Moeka Iida

speaker

279 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 22 Jul

Moeka Iida’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The breakup was ugly.

She resented her ex and hated the thought of him rejoicing over a reunion.

And for about a year she kept the two of them apart.

But then she came across another divorced mother who was keeping her child away from the father.

And she remembers thinking, what a terrible mother.

But then she realized she's no better than her.

Soon after that, she called her ex-husband to arrange a meeting, and since then, he has been a part of the boy's life.

Miss Chibahashi's story is emblematic of a broader shift taking place in Japan.

For decades, Japan was the only country in the G7 that did not recognize joint custody after divorce.

And non-custodial parents technically did have visitation rights, but those rights were weak and easily withheld.

So for a long time, Japan had a system where the parent granted custody, which tends to be the mother, could easily shut the other out.

And there was even a government

survey in 2021, which showed that only one in three children of divorced parents had any contact with the parent they didn't live with.

And even when they did have contact, that interaction is very limited, a few hours a month or something like that.

But there was a really big shift recently.

In April, Japan introduced joint custody for the first time, and that follows a revision to a civil code that had gone unchanged for eight decades.

And this reflects a really big shift in how the country thinks about family life.

Well, there are a number of layers to this.

First of all, a joint custody system will require parents, even after divorce, to keep collaborating, to make key decisions over a child's life.

So that includes things like schooling and relocation and moving places.

Showing 61–80 of 279 · page 4 of 14