WHEN SHIBAHASHI SATOKO divorced her husband a decade ago, she did not want her ten-year-old son to see his father. The break-up had been ugly, and she recoiled(畏缩，退缩) at the thought of a reunion. Then she met another divorced mother whose child, denied access(被拒绝接触) to his father, looked miserable. “I thought: what a terrible mother(我想：多么糟糕的母亲啊),” she recalls. “But then I realised I’m no better.” She called her ex-husband to arrange a meeting. He has been part of the boy’s life since.
十年前，当柴桥佐登子离婚时，她不想让十岁的儿子见他的父亲。分手很糟糕，她一想到重逢就畏缩。后来她遇到另一位离婚母亲，她的孩子被拒绝见父亲，看起来很痛苦。“我想：多么糟糕的母亲啊，”她回忆道。“但随后我意识到我也好不到哪里去。”她打电话给前夫安排见面。从此他一直是男孩生活的一部分。
Her change of heart mirrors(反映，映照) a broader one. For decades Japan was the only G7 country not to recognise joint custody after divorce—so that the parent granted custody, usually the mother, could easily shut the other out(将另一方排除在外). A government survey in 2021 found that only one in three children of divorced parents had any contact with the absent parent(缺席的家长), typically just once a month. In April, following a revision of a civil code unchanged for nearly eight decades, Japan introduced joint custody. The change reflects a profound shift in how the country thinks about family life.
她的心态变化反映了一种更广泛的转变。几十年来，日本是唯一不承认离婚后共同监护权的G7国家——因此获得监护权的一方（通常是母亲）可以轻易地将另一方拒之门外。2021年的一项政府调查发现，离婚父母的孩子中只有三分之一与未获监护权的父母有任何联系，通常每月只有一次。今年4月，在对一项近八十年来未变的民法典进行修订后，日本引入了共同监护权。这一变化反映了日本对家庭生活观念的深刻转变。
Despite traditional family values, divorce is common. James Raymo, a demographer at Princeton University, estimates that at its peak in the 2000s, around a third of Japanese marriages ended in divorce, though that has eased to roughly a quarter today as people marry more selectively(有选择地). Japan is among the world’s easiest places to split(最容易分手的地方): rather than seeking a court order, as couples must in America or Britain, a Japanese pair need only sign a form at their local ward office(区役所（行政区办公室）). Around nine in ten divorces are settled in this way.
尽管有传统家庭价值观，离婚却很普遍。普林斯顿大学人口学家詹姆斯·雷莫估计，在2000年代高峰期，大约三分之一的日本婚姻以离婚告终，尽管由于人们择偶更为挑剔，目前这一比例已降至约四分之一。日本是世界上最容易离婚的地方之一：与美国或英国夫妇必须寻求法院命令不同，日本夫妇只需在当地办事处签署一份表格。大约十分之九的离婚案是以这种方式解决的。