Things are not going well in your relationship, and you are afraid that your Japanese partner might divorce you and run away with your child. Here is some advice if you are living in Japan already

If you have not been living in Japan for 6 months yet, leave. Get out. Although Japan has not ratified the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, 6 months is the generally accepted time required to establish habitual residency. Some countries like the UK, reportedly treat Japan as if they had really signed this convention, and might return you to Japan otherwise. Its gravely unfair to the non-Japanese parent as Japan will not treat their own citizens the same way.

Finally, after reading this section, be sure to see the section on Afraid Your Spouse Will Abduct Your Children.

Well first of all, its not possible to be divorced against your will in Japan, at least without a lot of court battles. The bad news is that it is not all that difficult to forge a signature of a non-Japanese on a "kyogi rikon" (mutual consent) divorce form. It has allegedly happened to at least a couple people I know of. It even happens for the hanko between Japanese spouses. Both spouses do not have to be present in order to turn in this divorce form.

To prevent that form from being filled in, you can file another form, every 6 months, with the local government office. More information here. Do it. If you are overseas, be sure to keep this up very regularly, because it seems that after a period of 3 yrs or more separation, it would be just a formality for the Japanese spouse her to sign the necessary form at the kuyakusho and get their divorce, even without his signature or inkan. I think this is allowed under the pretext of 'abandonment'.

After a divorce in Japan, only one parent gets custody and routinely restricts access to the child from the other. So if a Japanese spouse forges the Divorce By Mutual Consent papers they can also give themselves custody at the same time, making it easier for them to go abroad and then abduct the child and bring it back to Japan. (There is a foreign woman in Japan right now whose Japanese husband abducted the child from abroad and forged the divorce papers giving himself custody in the process.)

One member has the experience that their spouse prepared a kyogi rikon divorce form and asked him to submit it, yet later changed her mind and put a block on it at the local government office. She continued to put 6 month blocks on it, yet later gave him another signed/hanko'd one to submit and let him decide on custody. She was applying for mediation at the time, and it turned out that she had to withdraw the block on the rikon todoke to do this. With advice from his lawyer, this member then tried to submit the rikon todoke, but the local government office officials would not accept the form. Even after the lawyer called to discuss it, they refused. The reason was never clear. It could be that the mediation process had been coincidentally cancelled that day and the block restored, or it could be that there was some discrimination against a non-Japanese getting custody like this.

The two important points here are that 1) To go through with mediation, you appear to have to cancel blocks on rikon todoke (divorce form) being submitted. This opens up a window where a spouse could submit a forged one. So you probably want to check the status of your spouse's koseki more regularly during mediation. 2) Be prepared for being refused if you submit one, (a legally prepared one of course) and know your rights. Get the name of who you speak to and bring a tape recorder. (Please report back here on your experiences in submitting a divorce form, positive or negative.)

Another member has had the experience of being sued for divorce, and carrying thru with a counter suit to get custody of the children. But apparently, given this and the fact that he carried thru with mediation on the subject, it means that he automatically agrees to the divorce. So although an opposition lawyer or a Family Court employee may claim that mediation is not legally binding if you do not come to an agreement, it looks like there might be other impacts that it could have anyways. Be careful about attending mediation. It can have consequences.

Several members have complained about their spouse out right lying about things that happened in their marriage. There have also been several discussions on perjury laws in Japanese courts. A couple people have even asked their lawyers, but the answers range from "yes it is illegal to lie in both civil court and criminal court" to "lying will be held against her in the judgment, but there will be no punishment or punitive damages", to "there are no laws against lying civil court, only in criminal court." Regardless, we have never heard of punishment for this in Japan and there are several articles on the internet talking about it that makes it further confusing.

[REVISE FOLLOWING AND POINT TO A COMMON PERJURY SECTION]

It is unclear whether or not Japan has laws against perjury in civil court. (There seem to be in criminal court, although the current comment may not be far off in criminal court either.) Even if there are perjury laws, it has been reported by people who asked their lawyers, that a judge virtually never penalizes a person for lying, especially in the Family Court. Only when the lies are so egregious and the other person is able to prove it, is perjury likely to matter. So the moral of this story is that you should keep records of things that your spouse may try to lie about, such as

Who paid for living expenses. Keep receipts of major purchases such as your house. (Definitely make sure the house is jointly registered, not just one of you.)
Rent payments.
Pictures of the house and neighborhood of where you lived if overseas so he/she cannot claim you lived in a slum.
Bank books showing how much money he/she withdrew from your account to prove how much you gave them to live on. (This is tricky as it could also be later used to establish alimony. We support alimony, but it needs to be fair and linked to child visitation if appropriate.)
receipts of medical treatment, records of who called for help and when if she tries to commit suicide, etc.
Names of police contacted if you ever have to call the police.
If your spouse is abusive, you certainly want to try to get a voice recording with a hidden recorder. And if they threaten over the phone, same thing. You would want to record it. Save those answering machine tapes with nasty messages! <Link to section on tape recording>

<TODO: This is mostly advice for a non-Japanese. Rewrite to apply to Japanese also.>
<TODO: Add a special section on what to do if spouse or child abuse is occuring. Perhaps on main menu under Help Now...>