Since the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction was implemented in Japan in April of 2014, the Japan Central Authority has been accepting requests for the return of children and international visitation. The number of requests has varied by month but overall they has been relatively stable. The exact figures are: April (15 cases), May (11 cases), June (8 cases), July (7 cases), August (19 cases), September through the 10th (10 cases).
We can see from these statistics that some months have a larger influx of cases than others. Part of the reason for these periods of increased volume is due to groups of applications being filed together. For example, when the Convention was first implemented, a large number of requests came in from the United States all at the same time. This may be because Central Authorities in foreign countries would rather submit large batches of cases at once, either because there is a backlog of cases or for ease of processing.
Due in part to the large group of American requests that were received by the Japan Central Authority at the implementation of the Convention, American requests make up a majority of the cases received so far. Of the 68 requests received until September 10th, more than half (37 cases) were from America. Canada and Russia also make up a large portion of the requests being filed with the Central Authority but overall the requests received have show a surprising variety and originate from a large number of countries from around the world.
Most of the incoming cases (requests to return children to foreign countries) have been from America. The outgoing cases (requests to return children to Japan) have mostly been split between South Korea and the Eastern Bloc countries (including Russia). In many of the outgoing cases where children are taken abroad, both the mother and the father of the child are Japanese nationals.