The high-profile case of Christopher Savoie, a Tennessee man who was arrested in Fukuoka Prefecture for snatching his two children from his Japanese former wife and now faces kidnapping charges, illustrates the extremes a partner in a broken international marriage will resort to for child custody.

The case, which made a splash in U.S. media, especially on CNN, also highlights the uniqueness of Japan's culture and judicial system regarding the custody of children in cases of divorce, and its lack of regard for custody rulings by courts overseas where divorces took place, such as the one in the U.S. favoring Savoie.

The fact that Japan has not signed the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which secures the prompt return of a child wrongfully removed to or retained in any signatory countries, complicates the problem even further.