Words of advice and precedents for Japanese Family Court

0) Get ready for unrestrained un-truthfulness.  One parent spent years and over USD $100,000 in the Japanese courts, to get a foreign custody order recognized by the Japanese court system.  In the end, it was not enforced.  This required combination of time and money is a very structural discrimination against non-Japanese citizens.  This person says:

"The problem about enforcement is that in Japan, there is no contempt of the court, at least in civil matters. After every judgment, the parties would have to go to the enforcement court to request the judgment be enforced. Again, lawyers have a chance to argue and debate over whether enforcement is the best solution."

1) Get in touch with your Embassy and try to make a friend there.  Get them to call the court clerk for your case to inquire about the status.  Get them to call right before and after every court date.  That lets them know they are being watched.  This was a relatively successful strategy for someone I know who ended up getting weekly visitation.  Others are using this approach now and Ill try to report the results when I know them.

A friend who had their embassy call about their court case seemed to think that if you had the case number and the date of the next court meeting, a native speaker could call the court and get in touch with the "secretary" for the appropriate judge.  He had one of the embassy's Japanese officials call the court to speak with the court secretary in the relevant section. I had/have no idea of the judge's name but I did let the embassy know of the case number, time and court room of the next court hearing. That was all that was needed.
 

I telephoned the Tokyo District Court and spoke with Mr Suzuki, Court Secretary, of the 12th Civil Affairs Department which has been dealing with your case. Mr Suzuki remembered we had approached him two years ago.

As had been explained previously, Mr Suzuki said the judge is not permitted to receive directly any phone calls or visits from concerned or interested parties.  He said however that he would let the judge know that we had called and conveyed our confidence in the court process.

Mr Suzuki noted that when child custody is the issue under consideration, the main priority is placed on the child's happiness and welfare, including from the psychological perspective.

2) If your Japanese is reasonable, contact the Fathers Website guys. They have a lot of experience fighting fake claims of domestic violence, which are very common in Japan since there seem to be no laws against perjury in civil cases.  They know the angles and can hopefully give you some ideas on what to do.

www.fatherswebsite.com

3) In order to help get a court to allow overseas vacations, you should try to get your child to start corresponding with overseas relatives. This could be done by hand-written letters with pictures etc. Get the relative to make three copies of all the originals (pictures included) before mailing it.  Send you two copies and get them to send you copies of anything they get back from your child.  Get all the relatives to write, including other children, and make sure they say please visit us. In court, submit copies of everything as evidence that the relatives want to see them, and also that the child wants to visit them.  These can be later submitted to the court.

4) Submit copies of other court cases that give reasonable visitation for the non-Japanese.  I know of two so far.  If you need a copy, it might be possible.