Today, the E.U. Parliament has taken official action against Japan, launching an official complaint to Japan about the disturbing increasing number of parental child abductions both to and within Japan of European children. Japan became a member of the Hague Convention in 2014 but since joining little has changed. Due to Japan’s laws and lack of action on Hague Related cases there are no known cases of enforced Hague Convention returns of children back to their home country. Japan often uses loopholes when it comes to Hague Convention returns; even if a parent obtains a Hague Convention return order for their abducted child, Japan has a long history of not enforcing them. In Japan, even with a Hague Convention return order, the decision to return the child is almost always given to the abducting parent. If the abducting parent does not agree with returning the child, then the return order in not enforced. In many cases, Japan adopts a time wasting approact to Hague Convention returns where decisions and orders are delayed to such an extent that because of the lenght of time they have taken to even go through the system they automatically drop off the system and in Japan are processed as resolved when the child remains in the country they were abducted to rather than being returned. In short Japan is a country that is acting in bad faith regarding child returns under the Hague Coinvention and is not upholding it’s international obligations Japan signed up for under the Hague Convention. Europe is taking steps to end this deception by Japan. Britain as yet has not acted to condemn Japan. 

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2020-0182_EN.html

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20200706IPR82720/parliament-sounds-alarm-over-children-in-japan-taken-from-eu-parents

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-children-eu-parliament-idUSKBN23O2DK