Spanking illiegal?

Is spanking illegal in Japan? I heard it's illegal in Europe. Does it count as domestic violence?

anyone???

I suppose you meant "child abuse," for spanking your own kids, right?

I believe spanking per se is not illegal. If a kid at school says he got spanked by his parents, the parents will not be reported to police Of course, for example if a teacher at school sees some bruises on a child, constantly, and if the kid is not willing to talk about where that came from, etc., where child abuse is strongly suspected, then the teacher might contact the child welfare office to look into the matter. But if the parents deny that there has been no abuse, only discipline, then there is nothing any welfare office/police can do about it.

Europe seems to be very strict with this - I have heard of a case of Japanese parents, living in Euorope, getting reported to the police because the school teacher saw at a doctor's check-up at school that the Japanese child had what he thought was "bruises" on the lower back, while in fact that was just Mongolian blue spot, something that Asian people are born with :) I think parents can simply be arrested if someone reports an observation like this.