Author: Takeshi Hamano, University of Kitakyushu, Japan
Email: hamano@kitakyu-u.ac.jp
Published: August 4, 2017
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijas.3.1.03
Citation: Hamano, T. (2017). The Aftermath of Japan’s Ratification of the Hague Convention on Child Abduction: An Investigation into the State Apparatus of the Modern Japanese Family. IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijas.3.1.03
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the ways in which a recent international dispute has evoked an inquiry about the family ideology of modern Japan. Initially, it explains a recent issue on Japan’s ratification to the Hague Convention on child abduction. In April 2014, the Japanese government finally ratified the Hague Convention on child abduction, an international Convention to resolve disputes on international parental child abduction. However, skepticism toward Japan still remains, because, in order to put the international Convention into practice, Japan has not proceed to radical family law reform at this stage. To recognize this incongruent situation, this paper explains that the present Japanese family law is incompatible with the principle of this international Convention. Although the Convention premises shared parenting in the grant of joint child custody even after divorce, Japanese family law keeps the solo-custody approach, which is necessarily preserved in order to maintain Japan’s unique family registration system: the koseki system. Arguing that the koseki system, registering all nationals by family unit, is an ideological state apparatus of Japan as a modern nation state since the nineteenth century, this paper concludes that recent international disputes regarding parental child abduction in Japan inquires about a radical question on national family norm of Japan.
Keywords
Japan, family, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, child custody, koseki