Chikan is a chronic problem on public transport in Japan that doesn't seem to be getting better any time soon. Despite the introduction of women-only carriages during rush hour and the display of posters and "shame stickers" warning offenders that groping is a crime, the number of men who do it never seems to decrease. If #MeToo was just about chikan, the number of tweets would likely break Twitter's servers.
Kumi Sasaki says she was groped "nearly daily" on her commute to and from school in Japan. She was aged between 12 and 18.
Her first experience of chikan was on the crowded JR ...
Being of that kind of mind, the Japan Suspicious Person Information Centre (JASPIC) conducted a seven-month study on "perverts" based on reports from police and municipalities. The Japanese term here is fushinsha, a "suspicious person." This, though, does not refer to spies or would-be thieves, but voyeurs, flashers and chikan (gropers).
JASPIC reports that 11,607 incidents were officially recorded from March to October this year, and of these 4,487 -- around 40% -- were in the vicinity of train stations.
Naturally, there are a lot of stations in Japan and most of the 4,487 are spread ...
To, er, celebrate International Women's Day, Al Jazeera ran this long and detailed story about sexual assault in Japan, claiming "every girl was a victim" but now more schoolgirls are speaking out about groping on public transportation.
Tamaka Ogawa was about 10 years old when she was sexually assaulted for the first time. It was a public holiday and she was on the subway. A man standing behind her pulled down the band of her culottes and underwear, touched her bare bottom, then pressed himself against her. She recalls feeling shocked and physically sickened. When she reached home, she ...
Aren't the cops meant to be the good guys?
Okay, I'm being a bit ironic there but still, this story is a bit much.
After celebrating at the farewell party of a colleague, two officers from the Yamato, Kanagawa, precinct, Yoshinobu Mori (35) and Yoshikazu Arakawa (38), went on for a nijikai (round two!) with two other policemen in March last year.
In the mood for some more drinking and fun, they phoned an off-duty female officer to join them at karaoke. Nothing unusual in that.
But then during the course of a tortured rendition of a pop song, things seemed to go wrong. The ...
An American soldier has been arrested in Okinawa for sexually assaulting a Japanese woman in her twenties. Philip Sawyer is a Marine actually based at Iwakuni in Yamaguchi and was just visiting Okinawa, it seems.
Sawyer (28) waited for the woman in her hotel room and tried to force himself on her in the early hours of the morning. This wasn't a case of getting mixed signals -- they had never even met before!
Clearly his training hadn't prepared him for feisty Okinawan girls. She made enough noise for the neighbors to hear and call the police. On top of failing at rape, Sawyer made a ...
