

The word “married” in this article refers to men and women who are or have been legally married or in common-law unions. Guidance for victims of spousal abuse is provided in Japanese, English, Spanish, Thai, Tagalog, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese and Russian atwww.gender.go.jp/e-vaw/siensya/08.html#forigner1. Information in English on phone numbers for spousal violence centers across Japan can also be found on this website. Send comments on this issue tocommunity@japantimes.co.jp

Justice Minister Taki refuses to take position on dual parental rights

Based on his positions on other issues and his unwillingness to take a stand on dual parental rights in divorce cases, it does not seem that Justice Minister Makoto Taki will be a very proactive force in addressing international abduction and children’s rights issues in Japan.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120620f4.html#.T-HPwN3YlZ9

 

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

 

Death penalty on books, should stay: justice chief

 

By MINORU MATSUTANI

Staff writer

Newly appointed Justice Minister Makoto Taki said in a recent interview that he supports the death sentence because it’s on the books for heinous crimes.

 

Makoto Taki

 

“I lean toward maintaining the death sentence because it already exists in the judicial system,” Taki, who assumed his post June 4, told The Japan Times and other journalists in his office last Thursday.

“The fact that the judicial branch hands down death sentences should not be taken lightly,” he said. “We should be cautious, as we should scrutinize individual cases.”

He also said he does not plan to repeat what predecessor Keiko Chiba did in 2010 and give the media a glimpse of the gallows.

“Because the media got to see the death chamber under Chiba, I don’t plan to do” likewise anytime soon, he said without elaborating.

He also said he will continue to study whether hanging is the appropriate method for executions.

On whether to add life in prison without parole as a punishment for serious crimes, he said the Democratic Party of Japan “has not really launched discussions because the issue of whether to keep or abolish the death sentence is the priority.”

Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is not a current option. Life sentences can lead to parole if an inmate demonstrates good behavior.

Legal experts and activists argue that the gap between life with the possibility of parole and the death sentence is too wide.

Japan is one of 58 countries, including the U.S., China, India and Iran, where executions take place; 104 nations, including all of the European countries, Canada and Australia, either have abolished capital punishment or have kept the death sentence on the books but have not conducted executions for years, according to Amnesty International.

On whether to allow dual parental rights in divorces, Taki said he will handle the issue carefully and avoided clarifying his position.

Domestic law allows only one parent to have custody, and thus those who lose the right in custody battles find it extremely difficult to see their kids after a divorce.

“Opinions are split on the issues of medical treatment and schooling of children, so I want to handle it carefully,” he said, referring to situations in which children may be required to change schools and sources of medical care if they go back and forth between parents.

The issue of single or dual parental rights is a hot-button issue because Japan is preparing to sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspect of International Child Abduction, which will basically make Japan promise the other participating countries that it will do its utmost to enable non-Japanese parents to see their half-Japanese children.

In 2004, Taki blamed foreign residents illegally staying in Japan for a rapid rise in crimes.

“The number of crimes have increased rapidly and more than doubled from 1973, when it was the lowest since World War II. Above all, crimes committed by foreign residents illegally staying in Japan are extraordinary in their frequency and brutality,” Taki said on his website in 2004.

Asked about this statement, Taki said in the interview that such crimes have dropped to a third of the number in 2004 and thus he is no longer as concerned.

“Back then, the number of crimes had gone up suddenly, not just by foreigners but also by Japanese,” he said.

Questionable that intent of Hague Convention will be implemented by Japanese government

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/adv/chuo/dy/opinion/20120611.htm

 

Hague Convention Ratification and Post-Divorce Parent-Child Law

Takao Tanase
Professor, Chuo Law School, Chuo University
Area of Specialization: Sociology of Law

Read in Japanese

At present, ratification of the Hague Convention has been approved by the Cabinet and Japanese laws are being revised in order to implement this ratification. However, if we look at the domestic laws submitted by the government in order to execute the Convention, changes have been made with current Japanese public opinion and family court practices in mind, and it is questionable whether the intent of the Hague Convention has been incorporated.

1. The Framework of the Hague Convention

(1) Principle of return

The Hague Convention was entered into by the signatory countries in order to provide international protection to children from the damaging effects of child abduction. It aims to prevent abduction or, if abduction has occurred, to quickly return the child to its original home to eliminate any harmful consequences. This is the principle of summary return that forms the basic framework of the Convention. Here summary includes two meanings, quick, in the sense of instant action, and brief, in the sense of dispensing with time-consuming procedures and taking decisions quickly.

The need for speed is connected not only to the damage suffered by children in being abducted and remaining apart from the other parent but also to the powerlessness of children and their total dependence on adults, which is a feature of custodial cases.

Children are powerless and consequently tend to adapt to the environment of their abduction and show loyalty to the abducting parent who is now taking care of them. This is why there are endless attempts to gain sole custody by abducting a child and severing its relationship with the other parent, and is sometimes called abduction victory. Preventing this by returning the child quickly and irrespective of the loyalty shown by the child is the main point of the Hague Convention.

(2) Principle of requirement

To achieve this speedy return, the Hague Convention takes the stance of ordering the automatic return of a child if it can just be indisputably confirmed that the child was taken overseas without the consent of the other parent who has legal custody (including joint custody during marriage), or in other words, that the child was illegally abducted.

Even if the abducting parent pleads that the child wants to live with him or her and does not wish to return to the original home, this is not taken into consideration at all when weighing the pros and cons of the child’s return. Similarly, no attention is paid to pleas from a parent that one thing and another happened during the marriage, that the child would be happier living with him or her, or that the other parent cannot take proper care of the child. Allowing such pleas to be interfered in disputes over actual custody would inevitably make trials more drawn out and prevent a speedy return.

This is the other meaning of summary as in prompt decision-making.

(3) Serious risk

There are some cases in which children are mistreated and returning them would clearly put them at risk. This is given in the Convention as an exceptional reason for refusing to return a child, although there is also a risk of compromising the principle of return if the wrong action is taken.

Accusations of physical or mental abuse of children and physical or verbal spousal abuse are made between spouses most of the time in failing marriages as they contest decisions on culpability for the divorce, custody, and visitation and contact rights.

Parents therefore have to try not to be tripped up otherwise the trial can drag on, during which time the child comes to depend increasingly on the abducting parent who is taking care of him/her instead of the other parent who cannot meet the child, otherwise, not only returning of the child will be prevented, but the relationship with the parent can become severed. Because of this danger, the Convention seeks to limit exceptional cases of denying return due to a serious risk of physical or psychological damage to a child.

2 Implications for Japanese Law

(1) Toleration of abduction by Japanese law

The Hague Convention is against international child abduction and is not directly connected to abduction within Japan. So even if the Convention is ratified now, it does not necessarily mean that domestic law will change right away. However, the harmful consequences of abduction are the same even if it occurs within Japan. In fact the overwhelming majority of divorces in this country still follow a pattern of separation, in which either parent takes the child without warning in order to live together in the grandparents’ home, followed by a request for divorce.

In Japanese court practices, moving away with a child in a process leading to divorce is quietly condoned and not called abduction. In the words of judicial precedents, they left home with their children with the intention of keeping custody, and it is inevitably as they were unable to leave home without their children.

However, this way of thinking in judicial precedents is very far from the global consensus.

(2) Harmful effects of abduction

Children experience extreme trauma if they are suddenly removed for no apparent reason from a parent who dotes on them. The loss of a fundamental sense of trust can even scar them for the rest of their lives.

Abduction naturally provokes anger in abandoned parents, and fear of this anger and trepidation about returning children makes abducting parents even less likely to keep in contact and reveal their whereabouts. Of course many of them refuse visitation and cut themselves off from the other parent.

Later, even if mediation or a trial is held, the two parents cannot meet face to face to calmly discuss the post-divorce custody of their child as long as there is a background of this negative chain resulting from the abduction. All you can do through the mediation commissioner or judge acting as intermediary is work out an agreement on visitation and contact rather than discussing the current situation of the abduction, that is to say, rather than seeking agreement on parental rights and divorce.

However, if the person who has the abducted child close by keeps insisting on his or her demands, the future parent-child relationships will be significantly distorted.

(3) Equal joint custody

The post-divorce parent-child law that the world sees ideal would be one that allowed children to maintain continuous and direct contact with both parents. Parents split up, but children who are loved and raised by both parents will no longer lose one of them in the event of a divorce.

The Hague Convention stipulates that jurisdiction shall be in the child’s habitual residence and that the child shall be returned to that original country of residence even if the abducting parent starts a lawsuit in his or her own country. This is because the key to achieving equal post-divorce joint custody is for the parents to talk on an equal footing before separation and work out a post-divorce arrangement.

Of course the ideas and framework of the Hague Convention should also apply to divorces in Japan, and ratification of the Hague Convention along with domestic legislative reforms should be conducted quickly.

 

Takao Tanase

Professor, Chuo Law School, Chuo University
Area of Specialization: Sociology of Law

Graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo in 1967. He was an assistant professor and then professor at Kyoto University before taking up his current position of professor at Chuo Law School, Chuo University. He is a lawyer belonging to the Tokyo Bar Association. He passed the National Bar Examination while he was an undergraduate student. After graduation he worked as a research associate and assistant professor on the Civil Code. Since then he has specialized in the sociology of law and conducted institutional research into legal proceedings, the justice system, lawyers, and alternative dispute resolution, legal theory research covering legal awareness, comparative legal culture, and modern jurisprudence, and interdisciplinary analysis of legal interpretation theory aimed at the Constitution, tort law, contracts, family law, and so on.
He has also taught at several American law schools including Harvard University. Besides research and education, he is currently utilizing his accumulated research in the conducting of defense activities.

Japanese left-behind parents victims of Japanese child custody system

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201206080014

 

INTERNATIONAL MARRIAGE: Changing Japan as a safe haven for parental abductions

June 08, 2012

By HIROSHI MATSUBARA/ AJW Staff Writer

In February, 61-year-old Masahiro Yoshida was arrested for “abducting” his 7-year-old daughter from her elementary school in Ehime Prefecture the month before.

It marked the second time that Yoshida, a former professional jazz drummer, was driven to desperation and snatched his daughter, since his ex-wife has parental custody over his daughter, and he is not allowed to have any contact with her.

In Japan, courts do not recognize shared custody, and mothers retain custody in about 90 percent of court-mediated divorces involving minors.

In response to mounting criticism that Japan is a safe haven for parental abductions, the government finally submitted a bill to ratify the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which provides for the return of unlawfully abducted children.

The legislation is unlikely to pass in the current Diet session, as deliberations of controversial bills to hike the consumption tax are taking center stage. But if enacted, the convention, which has 87 signatory countries, will mandate that Japan return children whom its nationals took from other countries in a divorce, unless it harms the child’s welfare.

The public’s perception in Japan is that such post-divorce disputes are taking place only between Japanese mothers and fathers from Western countries. But many Japanese parents now claim that the justice system here is equally tormenting those who lost custody over their children following a divorce.

The case involving Yoshida has much in common with the well-publicized arrest of an American man in 2009 after attempting to abduct his son and daughter and flee to the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka.

According to Yoshida’s mother, Michiko, an 87-year-old former liquor store operator in Yokohama, it was her daughter-in-law who “abducted” her grandchild five years ago in an attempt to gain parental custody.

Michiko’s son is currently on trial at the Matsuyama District Court.

As Masahiro is likely to be given a prison sentence this time, Michiko said there must be fundamental flaws in the country’s justice system, which made her son a “criminal for just wanting to see his daughter.”

 

IS “GAIATSU” LAST RESORT?

 

In a nearly identical case, former family court judge Masanori Watanabe, 53, was arrested for abducting his daughter, then an elementary school third-grader, from a train station in Fukuoka in October 2005.

Watanabe, then a Yokohama-based lawyer, was subsequently given a suspended three-year prison sentence, dismissed from the bar association and cannot practice law.

“I certainly knew the consequences, but I thought it was my last opportunity to persuade her to come back to me when she becomes old enough to make her own judgments,” Watanabe said.

While waging court battles to gain custody of or visitation rights to their children, Yoshida and Watanabe campaigned for the Hague Convention, which they thought would help their causes.

“The convention means Japan’s last chance to review its cruel tradition to completely dismiss one parent’s right over children after divorce,” Watanabe said. “It is also my last resort to clear my name as a kidnapper.”

While the convention does not directly affect Japan-based families, Japanese and foreign parents here who lost custody pin hopes on their hopeful “gaiatsu,” or foreign pressure, scenario.

Lawyer Mikiko Otani, a member of the Legislative Council of the Ministry of Justice on the Hague Convention, said ratification will bring positive changes to the family courts here, which will examine and rule whether to return a child in accordance with the convention.

The family courts will need to examine and rule on what types of child-taking are unlawful and what serves as the best interest of children in ways that are convincing to foreign authorities.

If the expatriation of children becomes a common practice, courts need to break free from traditional reluctance in using force in family conflict cases. It will discourage parents from simply taking away their children, even by force, as is widely occurring today, she added.

“Ultimately, Japan will need to approve a form of shared custody, which is the norm in most of the countries that are signatory to the convention,” Otani said.

But gaiatsu inevitably draws a backlash. To the relief of Japanese parents who flee with their children from overseas, the proposed domestic legislation to set court procedures for a child’s repatriation sets strict criteria for judges to do so.

The vaguest and most potentially controversial clause among the six requirements is that courts need to ensure there will be no possibility that the concerned child suffers “physical or psychological” abuse once returned.

“Can courts expatriate its nationals, minors, over public opinion? I don’t think that can happen,” said a Japanese mother who fought a lengthy, exhausting court battle in Australia with her ex-husband over custody of their two children.

 

BACKLASH FOR CHANGE

 

Interestingly, parties opposing the convention, and moves that can lead to the idea of shared custody, include both those from conservative and liberal camps.

Conservatives say that the single custody system is vital to maintaining the integrity of “koseki,” or Japan’s family registry system.

Kensuke Onuki, a lawyer who has represented Japanese mothers who have brought their children to Japan, agrees that one of the divorced parents must back away, in order to make a child’s new environment more stable.

“I don’t think many Japanese can stand the Western way of communication between children and their divorced parents, in which both parents participate in their children’s growing-up process,” Onuki said.

A head of a parents’ group seeking visitation rights said that even many of its group members, mostly fathers, will find it too burdening to fulfill shared custody, given the limited roles they played in child-rearing before their divorce.

Recalling his days on a family court bench in the mid-1990s, ex-judge Watanabe expressed regret that he and his colleagues had no doubts that it serves the interests of children to grant custody to their mothers.

He added that judges believe that courts must respect women’s parental rights, because it was historically denied to them and they had to gain them through postwar feminism.

“I also remember my boss telling me that the court should give men a ‘free hand’ to start a new life by eliminating responsibility to raise their children, and I really did not find much wrong with it,” Watanabe said.

“Now I know how painful, how cruel it is for a parent, regardless of the mother or father, to have their access denied.”

Watanabe added that he knows that the signing of the Hague Convention may be just the beginning of change for Japanese society.

“But I won’t give up, because this is the only way left for me to show my love for my daughter,” he said.

By HIROSHI MATSUBARA/ AJW Staff Writer

Japanese ministry asking local governments to encourage meetings between divorced parents and their children

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120509005259.htm

 

Divorced parents lack ways to meet kids / Ministry has asked local govts to help out, but so far only Tokyo has taken active steps

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The welfare ministry has asked local governments to encourage meetings between divorced parents and their children by arranging and overseeing such encounters, but little progress has been made.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry started a project this fiscal year to increase opportunities for parents to meet their children after a divorce by encouraging prefectural governments and those of 20 ordinance-designated major cities nationwide to help out.

But among them, only the Tokyo metropolitan government has decided to begin to offer relevant services by the end of this fiscal year. The other 66 local governments will do so later, or have no plans.

Though the local governments admitted the project is necessary, they said the services cannot be provided because they have no officials with know-how about such meeting arrangements.

Thus it is an urgent task to train personnel who can implement the services.

Experts have said that meeting with parents after they get divorced is important for the children’s growth.

But in many cases, meetings by those directly involved are difficult to hold because of emotional conflicts.

According to the Supreme Court, applications for parent-child meetings in 2010 numbered 7,749, an about 3.2-fold jump from 10 years ago.

There have been many cases in which parents who have been refused permission to meet their children have taken matters into their own hands and absconded with them.

Private organizations offering to arrange and oversee such meetings do exist, but there are too few of them to meet nationwide demand. Consequently, only a limited number of people can use the services of such organizations.

A man in his 30s living in Hiroshima Prefecture apart from his wife and child while the couple’s divorce proceedings are under way said, “As my trusting relationship with my wife has been lost, I can’t even directly contact her.”

He said an arbitration service by a nonprofit organization cost 18,000 yen for two hours. He said, “Public assistance is necessary.”

In response to such opinions, starting in this fiscal year, the ministry decided to subsidize part of the costs if local governments of prefectures, major cities and regional core cities implement their own parent-child meeting services.

The public services cover low-income earners with children under 15, and the services are free of charge.

The idea is for officials of the local governments or other public entities to coordinate times and places for the meetings and also accompany the persons involved.

Since autumn last year, the ministry has asked the local governments to proactively implement the services.

However, in a survey conducted in April by The Yomiuri Shimbun on prefectural and major city governments, only the Tokyo metropolitan government replied it planned to introduce the service within this fiscal year.

Forty-six of the local governments, or 69 percent, said they were still considering whether to introduce the service. Twenty, or 30 percent, replied that they had no plans to do so.

On why such a service had not yet been introduced, a question for which multiple responses were permitted, 32 of the governments, or 48 percent, said they do not have officials or outside experts with expertise about such meetings, and 21 of them, or 32 percent, said they could not secure budgets for the purpose.

Most of the surveyed local governments admitted the project is necessary. But the Kochi prefectural government said the project means that public entities will get involved in the participants’ private affairs and thus careful consideration is necessary.

The Fukuoka prefectural government said that local governments alone have a limit on what can be done because difficult adjustments will be necessary in some cases, and it will be necessary to establish a system in which local governments will closely cooperate with lawyers, family courts and other experts.

A ministry official said, “We’ll take the opinions into consideration so that more local governments will implement the project.”

Waseda University Prof. Masayuki Tanamura, an expert on family law, said: “Maintaining interactions between parents and children after a divorce is important for the children’s growth. As there are many parents who say they can allow children to meet divorced spouses with third-party oversight, the project is significant.

“Because this is the first attempt of its kind, the local governments seem to be reluctant due to fear of possible trouble. But it’s useful even just to coordinate meeting schedules or contact parents on behalf of the other spouses. It’s necessary to actively provide the services,” he said.

(May. 10, 2012)