As it happens, I checked up on CATO via Google. He’s spreading all sorts of rumors on all sorts of Web sites.

The pathetic dude has a vendetta going against Junko. How sad is that?

I suspect she rejected him at some point and he still can’t get over it.

Junko Muto of Tokyo - Married to an American business man in Tokyo; however, she is already married to another guy - She never got divorced from her first husband!!!!

Her current husband met her while living in Tokyo and married her. They registered their marriage with the local government office as required in Japan. However, the Junko, as it turned out, was also married to another man in the US and never divorced. She never told this to her current husband. This US marriage was a legally recognized marriage in Japan, consequently, according to Japanese law, she was guilty of a crime, bigamy.

Eventually the American guy had to enagage legal help, which took an incredible amount of time and money that he had to pay to get the mess sorted out. He had to engage both US and Japanese legal counsel and ended up in Japanese family court.

Her attitude about the whole situation made things worse. She expected the American guy, to accept that she did’t tell him about already being married because she did’t want to lose him. Now that he knew, he should fix the situation for her. She actually didn’t think it was such a big deal now that he knew about it and that he was wrong for not accepting her as a human being who is not perfect.

You need to immediately set aside any idea of saving your marriage and take the difficult steps to try and make sure you will have access to your children should your wife decide to divorce you.

I suspect you have already heard of many gaijin men in Japan who are denied access to their children for no other reason than that their wife has decided to divorce them. If you are not aware of that, you also need to know to expect zero fairness from the court system here. Your wife will get whatever she asks for from the court.

I don’t know what your financial situation is, not how much you trust your wife to be a good enough mother to allow you regular visitation, but if she is typical, I would recommend that you take the following steps as soon as possible.

1. Establish an offshore savings account and fund it as well as you can. If your wife gets in contact with an aggressive lawyer, they will try to take as much of your money as they can. You may feel that you don’t mind supporting her, as it benefits your children, but you should also consider that you can do that at your own discretion. If you have no savings secured outside Japan, you may not have that as an option.

2. Carefully, completely document your family life with your children. Make sure you have plenty of photos of yourself with them, taking them places and in scenarios where you are alone with them. If possible, get photos/videotape of you with them in your home country. If visitation rights ever become an issue, you will be asked to provide this kind of evidence — however absurd it sounds to have to prove that you are important to your children. If you have these, put copies in a safe place your wife can’t get to. My marriage fell apart within a couple of years and my wife became less and less trustworthy as we tried to make it work for seven long years. In the end, she was capable of just about anything, including violence and, certainly, theft. I’m not saying this would happen to you, but it could.

3. It sounds like you have an open, mature enough relationship with your wife to freely discuss how a divorce would affect your children. Discuss these concerns with her carefully and get it on videotape, one way or another. You want to be able to show the court that she herself acknowledges that the children need their father.

4. Contact a lawyer immediately. Most attorneys in Japan are not worthy of the name. They see their job as simply to help you fill out the forms and to speak to the judge for you, but not really as your advocate. I was shocked to discover that some lawyers were willing to admit that they weren’t really on my side in the case. They just wanted to get the fee for “processing” the case. After going through two of these kinds of miserable parasites, I settled on a third who was willing to act as my advocate, but incapable. He apparently had little or no training as a client’s advocate. He was brilliant, and memorized the thick file related to my case in short order, but utterly lacked the ability to spot simple, blatant contradictions in my ex-wife’s testimony. Even when I pointed them out and listed them, along with explanations, he was hardly able to present them to the judge, other than to recite what I had written.
I wish I could refer you to a good lawyer, but I know of none. That is one reason I suggest you get in touch with one pre-emptively, before you actually face divorce. It may take many months before you can find a lawyer who you feel is actually on your side in the sense of seeing it as their job to achieve your objectives in any divorce case, not simply to guide you through the process and let the judge decide whatever he may.

5. If off-shore drilling, aka infidelity, by you is an issue, you must take action without delay. If your wife obtains proof you haven’t been faithful, she will have an open and shut case to take a lot of your money and deny you any access to your children. If she already has proof, you need to beg for her mercy and forgiveness and, again, get in on videotape. An alternative is to discuss it fully with her and get her to say that your marriage is no longer truly valid, as you have both given up the commitment and are just together for the children — on videotape, of course. If she’s been unfaithful, do what it takes to get proof.

I never did any of these things until it was too late. I failed to act largely out of ignorance. Firstly, I always believed that my wife’s lying, violence and vindictiveness would be enough to convince any judge that, if anything, she should pay compensation to me. But nothing even close to that happened. The first judge in our case apparently never bothered to read the case. He seemed only fleetingly familiar with testimony made at hearings he presided over mere weeks earlier, and transcripts of which sat on his desk. Secondly, I didn’t want to take actions that would undermine what little trust there was between my then-wife and I. For years, I was living day-to-day trying to avoid conflict at all costs. We had no mechanism for rationally working through disagreements, so anything can could inject controversy had to be avoided.
I hope you’re not in a similar situation, but if you are, get tough and act now. It may be your only hope.

Seems I found this article in time (or perhaps a little late maybe). As everyone has mentioned, it is difficult to be married, let alone being married to another nationality in another country. I think George and his wife are fine as people (dare I say friends) but simply not as husband and wife.

That is where I am. I have been here for more than 15 years and now my wife and I are talking about divorce for the same reasons George and many others have. I think that Japanese woman are so supportive of their foreign husbands (husbands in general) that they give up the things they wanted to do in life. That is my wife’s situation now. I never thought I actually prevented her from doing things but just being married to me, prevented her from doing them. Simple things like just using her native language (we met speaking English and never used Japanese in our relationship). A very trivial issue but come smack down argument time, it’s an issue, just like every other little thing that can become a reason to split.

For me, I am infamous for procrastinating with important things…such as applying for permanent residency since I was living under the secure blanket of a spouse visa. Now I face the possibility of having to leave for good since I never finished my degree and do not have a permanent residency. My wife and I are talking things out but it is crunch time for me since I need to apply now and then if it is approved, apply for a divorce…..don’t know if anyone has suggestions on this.

Anyway, otsukaresama to us all and good luck for any of you going through this, have gone through it or will go through it.

Cheers.