Ai Fukuhara, the renowned table tennis sensation who retired from competition in 2018, has been accused by her ex-husband of abducting their son, with the high-profile dispute putting a spotlight on the longstanding issue of alleged international child abductions by Japanese spouses.

Fukuhara’s ex-husband, Taiwanese table tennis player Chiang Hung-chieh, has accused her of refusing to let their son return to Taiwan. Chiang made the comments at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Thursday, adding that a court in Japan ruled on July 20 that Fukuhara was required to hand over their son.

Chiang filed for divorce from Fukuhara two years ago, with both reportedly agreeing to joint custody while in Taiwan.

The court also ordered a temporary restraining order against Fukuhara, Hsu Sung Po, Chiang’s Taiwanese lawyer, said at the news conference.

“Such a temporary restraining order is very rare... this is that type of (rare) case,” said Aiko Ohbuchi, Chiang’s Japanese lawyer. “This means Ai Fukuhara must hand over their son immediately... but she has not reached out about this matter.”

Ohbuchi said they do not know where the son is or if he will be handed over. She said Fukuhara faxed and emailed messages in an attempt to terminate Thursday’s news conference but did not comment on handing over the son.

“My son and daughter only have one mother, so I would like to maintain relations and further consider the situation,” Chiang said. “I wish that Ms. Fukuhara would please peacefully hand over my child to me.”

Ohbuchi noted a concern that Fukuhara may take the son overseas, mentioning that she has taken him to Singapore this past year.

Hsu said Fukuhara brought the son to Japan last year on July 23, cutting off contact with Chiang a week later. Chiang had expected to meet their son later that summer, Ohbuchi added.

Over the last two decades, Fukuhara has been celebrated as one of Japan’s premier athletes. The media has closely followed her journey, with the child prodigy from Sendai — who was in her first Olympics at 15 — becoming a four-time Olympian, winning team silver in London more than a decade ago and bronze at the Rio de Janeiro games in 2016.

Fukuhara — affectionately nicknamed “Ai-chan” in Japan and “porcelain doll” in China — gave birth to a baby girl around a year after the couple announced their marriage in 2016. She gave birth to a son in April 2019.

Cases of alleged child abductions by Japanese spouses have frequently made headlines in the past.

Japan joined the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction in 2014, the last G7 nation to do so. The convention is a multilateral treaty aimed at protecting children from parental abduction across international borders.

It establishes a procedure to return children to what is deemed their normal residence, with courts deciding where they should live. The convention applies to cases involving children being brought into Japan or taken out of the country.

Since coming into effect in Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has handled 346 related cases, with decisions reached in 309 of them as of June this year.

“(Child) abduction in Taiwan is also a serious issue, so when it comes to international marriages, it is difficult for handovers, especially as they are not part of the Hague (convention),” Hsu said.

In 2021, there were nearly 16,500 marriages in Japan involving a foreign spouse, according to government data. In the same year, there were about 8,300 divorces involving such couples.

Not all cases of alleged abductions by a parent involve a child being taken from one country to another.

French citizen Vincent Fichot made headlines after staging a hunger strike in 2021 near the National Stadium just before the Tokyo Olympics, attempting to highlight his claim that his children were abducted by his estranged Japanese wife.

Japanese police did not investigate Fichot’s claims, but in a rare move, a Paris court issued an international arrest warrant for his wife over the alleged abduction of their two children, who were said to have been taken from the couple’s home in August 2018.

His wife sued publishers in December for allegedly spreading misinformation about what her husband called parental abduction.

In another case, Australian journalist Scott McIntyre was given a suspended prison term of six months for trespassing at the home of his estranged in-laws to check on his children following a storm. He has said he has not seen his children since May 2019.