WHEN SHIBAHASHI SATOKO divorced her husband a decade ago, she did not want her ten-year-old son to see his father. The break-up had been ugly, and she recoiled at the thought of a reunion. Then she met another divorced mother whose child, denied access to his father, looked miserable. “I thought: what a terrible mother,” she recalls. “But then I realised I’m no better.” She called her ex-husband to arrange a meeting. He has been part of the boy’s life since.
For decades Japan was the only G7 country not to recognise joint custody after divorce—so that the parent granted custody, usually the mother, could easily shut the other out. (Unsplash)
Her change of heart mirrors a broader one. For decades Japan was the only G7 country not to recognise joint custody after divorce—so that the parent granted custody, usually the mother, could easily shut the other out. A government survey in 2021 found that only one in three children of divorced parents had any contact with the absent parent, typically just once a month. In April, following a revision of a civil code unchanged for nearly eight decades, Japan introduced joint custody. The change reflects a profound shift in how the country thinks about family life.
Despite traditional family values, divorce is common. James Raymo, a demographer at Princeton University, estimates that at its peak in the 2000s, around a third of Japanese marriages ended in divorce, though that has eased to roughly a quarter today as people marry more selectively. Japan is among the world’s easiest places to split: rather than seeking a court order, as couples must in America or Britain, a Japanese pair need only sign a form at their local ward office. Around nine in ten divorces are settled in this way.
That creates problems. Decisions over money, child support and custody are made while tempers run hot, with no neutral party to cool them. The results are bleak. Only 28% of single mothers get child support from ex-husbands. Combined with a large gender pay gap, this helps explain why the relative poverty rate for single-mother households, at 45%, is one of the highest in rich countries.
The same desire to sever ties shapes contact with the children. In principle, the non-custodial parent retains the right to see them; in practice, that contact is limited and easily withheld. Divorce in Japan, notes Allison Alexy, an anthropologist, follows a “clean break” model, in the belief that shuttling between two households harms children. When ex-spouses leave, says Ms Shibahashi, they are often treated as if they have died.
Critics point to an even bleaker consequence. Japanese courts tend to award custody to whichever parent the children already live with, creating a perverse incentive: a spouse anticipating a break-up may simply take the children first. Such “parental abductions” have become hotly debated. In 2021 a Frenchman staged a hunger strike in Tokyo demanding the right to see his children after his Japanese ex-wife took them away; but she did not relent.
Supporters of joint custody hope that the new law will help. It requires divorced parents to make big decisions—over schooling, say, or relocation—together, and puts parent-child contact on a firmer legal footing. Officials hope that fathers with a continuing stake in their children’s lives will be likelier to pay support; the reform has been paired with a new statutory child-support measure.
Opposition has come mainly from women’s-rights groups, which argue that joint custody could force victims of domestic violence back into contact with their abusive former partners. The concern is by no means baseless, though a survey suggested that only 8% of divorces were caused by physical violence.
It will take time to judge the law in practice. But the direction seems right. As Ms Shibahashi puts it: “Grown-ups may fight each other, but a child should never lose a parent because of that.”
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