(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-07-09 16:39

Attitudes are shaped by everything from Confucian teachings to a detailed household registry system that can dog unwed mothers for their entire lives, even if they give their child up for adoption.

Confucianism, which spread to Japan from China and Korea more than a thousand years ago, emphasizes the importance of a child's relationship with its birth parents and reverence for ancestry.

"Children in need of adoption have been stigmatized by notions of pure and impure or good and bad blood," Peter Hayes of Britain's Sunderland University and Toshie Habu wrote in their book "Adoption in Japan."

EXTENDED FAMILY

For much of Japan's history, adoption has therefore remained within the extended family, with childless couples often taking in a nephew or other relative to carry on their family name or business, rather than because the child was in need of care.

"Special adoption," of needy non-relatives was not introduced until 1989 and only a few hundred cases are approved each year, compared with three to four thousand in the United Kingdom, which has around half Japan's population.

The difference lies not only in the shortage of willing parents, but also the small number of available babies, many say.

When women give birth they must enter the child's name on their family register, a powerful incentive for single women to end a pregnancy or even abandon a newborn rather than risk its being discovered by a potential employer or future husband.

"We have campaigned at least for minors to be able to leave this information off their registers, but we have been told it won't happen," said Yokota of Motherly Network.

Children's homes, which are subsidized by the government according to the number of children in their care, are partly to blame because they are reluctant to recommend candidates for adoption, says sociologist Roger Goodman of Oxford University.

"We need to spread the message that adoption is an important tool for helping children. How do we do this, given that there is no background of Christian values here?" said author Takakura.

Shocked by the fact that some adoption agencies charge huge fees to introduce Japanese babies to adoptive families abroad, he is working with sympathetic members of parliament to try to pass a law encouraging more Japanese to take in unwanted children.

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