Forced participation in religious activities to be classified as child abuse in Japan

10 comments

1. Wel that’s gonna be a tricky thing to prove; but like the old politician said about pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”

2. Good luck to the kids who have to collect all the evidence since the cops won’t do it.

3. Surprisingly progressive. Would be nice if the rest of the world followed suit.

4. So I guess all of the thousands of religious schools have to close down then? I don’t see that happening…

5. Fucking awesome! Give America a copy… I mean at least fax it.. we know there are few fax machines around. We know.

6. This is a slippery slope and freedom of religion is being put at risk, especially because it’s not clearly defined. The article says that telling kids they will go to hell is forbidden. So how am I supposed to teach my faith to my child if I’m not allowed to explain the concept of salvation to them?

   “Where do the unsaved go when they die?”

   “Sorry son, I’m not legally allowed to tell you or I could be arrested for child abuse.”

   This law is made to be broken.

   Most religions have a concept of heaven and hell so it’s not as if my faith is the only one being put at risk over this.

   The article also says you can’t forbid them from being friends with others due to differences in religious beliefs. Even if you’re not religious, wouldn’t you want to forbid your child from being friends with someone who held a dangerous belief system? That is asinine.

   And what defines forced participation? They could declare that simply making your children go with you to church is forced participation.

7. This is why I stay in Japan. At least it’s secular.

8. My thoughts as posted elsewhere:

   The intervention contemplated by this law is forcibly separating a child from their parents and putting them in foster care. The law won’t just zap the religious abuse from the life of the kid without shaking anything else up. Using criminalization and family separation as remedies gets very, very messy in practice, because the remedy itself imposes a significant amount of psychological trauma.

   I’m also highly skeptical that this will be applied equally to all religious groups, particularly given Japan’s long history of restricting religious freedom and at times killing religious minorities. I mean, many Japanese people don’t even think of Shinto/Buddhist practices when they hear “religion” because those faiths (but not others) blend in with “tradition” and “common sense”.

   Consider the examples of child abuse they give. When they say it will constitute abuse to tell your kid they could go to Hell, does that include teaching your kids that Enma will hand down a sentence to you in Jigoku for your misdeeds? When they say “blocking their interaction with friends due to a difference in religious beliefs and thereby undermining their social skills” will constitute child abuse, are they going to go after Shinto/Buddhist parents who don’t want their kids hanging out with kids from other faiths? Or does it only count as “undermining social skills” if it’s a kid from a minority group being isolated from the majority group?

   The emphasis on removing kids from the home into protective care “without hesitation” is also kind of disturbing given that such laws have often been used to disrupt and fracture minority communities under the guise of child welfare, as we saw with the Sixties Scoop in Canada “protecting” indigenous kids from their parents’ backwards traditions. I can absolutely see this being leveraged in bad faith to crack down on minority ethnic groups.

9. メディアも総出でここまで燃やしても自民党の支持率どん底に落ちないっていうね…

10. But not participation in school, club, after-school homework, sports, camping, eating spinach or brussels sprouts, going to bed, turning off the Switch, etc. etc. ad naseum.

    I miss the days when minding your own friggen business was the general rule.