Last night I had a dream. I was responsible for protecting someone. I don't know exactly what I was, a guard or a guardian of some kind, but that was my job.
A woman with total authority, a queen, ordered us to go somewhere. I knew it was dangerous. I knew it was wrong and unlikely to work. I had no way to say so. I was a peasant to her. What I knew, what I thought, and what was actually true did not matter. She demanded it, so we went.
Something bad happened, as I knew it would. And I was blamed for it.
When I woke up I knew why I'd dreamed it. That is how it feels to be a father in the Japanese family court.
It is like living in the Middle Ages. There are two classes of people, the blue bloods and the peasants. If you are not in the favoured part of society, you are subject to the whims and views of those who are, and they do not see you as an equal.
A judge I have never met decides how much of my child's life I am allowed to be in. He does not ask what I think. The facts of my case do not change his answer: years of daily care, a record of every day we have spent together, a child who cries when it is time to leave. My child's feelings do not change it either. The answer was set before I walked in, by custom, and it is the same answer for every father.
And the other parent's account is accepted without being tested. Whatever the parent who holds the child says about safety, routine or the child's wishes is taken as given. Whatever the other parent documents is treated as a request. Nothing weighs the two against each other.
I have no voice in it. I am told what will happen and I am expected to accept it. If I object, I am the problem.
That is not justice. Justice looks at the people in front of it. This is a ruling system, an old one, where authority decides and those beneath it comply. I am subject to another person's view of what a father is, with no power to represent my own rights or my child's.
The feeling is hopelessness. Not sadness, not anger, though those come too. Hopelessness, because nothing you are and nothing you do counts.
I want people to understand that feeling, because thousands of parents here live in it, and most of them never say so. That is why this site exists.