Written in Partnership with Amir BakianIt was July 30th, 2022, when the Japanese mother of our beloved young son suffered a Kramer vs. Kramer moment, one from which I have yet to recover. We separated in 2018 in the United States when our son was just one year old, but remained on amicable terms, enough that my son’s mother willingly allowed me to visit their residence in Japan. She had relocated to her hometown of Nagano after our separation, but it was a journey I was more than happy to make, even during COVID. We worked together so I could enter Japan and endure the grueling quarantine process and daily check-ins required by the Japanese Health Department. She was not employed, not uncommon among single mothers in Japan, of whom an estimated 2.5 million live below the poverty line. I made no objections to an agreement to pay $2300 a month in child support, and have never missed a payment.
But last year on July 30th, my son’s mother made a shocking decision that effectively destroyed any peace I had made with my son living across the world from me. She abruptly declared that I was no longer welcome in my son’s life, and my shock was compounded by the discovery that her rash decision was fully protected under Japan’s antiquated sole custody system.
On that muggy day in July, my gleefully rambunctious son raced ahead of me as I was walking him to a Saturday school known as Kumon in the nearby town of Tsujido. To my great dismay, he took a minor fall that required all of three stitches in his forehead. The trip to the clinic meant my son was relieved from Saturday school, so instead we had ice cream and went to see Pixar’s LIGHTYEAR, only because my son was fortunate enough to sustain nothing more than a superficial injury. I may never grasp the decision-making that ensued on the part of my son’s mother, but it quickly culminated in her ordering me to bring my son to the police station, where the authorities must have been informed that the boy had been kidnapped. I returned my son at the agreed-upon hour to his home, and that was the last contact of any kind I was allowed with my son since that fateful day.
My son was weeks shy of his 5th birthday, and turned six this past August. That is a year of my son’s life I will never recover. I have reached out to my son’s mother and pleaded for her to reconsider more times than I can recall. I appealed to every known member of her family for assistance, begging for only a handful of days a year to visit with my son. My hope is that those precious days would preserve the building blocks of a loving father-son bond that was summarily dismissed because he tripped and fell, parallelling the iconic moment in the divorce drama, “Kramer vs Kramer.”
In the film, Meryl Streep’s character demands full custody after her son takes a spill at the playground with Dustin Hoffman, who plays the father. But it’s worth noting that the mother allows Dustin Hoffman to see their son one night a week and every other weekend. In my situation, I’m not even allowed a video or phone call with my son. I fear that by the time he turns 18, he may not even remember me, and I’m haunted by thoughts of what my son’s mother might be telling him, if she acknowledges my existence at all. I recently spoke to a divorced Japanese father whose ex-wife told their young children that he was deceased, a false claim he’s legally obligated to honor until they turn 18. It’s hard to believe that such preposterous falsehoods are protected by law in Japan today.
Japan’s sole custody policy affects over a million single parents, making the nation an outlier among developed countries due to its archaic stance. The country is unique in its willingness to sign UN treaties with allies while disregarding them domestically, as it lacks and will not establish enforcement mechanisms. In 2013, Japan reluctantly joined the Hague Abduction Convention under international pressure but continues to willfully ignore its existence by failing to enforce it. Calls for reform in the sole custody system have grown in recent years from both domestic and foreign parties, but the system remains unchanged in 2023. The hope for reform, eagerly awaited by tormented parents longing for their absent children, has yet to materialize, much to our collective dismay.
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