Spirited Away: Japan Won't Let Abducted Kids Go

[Foxy Brown]

Kaya Wong's parents never imagined they would be able to have a baby.

Born three years after her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Kaya, now 4 years old, was a miracle.

But for Paul Wong, Kaya's father, the unimaginable soon became the unthinkable. Months after the cancer fatally spread to his wife's brain in 2005, Kaya, he says, was kidnapped by her maternal Japanese grandparents.

Despite being his daughter's sole surviving parent, he has few options available to him as an American in Japan — a historically xenophobic country that does not honor international child custody and kidnapping treaties. It's also a nation that has virtually no established family law and no tradition of dual custody.

[JFC]

^ That's just sad, and the grandparents are just being selfish IMO. The way I see it, they took the girl so that she could take the place of their daughter/her mother in their lives.

[ctz]

Culturally, there is no concept of dual custody or visitation. Once a couple gets divorced, the children are typically assigned to one parent and never again have contact with the other parent.

After divorcing his then-pregnant wife of four years in 1982, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi retained custody of his two eldest sons, Kotaro and Shinjiro. His ex-wife Kayoko Miyamoto took custody of their unborn son, Yoshinaga Miyamoto. Since the divorce Miyamoto has not seen her two eldest sons, and Koizumi has never met his youngest son, Yoshinaga.

If this is common, it's kinda cruel. No wonder that Japanese haven't been divorcing that much, if it means never seeing some of the children again.

[pikapikapika]

That's such a shame

[kaminokami2086]

If there's no law for kidnapping and he knows where she is, why not just go get her back?