Growing numbers of divorcing parents are seeking court recognition of their right to continue seeing their children, a Supreme Court report showed Wednesday.

With most mothers gaining custody of children during divorces, the doubling of requests for visitation rights during the '90s is largely attributable to men.

"We see the trend as being the result of growing numbers of young fathers who want to continue being involved in their children's lives," Junichi Iwase, a Tokyo Family Court inspector, said. "If kids can regularly meet the parent from whom they have been separated it helps to heal the scars the child has received as a result of the divorce."

Supreme Court documents showed that court-mediated divorces increased by 28 percent -- from 43,164 to 55,560 -- from 1991 to 2000. But court mediations involving alimony and custody of children more than doubled, increasing from 7,214 to 15,041 cases over the same period.

Because of the rise in requests for court mediations surrounding alimony and custody, Supreme Court officials began looking into the specifics of the case. Officials learned that from 1998 to 2000 there was a 42 percent increase in requests for courts to recognize visitation rights for the parent not granted custody of the children. With most divorcing mothers granted custody over children, nearly all the applications for visitation rights have been made by fathers.

No legal regulations exist for determining the rights of the parent without custody to meet their children. In September last year, a group of divorced fathers started campaigning for the right to have joint custody of their children. (Mainichi Shimbun, August 1, 2001)