Government officials refuse to help a parent find a child being hidden by the other parent

Japan takes no measures to assure that a child separated from a parent due to denial of visitation by the custodial parent is able to maintain contact with the non-custodial parent. Japanese officials are typically unhelpful to a non-Japanese parent trying to trace down a missing Japanese custodial or even an abducting parent.  The Residency Registration for Japanese citizens would seem to be a mechanism to always make finding a child possible.  But a parent who wishes not to be found will simply not update their Residency Registration. Although there are fines for this, they are rarely imposed, even when the deception should be obvious.

The government continues to provide services to a parent whose Residency Registration is not accurate. This is true even when these services, such as health insurance, national pension, etc are obviously being provided from a local government office in a different area from the Residency Registration. Such a parent often instructs the Post Office to forward mail for an indefinite time, or changes the address for the service, yet is not required to change their Residency Registration. Government providers of such services will typically not release information about the location of the person receiving these services, nor will the Post Office release forwarding address information.

Japan takes no measures to assure that a child separated from a parent due to denial of visitation by the custodial parent is able to maintain contact with the non-custodial parent. Conversely, Japanese officials are typically unhelpful to a non-Japanese parent trying to trace down a missing Japanese custodial or even an abducting parent.  The Residency Registration for Japanese citizens would seem to be a mechanism to always make finding a child possible. But a parent who wishes not to be found will simply not update their Residency Registration. Although there are fines for this, they are rarely imposed, even when the deception should be obvious.

• Various government agencies racially discriminate by not helping Non-Japanese locate hidden children.

A non-Japanese parent can run into many brick walls when trying to find their child who has been abducted to and hidden in Japan.  The police will say it is a "family matter" and will not file a missing persons report as would commonly be done in other countries.  Schools, local city offices, Ministry of Health, etc. will also not provide information to non-Japanese parents, citing the child's "privacy rights."  Making matters even more complicated, the abducting parent will frequently list themselves and their children under fraudulent names and addresses.  Private investigators are not licensed in Japan, and there are some who enrich themselves at the searching parent's expense, giving them false hope but no results.  Parents can easily use up many years spinning their wheels and spending many thousands of dollars searching for their children in Japan without ever finding them.   (Although this could potentially happen to Japanese also, we believe that government agencies, local governments, police and courts act this way particularly when a non-Japanese is involved, and is hence discrimination. We are investigating further and attempting to gather evidence.) 

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