The New Paper - 19 Jul 2003

Divorce your Japanese wife - and lose your kids

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/top/story/0,4136,30759-1058630340,00.html

IT'S 'Bye bye, children' if you are a foreigner going through a divorce in Japan.

Forget shared custody or visitation rights. In many cases, the foreign spouse - especially fathers - can even forget about ever seeing their children again.

For when an international marriage collapses there, child custody would go to their former Japanese partners, reported The Washington Post.

Even if the wife whisks the children away, there is no legal remedy as it is not a crime there to kidnap your own child.

Linguistics professor Sean Reedy is one foreigner who has been through it all.

One Saturday 18 months ago, his wife just upped and left - with their three sons.

He came home one day, and their clothes were gone.

His Japanese wife took his sons into hiding that day, preempting custody of the boys by simple possession.

She did so, confident that Japan's customs and laws would help her keep the children from their father.

It stunned Mr Reedy, 44, who had been in Japan for 16 years.

But in the Land of the Rising Sun, the wife gets the children in 80 to 90 per cent of the cases, according to divorce lawyers. Fathers are expected to drop out of sight.

The school refused to tell him where they had been transferred, although there was no allegation of abuse.

Through her attorney, his wife has let him see them three times in 18 months, but he doesn't know where they live and cannot contact them.

She sued for divorce, and he demanded frequent visitation rights.

Said Mr Reedy: 'In court, when I said I wanted to see my kids every weekend, they laughed at me.'

Family experts say divorce carries a stigma in Japan, so ex-spouses avoid each other. The workaholic hallmark of post-World War II Japan resulted in a clear division of responsibility in which husbands belong to their job and the children, to their mothers.

Mothers take total responsibility for children - they're blamed, for instance, if their children get bad marks in school - and are expected to retain that role after divorce.

Some experts also argue that children's loyalties are less divided if the father is not around. It is rare for Japanese fathers, or mothers, to fight that tradition.

When one parent in a failed marriage is a Westerner who wants continued contact with the children, there is little legal help.

Japan ranks second, behind Mexico, in the frequency of parental abduction cases handled by the US State Department, according to a spokesman.

NO ASSISTANCE

Even as a tenured professor and taxpayer, Mr Reedy could get no assistance from the Japanese courts in getting his children back - or even seeing them regularly.

Said lawyer Kensuke Onuki, who handles international divorces: 'It's a big problem, especially for foreign men. The situation is totally different from the US.

'There are hardly any cases where my clients are able to see their children.'

And it's a growing problem, as international marriages increase in Japan and the stigma of divorce declines.

In 2001, the Health Ministry recorded nearly 40,000 marriages between a Japanese and foreigner, more than triple the number in 1980. It also counted more than 13,000 divorces of mixed-nationality couples, nearly double that of a decade ago.

In Japan, 'it has nothing to do with whether the kids would benefit by being with another parent'.

Once there is a divorce, the line is cut.

That's it.

CASE #1:

Can't enforce law

THE court overturned the divorce on grounds that Mr David Brian Thomas's wife doctored papers and forged his seal.

But Mr Thomas has been unable to see his son, Graham Hajime, since his Japanese wife and her parents locked him out of their house in 1992.

He said: 'There's no method in Japan of enforcement. Technically, I have won, but I have lost.

CASE #2:

Wanted by FBI

SALT Lake City lawyer Michael Gulbraa, 39, has a Utah court order for custody of his two sons, now 12 and 13.

But his Japanese ex-wife took them to Japan in 2001.

The Japanese police know where they are, he said, but won't arrest them.

He said: 'They are wanted by the FBI and Interpol, but the (police) say abduction by a parent is not a crime in Japan.'

CASE #3:

Caught by old law

MR ENGLE Nieman, 46, was arrested at the Osaka port and spent four months in jail for trying to return to Holland with his 1-year-old daughter after his wife moved in with her parents.

He was arrested under an old law against trafficking of girls for prostitution.

He complained: 'My wife is now hiding somewhere with my daughter. She doesn't show up for court.'