Human Rights in Japan - Rights of Children

Rights of Children

Boys and girls have equal access to health care and other public services. Education is mostly free and compulsory through the lower secondary level (age 14 or ninth grade). Education was available widely to students who met minimum academic standards at the upper secondary level through the age of 18. Society places an extremely high value on education, and enrollment levels for both boys and girls through the free upper secondary level exceeded 96%.

Public attention was focused increasingly on reports of frequent child abuse in the home. The law grants child welfare officials the authority to prohibit abusive parents from meeting or communicating with their children, although due to Japanese cultural views on family matters being "private", this enforcement option is rarely exercised. The law also bans abuse under the guise of discipline and obliges teachers, doctors, and welfare officials to report any suspicious circumstances to 1 of the 182 nationwide local child counseling centers or to a municipal welfare center. In May 2003, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare reported that 108 children died as a result of child abuse since the enactment of the Child Abuse Prevention Law in 2000. In 2003, there were a record 23,738 cases of child abuse, up almost 2% from 2002, according to the Cabinet Office. Approximately 50% of the cases involved violence, and 40% were cases of parental neglect. Child welfare centers likewise reported a record 26,573 calls in 2003, an increase of 2,800 calls from the previous year. Generally accepted statistics indicate that upwards of 70% of child abuse cases involve a female perpetrator, usually the child's mother, demonstrating that violence and abuse is not a gender-specific phenomenon. Although the Government offered subsidies to local governments to combat record-high child abuse, only 13% accepted the offer. Most of the local governments declining the subsidies stated they could not afford to pay their share of the bill.

Incidents of violence in schools, severe bullying ("ijime") and bullycide also continued to be a societal and government concern. According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, public elementary school children committed a record 1,777 violent acts in the 2003 academic year, an increase of 27% from the previous school year, including acts of violence committed both on and off school grounds. In all 35,392 violent acts were committed in public elementary, junior high, and high schools during the 2003 academic year. Overall, cases of bullying rose 5.2%.

Student-on-student violence accounted for 50% of the violence by students in public schools. In June, a sixth grader murdered her classmate, and a junior high school student pushed a 5-year-old boy off the fourth floor of an apartment building. The MOJ's Office of the Ombudsman for Children's Rights provided counseling services for children 18 years of age and younger who had been victims of bullying. In May, a High Court overturned a 2002 lower court ruling and ordered seven persons to pay a total 57.6 million yen to parents of a 13-year-old boy killed in a bullying incident in 1993.

Teenage prostitution, dating for money, and child pornography continued to be problems. According to the Cabinet Office's white paper, there were 722 sex-related crimes associated with dating sites during the year. Easy access to web sites through mobile phones with Internet access made it easier for strangers to set up encounters with juveniles. In July 2003, the Diet passed a law criminalizing the use of the Internet for child pornography and prostitution.

Children under the age of 14 cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions. Under juvenile law, juvenile suspects are tried in family court and have the right of appeal to an appellate court. Family court proceedings are not open to the public, a policy that has been criticized by family members of juvenile crime victims. For the last several years, juvenile crime has shown a trend toward more serious offenses such as murder, robbery, arson, and rape. The Tokyo prefectural government continued programs to protect the welfare of stateless children, whose births their illegal immigrant mothers had refused to register for fear of forcible repatriation.