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Originally Posted by GoNative
The problem in Japanese cases is that generally the Japanese courts do not get involved in custody issues and do not make rulings on custody.
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If the divorce goes to court, there will be some sort of ruling on the custody. The main reason divorces involving children end up in court is for custody issues. When it is a divorce by mutual agreement, part of the divorce agreement is to give up the children to one side or the other. It is usually to the mother - but it is still present in the divorce agreement itself as the children have to belong to one side or the other.
This is legally binding in Japan. The custodial parent is free to give as much or as little access to the other parent as they like - but things have been changing toward making the custodial parent keep up contact with the non-custodial if possible. If there are serious problems (abuse, etc), the custodial parent can legally deny complete access to the children.
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From what I've read the US is actually one of the few countries that does uphold custody agreements from other countries (who are signatory to the child abduction convention) and will prosecute it's own citizens that have abducted children from those countries
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In what I have seen, they will uphold when it is a
clear case of abduction even for countries that have not signed. When it is not clear, such as when the foreign parent said that they agreed to give up custody on the condition that they be given equal access to the children - but has NOT been given equal time with the children (because they live in the US while the children live in Japan) things change. The mother didn`t honor the agreement and so the US reserves the right to overrule. This is particularly easy to do if the father brings the children to the US legally and gets them "settled in" - and then pursues legal action in the US based on the Japanese system having been unfair to him (regardless of whether this is true or not).
As you said though, there are a lot more cases of children remaining in Japan than being whisked off to the US - most likely because there are a lot more Japanese women married to western men than the other way around. And because of the sad fact that more fathers are willing to write off children than mothers... So the issue of children being abducted to Japan is much larger than children being removed from Japan.