Divorcee sues to register child to real dad
OKAYAMA (Kyodo) A woman in Soja, Okayama Prefecture, who gave birth within 300 days of her divorce will file a lawsuit seeking ¥3.3 million in compensation from the city for refusing to register her baby as born to her and her current husband, the woman’s lawyer said Monday.
The city rejected the registration submitted by her current husband on Nov. 10, citing a provision in the Civil Code — Paragraph 2 of Article 772 — that says a child born within 300 days from the date of the dissolution or cancellation of a marriage is deemed to have been conceived during the time the couple were married. The woman was separated from her former husband for a much longer period, according to the lawyer.
The suit, to be filed with the Okayama District Court, claims the city violated the Constitution. (さらに…)
Japan would help children of international marriages
Japanese women from collapsed international marriages who bring their children to Japan without their partner’s consent are facing charges of abduction — an issue that has highlighted a convention covering international child abduction.
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction has been signed by about 80 countries, including in Europe and the United States. Under the convention, it is illegal for one parent to take a child away from his or her country or residence without first settling issues such as custody and visitation rights.
Signatory countries have a responsibility to return children who have unilaterally been taken out of the country by one of their parents. (There are some exceptions, such as when the child refuses to go back.) Japan, however, has not signed the convention, so this rule of returning the child does not apply. This has raised strong dissatisfaction among foreigners who cannot see their children because they have been taken to Japan.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice are giving favorable consideration to signing the convention, but the opinions of experts are split.
Kensuke Onuki, a lawyer familiar with the issue, is opposed to Japan signing the convention, based on the viewpoint of Japan protecting its own citizens. (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Japinos & Japayukis
I learned two new terms today, “Japinos and Japayuki.” Thank goodness that I will never use them! Here is a follow-up to a few stories that I previously blogged on abandoned families in Japan…
Some 70,000 Filipinos live in Japan, most working as entertainers. An estimated 50,000 (some groups put the number as high as 100,000) Japanese-Filipino children — known as “Japinos” — live in the Philippines, often abandoned or orphaned by their fathers after liaisons with Filipino women, who in most cases worked as entertainers in Japan, said Akira Oka, head of the Shin-Nikkeijin Network or SNN.
While some in Japan have probably heard of stories similar to the one above most have not heard of the families abandoned in Japan by USFJ servicemen. This was reported by Stars & Stripes.
…on the land of the rising half-breeds (not my term)…
J-cast includes data to support its observations. According to the ministry, the number of infants born in 2006 with at least one foreign parent came to 3.2 percent, or one child out of 30. This means that about one child in every school class will be of either non-Japanese ancestry or part Japanese.
International marriages are increasing, the site says. The ministry noted that 6.6 percent of couples wed had at least one foreign partner, which makes one couple out of every 15. This is the highest level in the past 10 years. In the central wards of Tokyo and in Osaka and Nagoya, the rate [of intermarriage] has reached the high figure of one couple out of 10.
…and on a revision to the Nationality Law:
The government plans to revise the Nationality Law to remove a provision requiring parents to be married for their children to obtain Japanese citizenship, according to government sources.
The decision came after the Supreme Court ruled in June that denying Japanese citizenship to children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers is unconstitutional, the sources said.
Well it seems that the stars are starting to align and progress is being made in the fight to help biracial children and their mothers find a better life, and most probably citizenship, in Japan. Read the Japan Times article below for the rest of the story: (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Japinos & Japayukis
I learned two new terms today, “Japinos and Japayuki.” Thank goodness that I will never use them! Here is a follow-up to a few stories that I previously blogged on abandoned families in Japan…
Some 70,000 Filipinos live in Japan, most working as entertainers. An estimated 50,000 (some groups put the number as high as 100,000) Japanese-Filipino children — known as “Japinos” — live in the Philippines, often abandoned or orphaned by their fathers after liaisons with Filipino women, who in most cases worked as entertainers in Japan, said Akira Oka, head of the Shin-Nikkeijin Network or SNN.
While some in Japan have probably heard of stories similar to the one above most have not heard of the families abandoned in Japan by USFJ servicemen. This was reported by Stars & Stripes.
…on the land of the rising half-breeds (not my term)…
J-cast includes data to support its observations. According to the ministry, the number of infants born in 2006 with at least one foreign parent came to 3.2 percent, or one child out of 30. This means that about one child in every school class will be of either non-Japanese ancestry or part Japanese.
International marriages are increasing, the site says. The ministry noted that 6.6 percent of couples wed had at least one foreign partner, which makes one couple out of every 15. This is the highest level in the past 10 years. In the central wards of Tokyo and in Osaka and Nagoya, the rate [of intermarriage] has reached the high figure of one couple out of 10.
…and on a revision to the Nationality Law:
The government plans to revise the Nationality Law to remove a provision requiring parents to be married for their children to obtain Japanese citizenship, according to government sources.
The decision came after the Supreme Court ruled in June that denying Japanese citizenship to children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers is unconstitutional, the sources said.
Well it seems that the stars are starting to align and progress is being made in the fight to help biracial children and their mothers find a better life, and most probably citizenship, in Japan. Read the Japan Times article below for the rest of the story: (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Gaijin Smash Meets the Devil
The blogger over at Gaijin Smash (list in the Black Tokyo Japan Blog Roll) had me rolling in laugher with his The Devil is Prada posts. Here is an excerpt:
That’s another thing I forgot to mention last time…quick cultural lesson, often times when you enter a store, the Japanese clerks will say “irrashaimase!” Kind of hard to translate, but roughly it means “Welcome!” That’s all well and good, but the problem is that in these fashion stores, it can be hard to keep track of who is weaving in and out of the store. To solve this problem, the clerks will just shout out “irrashaimase!” at 3-second intervals. This becomes particularly annoying when you’re standing right next to them and they just keep saying it! Goddamnit, you already welcomed me to this hell stop, stop doing it!
You can read the rest of the story at Gaijin Smash by clicking here.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Land of the Rising Half-breeds?!
I am pretty sure that those of mixed-heritage in Japan (sometimes referred to as half or double) will not take to being called a half-breed too kindly (they are not dogs or plants) but the article by J-cast below is none the less interesting. Here are some previous Black Tokyo reports that provide additional information.
A rapid increase in the number of women in their 20s and 30s choosing foreign husbands may turn Japan into a land of half-breeds, or so says vernacular web news site J-cast.
The site refers to Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare survey data that indicated that one baby out of every 30 is of mixed blood origin (konketsu no haafu). Moreover in the central wards of Tokyo, as well as in both Osaka and Nagoya, there is a high rate [of intermarriage] — one couple out of 10. According to an expert, over the past five years the number of [Japanese] women choosing Caucasian partners has increased more than tenfold. Is Japan, J-cast wonders, on the verge of becoming a society where [the presence of] mixed-breeds is taken for granted? (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Kids born out of wedlock to gain Japanese citizenship?!
The government plans to revise the Nationality Law to remove a provision requiring parents to be married for their children to obtain Japanese citizenship, according to government sources.
The decision came after the Supreme Court ruled in June that denying Japanese citizenship to children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers is unconstitutional, the sources said.
The revision bill is expected to center on the following two points:
- Japanese fathers’ acknowledgement of paternity will be the sole requirement for children to obtain Japanese citizenship, removing the requirement for parents’ marital status from the provision.
- Those who have falsely claimed paternity will face imprisonment or a fine of up to 200,000 yen.
The government plans to submit a bill to revise the law in the next extraordinary Diet session after obtaining approval from the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, according to the sources. (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Do Japanese Women Make Better Wives?
That was the question posed by Jet Magazine in 1953. Many know that the most tenacious form of legal segregation in the United States (US), the banning of interracial marriage, was not fully lifted until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967 by the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia. At that time, inter-racial marriage meant marriages between blacks and whites.
Changes in racial attitudes in the US over the last 30 years clearly played a major role in the mushrooming of inter-racial marriages, which were illegal in most states at the end of the 19th century. As recently as 1945, the legislature of California which, next to Hawaii, has become the country’s multi-racial state passed a law that banned marriage between whites and Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians (which included Chinese and Japanese), and Malays.
US Servicemen and Japanese Women
After World War II, however, the law began to change as U.S. servicemen married Japanese women, and as the civil rights movement began challenging anti-miscegenation laws in the courts. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all such laws were unconstitutional, although it took Alabama until 2000 to repeal its ban. (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Custody Battles in Japan
Michael Hassett writes:
“There is a 21.1-percent likelihood that a man who marries a Japanese national will do the following: create at least one child with his spouse (85.2 percent probability), then divorce within the first 20 years of marriage (31 percent), and subsequently lose custody of any children (80 percent). And in a country such as Japan — one that has no visitation rights and neither statutes nor judicial precedents providing for joint custody — loss of custody often translates into complete loss of contact, depending on the desire of the mother.
And if this figure is not startling enough, this year’s calculation using more current data would leave us with an even higher likelihood: 22 percent. Having this information, we must now ask a question that most of us would dread presenting to a friend in a fog of engagement glee: Is it the behavior of a wise man to pursue a course of action that has such a high probability of leaving your future children without any contact with their own father?
Most of us enter a marriage with the realization that divorce is a possibility. Of course, we don’t hope for a breakup, but we accept that unions do occasionally dissolve, and heartbreak — usually temporary — will often result. However, do we ever enter marriage thinking beyond our own selves to the realization that there is a substantial likelihood that our own children — our personal flesh and blood — will be ripped from our lives? Doubtful. But in this country, this loss happens to one in every four fathers. Does it happen more to non-Japanese men? Most likely not. The divorce-to-marriage ratio for relationships between Japanese women and foreign men was nearly 39 percent in 2006. For the entire nation it was 41 percent. (さらに…)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Problems with Japan’s Family Registry
Here is an interesting and problematic read on Japan’s Koseki System:
“This may be common knowledge, but it wasn’t for me (admittedly due to my own failure to properly research the issues), the lesson being that you should never take anything for granted — not even something as simple as your child’s last name.
My wife and I have separate last names; she kept her maiden name when we married. Yesterday, we took the Notification of Birth form for our recently-born daughter to the city hall to file it. Naturally assuming that our daughter would take on my last name, we filled it out with my last name and her chosen name. Fifteen minutes later, we were waved over to be told that because my wife’s maiden name is still on her koseki — and as we all know, my name is just a footnote on her koseki — we cannot use my last name, and our daughter would have my wife’s last name. The only way around this is to have my wife file for a change of name at court, whereupon her name will officially be changed to mine, and thus our daughter will be able to take on my last name.
While it’s a quick fix for the time being, the horrendous legal and familial limitations put on foreigners by the koseki system finally really hit home. I’ve never felt my existence was negated quite so much as the instant where we were informed of this rule. I guess I’m just offering this anecdote as a warning to people considering marrying/having children because this is what you will face if you opt to go with different last names, and as an example of why the koseki system needs a serious overhaul, particularly with respect to foreigners.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Additional information on the Koseki System.
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