International Child Abduction in Japan

International child abduction in Japan refers to the illegal international abduction or removal of children from their country of habitual residence by an acquaintance or family member to Japan or their retention in Japan in contravention to the law of another country. Most cases involve a Japanese mother taking her children to Japan in defiance of visitation or joint custody orders issued by Western courts. The issue is a growing problem as the number of international marriages increases. Barring exceptional circumstances, the effects of child abduction are generally detrimental to the welfare of children. Parental abduction often has a particularly devastating effect on parents who may never see their children again.

Japan, together with most Asian and African countries, is not a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which obliges signatories to promptly return abducted children to their country of habitual residence. Critics of the Japanese legal system say this refusal has the practical effect of facilitating international child abduction. The issue has become a cause for significant concern to signatory nations, the majority of which are Western countries. The main impediment to Japan's signing the convention is that it would require an overhaul of the Japanese legal system. Japanese family law considers issues of divorce custody, child support or alimony as predominantly private matters. Consequently, Japan has no enforcement mechanism to enforce foreign custody rulings or recommendations made by its own domestic courts. Furthermore, Japan does not recognise joint parental authority or shared "residence" after divorce. As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, however, Japan is supposed to recognize the right of a child to obtain non-custodial parent visitation. However, the Supreme Court of Japan has recently ruled that this does not amount to the right of non-custodial parents to see their children (it has ruled that state-enforced visitation is the right of neither parent nor children). This ruling, in effect, makes visitation without the cooperation of the custody-holding parent a practical impossibility.