Japan - Progress is slow when it comes to societal views on adoption
Progress is slow when it comes to societal views on adoption
BY PHILIP BRASOR
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
MAY 2, 2015
ARTICLE HISTORY
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The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction went into effect here on April 1, 2014, but there is another Hague treaty that Japan has yet to sign.
The purpose of the Hague Adoption Convention is to prevent the trafficking of children, and Japan is alone among developed countries in its failure to implement rules that require follow-up scrutiny when a Japanese child is adopted by a foreign party. Several years ago some lawmakers formed a Diet group to address this matter, and one member, Seiko Noda, the Liberal Democratic Party’s point person on child-rearing issues, proposed banning international adoptions of Japanese children because of the potential for abuse.
But for most Japanese orphans and abandoned/neglected children, international adoption may be their only chance to grow up in a family environment. According to Human Rights Watch, only 12 percent of the children who enter welfare facilities leave before they reach the age of majority. For various reasons, it is difficult for them to be adopted or taken into foster homes. Some reasons are procedural, but most are social. These children are considered damaged goods.
Nevertheless, tokubetsu y?shi — special adoption, meaning the adoption of children — is catching on in Japan. Normal adoption is simply placing the name of somebody in another person’s family register (koseki) for legal purposes. Noda herself was adopted by her grandfather so that he could have an heir. Her parents were still alive at the time.
Because all family-related events are specified in the koseki, adoptive status is there for everyone to see, but there wasn’t a law covering the adoption of infants until 1987. Before that, if a couple wanted to adopt a baby and raise it as their own they had to do it clandestinely. In the early ’70s, an obstetrician in Miyagi Prefecture was arrested for manipulating more than 200 birth certificates so that babies born of women who didn’t want them could be registered as the natural offspring of women who were unable to get pregnant.
According to the Special Adoption Law, children given up by their parents for any reason other than immediate adoption and at whatever age must directly go to a child-welfare facility, and once they are institutionalized it becomes increasingly difficult to find homes for them, even though there are many childless couples who are interested in adopting. The problem is these couples don’t know what to do or where to go.
For several years now, TBS’s newsmagazine “Hodo Tokushu” and Nippon TV’s documentary showcase “NNN Document,” among others, have been airing reports on special adoptions that focus on akachan engumi (literally, “baby matchmaking”), the process of arranging the adoption of newborns by couples who want children.
The Special Adoption Law states that if a mother agrees to give up her child specifically for adoption prior to giving birth, the child can be entered into the adopting party’s family register directly, without any mention of the child’s biological mother, thus eliminating one source of possible discrimination. But while the baby is given to the adopting parents as soon as he or she is born, a court must finalize the adoption after a period of at least six months. If during this period the birth mother changes her mind, the baby is returned to her. The advantage of having the child immediately transferred to the adopting parents upon birth is that there is less risk of the kind of attachment disorder that causes problems with older children who are adopted.
A common feature of these documentaries is their focus on nonprofit organizations, which are shaping the way adoption is being carried out in the absence of government standards. Some have implied that these organizations act as “brokers,” a word with unfortunate connotations, and there has been concern that the fees they charge may be exploitative. In any case, the law prohibits profit-making in adoption transactions, and there are definite costs involved, including those related to the birth mother’s medical care, which isn’t necessarily covered by national insurance.
More significantly, these groups make sure that the parties involved understand their responsibilities. This is the area that public welfare offices don’t cover, because it takes time and the kind of acquired expertise that overworked civil servants don’t always possess.
In recent years, as these documentaries have shown, special adoptions have gained greater acceptance, with the most recent reports arriving at the trickiest aspect of what is a long process: kokuchi, or “notifying” a child that he or she is, in fact, adopted. Since the koseki of special adoption children do not designate the child as having been adopted, the only way for the child to find out is if that fact is revealed otherwise.
One adoptive mother in the 2014 NTV/Chukyo TV documentary “Mothers” related to a roomful of other adopting parents how her mother-in-law, for reasons she didn’t explain, told her adopted daughter the truth of her parentage. “How much did you pay for me?” the daughter later asked her. On the other hand, some adoptive parents solve the problem before it becomes one. A couple in Okayama Prefecture profiled in the same report was so elated when they received their new son they went out and told all their neighbors.
Japan has a ways to go before it has a policy as progressive and open as Germany’s, where all adoptions are carried out by the state and all adopted children are monitored until they become adults. The media must advance the issue by covering adoption less as an anomaly and more as a way of addressing various social problems, like child abuse and abandonment, as well as infertility.
These documentaries are a small step in the right direction. Chukyo TV even won an award last year for “Mothers.” Too bad it was broadcast at 1 in the morning.
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