Japan: Parent hope as global custody treaty signed

Japans Upper House members approved joining the convention yesterday. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

The upper house of parliament voted unanimously to join the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction following its passage in the more powerful lower house last month. Japan was the only Group of Seven nation that had not joined the convention, which has 89 signatories.

The convention will probably take effect later this fiscal year, which ends in March 2014, as other steps, including passage of an implementation bill, are needed first, said Tatsushi Nishioka, a foreign ministry official.

Britain, the United States, France and other countries have repeatedly urged Japan to join the convention. It seeks to ensure custody decisions are made by the courts of the country where the abducted child originally resided, and that the rights of access of both parents are protected.

Custody battles between parents of broken international marriages have become a growing problem in recent years, as Japanese mothers bring children home and refuse to let foreign ex-husbands visit or see their children.

For years, Japan had resisted joining the convention, citing cases of Japanese women fleeing abusive foreign husbands.

The issue has been an irritant in otherwise close relations between the West and Japan. US secretary of state John Kerry called it a “huge issue” that needed to be resolved.

It gained attention in 2009, when American Christopher Savoie was arrested in Japan after his Japanese ex-wife accused him of abducting their two children as they walked to school.

He had been granted full custody by a US court, but his  ex-wife violated that ruling by taking the children from Tennessee to Japan.

Amid accusations of kidnapping from both sides, Mr Savoie was eventually released and allowed to leave Japan – on condition that he leave his children behind.

Another case is that of Scottish author Douglas Galbraith, 47, whose Japanese wife abducted his two sons, Satomi and Makoto, from the family’s Edinburgh home in 2003 and fled to Japan. He has not seen them since, despite efforts to try and gain access.

Last year he published a book, My Son, My Son, which serves as a letter to them, filling in those missing years.

Mr Galbraith has previously told how police in Scotland and the Japanese consulate in Edinburgh were reluctant to help, as his sons were with their mother.

Speaking previously about how he would feel if Japan signed the custody treaty, he said it would be too late for him.

He said: “My children have been living a Japanese childhood since they were four and six.  I don’t think it would be in their interests for me to disrupt that.  I just want contact.”

The phenomenon has given rise to this group identifying themselves as “left behind” parents.

In 2010, the US House of Representatives turned up the pressure on Japan by voting overwhelmingly for a non-binding resolution that “condemns the abduction and retention” of children held in Japan “in violation of their human rights and United States and international law”.

Japanese law allows only one parent to have custody of children in divorce cases – nearly always the mother. That has kept some foreign and many Japanese fathers from seeing their children until they are adults.

Under the pact signed yesterday, Japan’s foreign ministry would set up a central authority to handle petitions by the foreign parent to locate or visit the child, and try to work with both the parents to settle disputes through consultations. If those fail, family courts would take up the cases and issue rulings, Mr Nishioka said.

American Kevin Brown, whose Japanese wife fled with his two-year-old son six years ago from where they were living in central Japan, says the decision will not affect his situation as the convention will not apply to past cases, only future ones.

Mr Brown is sceptical that the proposed office to handle petitions from foreign parents will have any power to grant them access to their children in Japan.

“I think it’s just going to be someone will be there to hear your complaints,” he said.