Why doesn’t Japan take child abduction seriously?

It’s not often that Japanese affairs get a mention in the EU, still less a condemnatory one. But that’s what happened last week when the EU petitions committee unanimously passed a motion censoring the Japanese government for failure to conform to international norms, and comply with international law, over the question of parental child abduction.

The issue, provoked by a history of cases where Japanese nationals (nearly always the mother) remove their children and subsequently deny access to their estranged foreign national father, has long been festering. It has been raised by the French and Italian presidents, and the British ambassador in the recent past, though with few tangible results. This latest rebuke, from an EU that has long had a cosy relationship with Japan, marks a significant escalation.

Earlier in the year the petitions committee heard impassioned testimony from Frenchman Vincent Fichot and Italian Tommaso Perina who had both lost contact with their children after abductions.