Here I am in 2018 at the clinic, as proud as can be at the birth of my second son, I had no idea what was waiting for me around the corner. Building this website and baring the deepest parts of my private life to the world is something I never thought I would have to do.

My story is as follows, on the 21st June 2021 I dropped of my children Kenta and Shota at their nursery as I usually did; at this time my ex-wife and I were relatively happily co-parenting the boys. From August 2020 to June 2021 my ex-wife and I had been sharing the care of the children. We had separated in August 2020 and divorced later that year in December. The divorce was amicable. We both went to the city hall and signed the papers together. My ex-wife had made a divorce agreement which I thought guaranteed my access to the children. I was apprehensive but I granted full custody rights to my ex-wife without knowing the full extent of what that meant. In my mind I was convinced that she would treat me fairly, there was just no way she was going to separate the children and I. My relationship with my children was extremely close and I loved them dearly. During the co-parenting period I would pick up the boys on Friday afternoon and drop them back at the nursery on Monday morning. My ex-wife would have the children during the week. There were many times that my ex-wife would ask me to take the children for longer periods, sometimes for the whole week. There was never any complaint about my care for the children and she happily asked me to look after the children whenever she needed help. However, later that day, on the 21st June 2021, I received a LINE message stating that it is better that I do not see the boys for a while and that I can not pick them up after nursery the following Friday as I usually did. I froze, I felt a chill run through every part of my body right out to the tips of my fingers and toes; I just knew at that point that she was going to take the children away from me. At first I pleaded with my ex-wife to allow me access to the children but to no avail. I tried pleading with her friends and family to put pressure on her to relent. My mother and my sister messaged her to plead with her to change her mind. It all fell on deaf ears.

Finally, once I realised that there was no hope of appealing to her better nature I tried mediation through the Utsunomiya-city family court from October 2021, I thought it would be staright-forward at the court but I was completely wrong. She did not appear at any of the mediation meetings, which did not seem to bother any of the officials.. Instead, she sent a lawyer as her representative who refused any pleas of mine to let me communicate with the children, even the use of a third-party organization to mediate visitation was refused. The courts bowed down to the demands of the lawyer and ignored my pleas. Finally, a judgment was made , the court ruled, in June 2022, that I could exchange pictures, letters and videos until April 2023, but could not communicate with the boys directly; from April 2023 we could then start the process of organising visitation and phone calls between myself and the children. This was utterly unsatisfactory but I accepted the ruling. I have sporadically received photos but I have never received videos or letters.

So, April 2023 came about I contacted my ex-wife’s lawyer to start the planning for direct contact but was met with silence. I had no other option and hired a lawyer for the first time. My lawyer contacted my ex-wife’s lawyer it was then that I found out she has moved far away, that she is no longer using her lawyer as go-between and I am unable to obtain the whereabouts of my children. The current situation is that I have not communicated with my children since June 2021. I do not know where they are or the status of their well-being.

I have found some support online and have been referred to a lawyer that understands these types of cases well and wishes to reform Japanese law. I hope with help of this new lawyer I will be able to gain access to my beautiful boys. I hoped that I would never have to use a lawyer, go through the courts and go to extraordinary mesures like building this website. All of this energy, time and money could have gone directly to those children, to their well-being, their happiness and their prosperity; instead it is being thrown into a black hole. I am very lucky to have been refered to a lawyer that I can trust because the single-custody system is ideally placed to be abused by nefarious lawyers. Lawyers deliberately exploit the system to make money from the misery of parents. As I was coming to terms with my own situation I was also coming to terms with the utter failure of Japanese family law and the family court system, and also realising that lawyers were deliberately gaining the system. It has been an eye-opening road to say the least but one must persevere, giving up is not an option.'

I have subsequently remarried and have a good life with my wife. All I want to do is fulfill my responsibilities and duties to my children, Kenta amd Shota. I do not understand why the Japanese family courts do not support me in this endeavour.

Thus the purpose of this website is three fold; firstly, to act as a place where my children might find me in the future if the family couts fail; two, to tell my story; and finally, to highlight the absurdity of the single-custody system, the Japanese family law system and exploitation by lawyers.