Doesn't the lid get pulled off every couple years and then nothing? I feel I read about a few cases over the decades. Somehow Nintendo and Anime seem to overpower that quite well. ;-)

Yeah my brother had a child with his Japanese wife last year, and she became very unwell mentally post-partum, but won't seek treatment. He's desperately unhappy, but he has to stay in the marriage, as he has no chance in hell of seeing his son if he leaves, foreign spouses never win a custody dispute in Japanese courts, and Japan does not do shared custody.

I think something similar happened go some youtuber (google Tech lead guy on youtube) where his wife who is Japanese took their (I think American) child to Japan and now he cannot even see his child.

I remember the dude and remembered him mentioning trouble with his wife and kid.

How can a parent take a kid out of the country without the consent of the other parent without it being categorized as kidnapping. Being that the kid is an American citizen can't the U.S. system get Japan to send this kid back(if the mother is only Japanese and not the kid). Didn't America extradite the Americans involved in Ghosen's escape? So they should have agreements this such legal matters to no?

P.s. I really didn't agree with American extraditing it's citizen in Goshen's case.

One can only wonder what led her to do this to him (as a millionaire).

In a closely similar situation, I went for counseling personally. It helped me understand where she's coming from and stick it out. You can never judge other people, but marriages have their lows and it's worth fighting for them -- at least more often than pop culture and individualist mores ("get out, it's getting you down") would have you believe.

And I mean, you will have your cross to bear eventually. That's life.

He's in counselling, but to handle being the subject of her rages and paranoia. Post-partum psychosis isn't really something you can understand their viewpoint on.

She really needs professional assistance but won't seek it, and her family have been slow to move her towards doing so, as her Dad is a prominent religious official in their small town, and there's some shame in having an unwell daughter.

But, recently they've acknowledged that there is something that needs treatment and have been gradually approaching it, which gives my brother hope. He loves her, of course, but there's marriages worth fighting for, and marriages where you're being abused. Currently, his is the latter.

So... not super similar ;)

This is indeed a big issue with international marriages. The solution I thought of (because I was living in Japan for few years, so may someday get stuck in a similar situation) would be to steal the kid before she does, like using holidays abroad, or even just like taking a fly with the kid after school or something. Basically boils down to firing first. Risky if the spouse find it, and of course that mean leaving a lot of things (possibly financial assets) behind.

That's the problem, he's not that kind of guy. And no-one really thinks about these things, e.g., "what if my partner develops post-partum psychosis in a jurisdiction hostile to people not from that jurisdiction" when falling in love.