Adoption in Japan Part 2: Attitudes to Adoption

In Part One I explained why there are orphanages full of children but very few are available for adoption. In this post I want to talk about factors that discourage parents from adopting even those children who are available. Although I’ve researched this topic, if you notice any mistakes or misinformation please do let me know. I am by no means an expert. I am also very aware of the dangers of the kinds of generalisations I’m making here. It’s impossible to write this sort of article without saying things like “Japanese society treats…” or “in Japan it is seen as…”. Of course Japan, no less than any other country, is comprised of diverse individuals. Many of them I am sure would disagree with the various opinions and prejudices I describe, and I hope that in reading this you can remember that generalisations are not universally applicable.

 

 Adoption Law

Japan has a long history of adoption… of adults. This is a very practical way, within a patriarchal system, to ensure smooth inheritance. If one doesn’t have a son to inherit the family name and business, one can adopt a suitable successor. This may be an extended family member, a gifted apprentice or trusted employee, or, if one has a daughter, a son-in-law. Think how different world history could have been if Henry the Eighth had had adoption as an option? These “inheritance” adoptions are not limited to the business world or bygone days. An old classmate of mine told me about the difficulties in her family when her younger brother refused to be adopted by their grand-parents. To explain the situation let me back track for a moment to introduce the family register, centre piece of every modern family law problem in Japan (see this post on custody disputes). Each family has a family register, kept at their local city office. Think of it a bit like the old family bible: each birth, marriage and death is recorded. One child, usually but not necessarily the oldest son, will inherit and continue the parents’ register. The other children may join another family’s register through marriage or adoption, or they may start their own register. A poignant moment in the TV drama 14 Year Old Mother (14才の母) shows the titular character realising that she cannot register her baby’s birth in her father’s register: she has to start her own “family”, with her as the head and only other member in order to register her child. As an unwed mother she is both symbolically and legally alone. In the case of my friend’s family, her maternal grandparents had only one daughter and no extended family with a superfluity of sons. That daughter married a man who was not able to take over her family (I assume he was already inheriting his parents’ register), moving into his register, and leaving her parents’ register empty of heirs. She had three children, two sons and a daughter (my classmate). The elder son was inheriting his father’s register, so the maternal grandparents wanted to adopt the younger son. This would mean him changing his name and entering their register. He refused however, not wanting the responsibility (there may have been a plot of land attached to the family name that they expected him to live on and farm, and he would have been expected to care for them (or more likely to have his wife care for them) while living together in their family home in their old age). The grandparents were upset and there was a lot of fighting going on, but my classmate noted glumly that through it all neither family expressed any thoughts of investing her as their heir. 

In what I think is a genius MacGyvering, inheritance adoption is used as a kind of de facto same-sex marriage arrangement by gay Japanese couples. Since the purpose is to clarify inheritance, there is no age restriction, meaning that one partner simply adopts the other as his or her successor. This means that their relationship has legal status; they are registered as a single household, and inheritance/compensation/other money issues are covered. These inheritance adoptions do not sever the relationship between adoptee and birth parents or entail any duty of care from adoptive parent to adoptee.  

Adoption in the sense of taking a non-biological child and making them legally and emotionally indistinguishable from a biological child is an entirely new concept in Japan. Legislation to create the legal framework for this sort of adoption was only finalised in 1989. The entire concept remains unfamiliar, particularly in the case of interracial adoptions. Back in 2005 I was showing my family photos to some older ladies I was having lunch with. They were confused about how my Caucasian sister and brother-in-law had been able to have two Asian daughters. I tried to explain adoption with the help of a dictionary, but didn’t get very far. Then one of the ladies said that she understood, and began explaining it to the others in Japanese. “It’s like my cats!” she said. “Momo is a pure breed I bought from a pet shop, and Tama is a stray I started feeding then eventually took in. Her nieces are like Tama-chan.” I repeated this story to the social worker who is handling our adoption incidentally, and she couldn’t help laughing; apparently when she had tried to explain her job to her grandmother the older lady had initially thought that her job involved finding homes for cats.

The family register raises its ugly head again in the issue of biological parents’ willingness to release their child for adoption. A child who is raised in an orphanage appears normally on the register (in most cases). A child who is given up for adoption will still be listed in the register, but with the adoption noted. For a young woman, having an adopted child listed in her register could cause any number of problems, including employment and marriage discrimination. There will be negative consequences not only for her but for her entire extended family. If she were to have an abortion, her register would remain unaffected. Some obstetricians have run a black market in matching infertile couples with patients experiencing unplanned pregnancies and illegally registering the birth of the latter’s child to the former’s register. Some private adoption agencies legally facilitate adoptions of newborns who are never listed in the birth mother’s register, but this means that the full costs of the mother’s medical care throughout pregnancy and birth must be paid up front. Although Japan has national health insurance, the costs of healthy pregnancy and a normal vaginal birth are not covered and have to be paid at the time of treatment. After a birth is registered in the family register the government pays a “baby bonus” to the mother that reimburses these costs. In a “normal” situation this means that the pregnancy and birth are in practice free, but if the birth is not registered the bonus isn’t paid, laying a large financial burden on the biological mother. Most agencies require the adoptive parents to pay this amount in addition to other fees and charges, meaning that even above-board, not-for-profit agencies charge very high fees.

 

Societal Acceptance of Eugenics

I wrote in a post about an orphanage Christmas party I organised that a co-worker commented that the kids would “just end up in jail anyway” because they had “bad blood”. Her view is definitely not a fringe or minority one. Ideas of pure and impure blood and of personalities based on blood types are commonplace and largely unquestioned. There is a pervasive belief that everything from your taste in food to the language you speak is biologically pre-determined. Even teachers will unabashedly say things like “Japanese ears have a different internal structure that can’t distinguish between R and L” or “Japanese language uses a different part of the brain from other languages”. These casual assumptions may not seem serious enough to warrant my use of the term eugenics, so let me also point out that laws providing for compulsory sterilisation of women with disabilities were not abolished until mid-1996.

During the orientation meeting for a private adoption agency we attended last summer the main focus was on the organisation’s policy of not allowing applicants to refuse a child. They explained that this included the following commonly objectionable reasons: Biological parents with a criminal record or mental illness, a child born of rape, the child’s race or the presence of a disability. Apparently many applicants baulk at the idea of a child with parents who have a criminal record… we couldn’t even understand why that was included. What possible difference could it make?! To Japanese couples, apparently it makes a big difference. During the Q and A section one couple who had adopted their daughter through the agency told us that race had been their biggest stumbling block. “A disability we could cope with” they told us, “but what if the child were black?! I mean, we don’t mind, but think about the bullying…” According to materials we were given, after this orientation more than half of applicants decide not to continue every year.

An anecdote in “Adoption in Japan” by Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu illustrates what prospective parents want in an adopted child. The authors write about the overwhelming response an adoption agency received to their search for parents for a three-year-old girl whose parents had died in a car accident. She represented the ideal "orphan" to prospective parents: the cute and developmentally standard child of a normal family affected by tragic circumstances.

In some Japanese cases, as in  many other countries, parents fear that that will not bond with or love an adopted child. Last time Abe Shinzo was prime minister his wife spoke publicly about their infertility but also commented that she felt incapable to raising an adopted child, and consequently they had decided to remain childless.

 

Fragmentation of Services

Adoption of children who are wards of the state is conducted via the child welfare office of each regional center. Private orphanages may pursue adoptions privately, particularly Catholic orphanages in coordination with the local Catholic congregation. A number of private adoption agencies exist to match birth parents with couples looking to adopt infants. Some obstetricians and maternity hospitals run private or ad hoc programs. There seems to be no national guidance or oversight. This quote from an article by Cynthia Ruble highlights the lack of consistency:

A woman whose daughter had died was allowed by child welfare to go to a local orphanage and pick out a girl who looked like her daughter and take her home. Mr. Yamanta inherited this case from his predecessor. When he visited the home to see how the little six-year-old was doing, the mother said in front of the girl, “My daughter was not stupid like she is.” When Yamanta told his superior about this, the response was that the girl needed to learn to endure suffering. Of course, Mr. Yamanta ignored his supervisor and immediately moved the girl out of the situation. He was later rebuked severely. Impressed by an American missionary and a doctors’ association that was helping newborns get adopted, Mr. Yamanta wondered why the government couldn’t do the same thing. This would keep some children from ever entering the system. So, he started doing something revolutionary. He started asking pregnant women who came seeking help if they would be interested in adoption rather than putting their baby in an orphanage. Mr. Yamanta and his co-workers developed a system of finding and qualifying parents and arranging adoptions. One of their tenets was and is that if a baby turns out to be disabled, the adoptive parents must continue to raise him/her. Instead of sitting in their offices, he and his staff would go to the hospital when a baby was born. They would take the new parents there and make sure they were taught how to care for the newborn. Then, they let the birth mother put her baby in the arms of loving parents. You would think that this amazing new process would have caught on like wild fire all over Japan, but instead, Mr. Yamanta and his staff were opposed at every turn.

Post-adoption services are similarly confusing and fragmented. Some private agencies keep track of adoptive parents, but their staff do not necessarily have any training appropriate to the special challenges faced by adoptive families. As this sad case of a foster mother murdering the little girl in her care shows, the government sector doesn’t do a great job of following up on placements either. In countries like Australia and America there is a plethora of support services, specialist councillors, respite care, play groups, email lists and publications. In Japan it is still apparently common for couples to move house around the time of an adoption in order to hide it, and to keep adoption a secret both from their neighbours and from the child. This makes it very difficult for those families to seek help or to network with other adoptive families. There is an increasing trend in private agencies insisting that this not happen. They use the English word “telling” to express “openness about the fact of adoption”. Some adoptive parents blog about their experiences and attend orientation sessions for prospective adopters, which helps to normalise adoption and break down the wall of silence. When I began telling co-workers that we were trying to adopt most couldn’t understand what I meant or why we would do such a thing, but two were enthusiastic and told me about friends or extended family members with adopted children. My feeling is that a generational shift in attitudes may be slowly taking place.

Click here for Part Three: How to Adopt and Experiences with Adoption in Japan