Emmanuel, Stephane, Henrik and James come from different backgrounds, but they share the same painful experience of battling Japan’s legal system — in vain — for access to their children after divorce.
Once married to Japanese women, they said they were prevented from contact with their children when their relationships disintegrated, sometimes even after court rulings in their favor.
Tough laws and patriarchal cultural norms that overwhelmingly see mothers granted sole custody after a divorce — 80 percent of the time, according to official figures — mean that fathers rarely see their children again.
Frenchman Emmanuel de Fournas has spent years battling for access to his daughter after his Japanese ex-wife moved back to Japan.
Despite winning a court order in France and filing a case under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in September 2014, he is still fighting for the right to see his daughter.
“I thought I could benefit from the clear rules of the Hague Convention, but ... they aren’t respected in Japan,” he told reporters.
“I’ve lost everything, my savings, my job,” he said tearfully.
Reporters were not able to contact the mother.
His experience is not unusual.
Henrik Teton from Canada and James Cook from the US have similar stories to tell.
“What kind of justice system is it if decisions are not implemented? There is room to do more and better,” said Richard Yung, a French senator who traveled to Japan to plead the cases of several French parents.
Although Japan has signed the Hague Convention designed to prevent a parent from moving a child to another country and blocking access for the former partner, Tokyo demonstrates “a pattern of noncompliance” with the pact, the US Department of State has said.
For foreign parents, most often fathers, “this poses major problems, because they have a different mentality and they can’t comprehend losing custody or the right to visit their child,” said Nahoko Amemiya, a lawyer for the Tokyo Public Law office.
Even when foreign parents win their case in a Japanese court, enforcement is patchy.
The department’s report this year described “limitations” in Japanese law including requirements that “direct enforcement take place in the home and presence of the taking parent, that the child willingly leave the taking parent, and that the child face no risk of psychological harm.”
With opinion divided on what causes the most trauma to children, the longer a child is separated from one parent, the more reluctant authorities are to intervene, citing a “principle of continuity.”
“It’s not that Japanese courts favor the Japanese parent, it’s that they favor the ‘kidnapper,’” who is living with the child, said John Gomez, founder of the group Kizuna, which advocates for parents separated from their children.
The Japanese government defends its record, saying that most of the 81 cases filed under the Hague Convention since 2014 have been settled.
“The majority of the cases in which we intervened have been resolved, but we are aware of six or seven where the return decision could not be implemented,” Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Shuji Zushi said.
“In these cases, there is a very strong conflict between the two sides and that leads to media attention or political action,” he said.
There are some signs of change: A panel of experts met in June to discuss new ways to enforce court orders, as well as the issue of joint custody and changes to the law.
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