Photos by Yuichi Yamazaki. Video by Harumi Ozawa
Masaki Kubota’s delight at reuniting with his two sons gave way to heartbreak when the younger, two years old, stared at him uncomprehendingly as if to say: “Who are you?”
It was their first encounter since his wife left with the boys a year earlier — the kind of painful separation that Japan’s new parental custody rules aim to prevent.
The country enacted laws last month allowing joint custody after divorce, replacing a decades-old system where it was granted to only one side, and almost always to the mother.
But the change has proved…
