Japan Foreign Marriage - Controversies

Controversies

While the practice of importing foreign wives has been present in Japanese society for more than thirty years, it is still too soon to understand the long-term effects. The inability to determine the effects is because foreign bride importation is still not a common enough occurrence to get the solid data needed to comprise a thorough statistical analysis. However, the moral consequences that have risen from the industry can be examined.

The first set of consequences is the negatives. In essence, a form of human trafficking has been created. While presumably all of the participants are volunteers, there is no official form of regulation, which creates the potential for exploiting young females. The potential for this is high since there is in fact a payment to the woman’s family through the third party broker. The broker and the farmer have no way of knowing if the girl has been sent willingly by her family or if this is a form of forced prostitution or perhaps even slavery. In a worst case scenario, the woman may not even be related to the family that is profiting from her dowry; the real possibility exists that woman being “sold” is a kidnap victim and the family are effectively slave traders. There are no safeguards against this.

Another possibility is that the woman is a con artist who will simply skip out of her new marriage once the dowry has been paid. As the marriage broker Keiko noted, there have been cases of the women returning to China or disappearing to urban Japan. The unwitting husband would have no way of knowing if the marriage broker was involved in this scam or if the broker was also a victim of the woman. As the women are foreigners, it would be very difficult to track them down once they had returned to their country of origin. Even if they are able to find the woman, the Japanese men may not have legal recourse to collect damages or compensation.

The final possible negative consequence is the possibility that women will be placed with an abusive or exploitative husband. These women are not given citizenship immediately and may or may not have the skills to seek the protection of the Japanese judiciary system should the husband be abusive. If the woman is being forced into any form of sexual exploitation, physical abuse, or other emotional distress it would be very difficult to uncover, especially if the woman cannot speak Japanese, or is afraid of shaming her family by being unable to fulfill the contractual agreement.