Mark comments

Jonathan PrinToday  12:37 pm JST

Upskirts are for the immature.

At the same time, calling the taking of a photo a crime because purportedly numbers have gone through the roof is fallacious.

First, men will always be men. It will not stop. It has been ongoing since the existence of portable camera.

Second, Japanese are no gentlemen, in a society where there is so little exchanges between women and men, while a high level of closeness otherwise in many cases (reason it is so common perhaps as a phenomenon IMHO).

Third, there is no harm truth be told. Safe Japan. Calling it a crime while an offense is just for the media.

It's easy to say when you are someone who cannot be a victim aye Jon.

It's precisely this attitude towards upskirt photography and sexual crimes in general that makes it so prevalent in Japan and why the laws are so weak against it.

Here's a brief explanation of why upskirt photography is a serious crime:

Invasion of Privacy: 

It's a gross violation of a person's privacy, taking photos of them without their knowledge or permission.

Sexual Exploitation: 

These photos are often used for sexual gratification or shared without consent, exploiting the victim's body and published for money.

Emotional Distress: 

Victims experience severe humiliation, fear, and potential long-term trauma.

Toxic Culture: 

It normalises objectification and contributes to a culture where sexual harassment is more likely to occur.

RedemptionToday  11:53 am JST

Mark, I agree with you but realistically what can an eager beaver foreigner do? If you violently intervene you are liable to be misunderstood, linguistically dominated and even arrested. In my opinion, if you see a pervert you can yell in a very loud voice something like "chikan yamete!" If you have other ideas that will avoid me being involved with the police here in any way shape or form, I am all eyes. BR.

If it's something you care about, like myself, you can try to make it more well-known online and with people you know especially if they are going to Japan. This type of crime and sexual assault on public transport is shockingly just a normal thing in Japan and something to put up with most people going to Japan do not realise the risk they face.

Japan's problem with subway groping | DW News (youtube.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbj_iu_8Lso&t=5s

This hurts some people ai know, but research by a number of groups shows that Japan has the highest rate of this type of crime in the world.

Here is a video by a well-known Japanese YouTuber who goes over some of that research:

Molestation on Trains is NO JOKE in Japan (youtube).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajKNczCPRscom)

I love Japan by the way but this is something about Japan that MUST be cleaned up because there are a lot of women suffering out there and it could damage Japan's image even further if more is not done.

StrangerlandToday  11:52 am JST

Plenty of evidence online for this interest in this issue is quite uniquely serious in Japan. It's a large-scale business as shown in a recent BBC documentary. The videos are sold in Japan and in China.

Yes, plenty of news articles on this.

Or is that just confirmation bias? Without numbers we cannot know.

Numbers in Japan are highly unreliable for several reasons though as stated in several news articles last year numbers of upskirt photography recorded by the goby have tripped in just 3 years or so.

There are a number of ways to assess the rate of a particular crime other than through official statistics.

For example, in Japan, it is estimated by various groups that less than 5% of all sexual assaults are never recorded so you can't go off the stats.

You can use victim surveys, offender self-reports, observational studies, hospital records, insurance claims, social media analysis etc.

> Old SausageToday  11:31 am JST

In Japan, police made more than 5,000 arrests for clandestine photography in 2023, a record number and about three times the cases in 2010. Plus the cases that are not reported or when unnoticed, I add.

Yes, plenty of news articles on this.

You are going to get a lot of resistance to talking about there being a high rate of sexual crime in Japan I'm afraid Old Sausage as some people have very deeply held beliefs about Japan being safe for women.

Plenty of evidence online for this interest in this issue is quite uniquely serious in Japan. It's a large-scale business as shown in a recent BBC documentary. The videos are sold in Japan and in China.

Search:

Catching the men who sell subway groping videos - BBC News

AJ . It is technically not a crime in some US states, and people who get caught are often not prosecuted.

It has been illegal in the US since 2004 but only since the middle of last year in Japan.

Search:

Japan to ban upskirting & capturing sexual acts without consent - Mothership.SG -

There has been a massive uptick in cases of upskirt photography in Japan possibly due to it becoming part of the video pron industry.

Search:

Japan records surge in upskirt photography

(newsonjapan.com)

AJToday  09:11 am JST

Not unique to Japan, but every other country I've lived or spent any significant amount of time in, such crimes are rare.

The sheer prevalence at which it occurs here irrefutably make it somewhat of a uniquely Japanese phenomenon.

The question is: why is that?

Because you're on Japan Today, which posts articles on a steady stream when someone is arrested for it in Japan. It is technically not a crime in some US states, and people who get caught are often not prosecuted.

The UK criminalized upskirting in 2019 and they have started to make a lot of arrests, but it seems to only make news if it is particularly heinous or a politician.

That's simply false, it is a crime in the US and every developed nation. While the laws vary by state it's a crime in all states of the US. I've checked. At the federal level, the United States enacted the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 to punish those who intentionally make an image of an individual’s private areas without consent, when the person knew the subject expected privacy.

You cannot accurately judge the rate of crime by the number of times you see it in the news in any nation and few crimes of the total committed are ever reported even to the police, let alone to the public via the media and it would be naive to suggest so.

StrangerlandToday  07:34 am JST

Question to the audience: Have any academics/sociology majors ever looked at why this is, and perhaps if there are any social/cultural factors that contribute to such a comparatively high prevalence of up-skirting and general voyeurism over here?

It's a human thing, not specific to Japan, so I would be surprised if there weren't any such studies somewhere in the world.

I have looked into sexual crimes in Japan because most of the women I know have been victims.

There are some papers and investigative journalism in English and Japanese. There are several books in Japanese that you might be able to hunt down.

I'm sad to say it is a bigger problem in Japan and in South Korea than anywhere else I have heard of. An incident like the one in this news story, from my understanding, happens hundreds of times a day but it is not reported or even noticed by most people. I have seen it myself on several occasions. They are very good at hiding what they are doing.

That's not to say it doesn't happen elsewhere, just not on the same scale as in Japan. It's the same with sexual assault on public transport (often called 'chikan').

Old SausageToday  07:28 pm JST

I believe that a comment should include some reliable information. I used AI to search the web for statistics on crime during the last 20 years in Japan. I can't believe it, but here they are for your consideration.

"• The number of violent crimes, such as bodily injury, assault, intimidation, and extortion, has dropped from 260,204 in 2002 to 88,707 in 2022," I repeat, I can't believe it.

I'm quite confident in saying that Japan has the least reliable crime stats of any industrialised nation.

There is chronic underreporting. That's not to say that crime in general is low it's not as low as the stats would have you believe.

RedemptionToday  06:26 pm JST

You don't go into a convenience store at 6:50 am expecting to be stabbed.

Indeed. Random acts of violence in public are worse than any other kind of violence.

There may not be a lot of violent crime in Japan overall but there seems to be more than a fair share of random public knife attacks. In the nation where I now reside this is almost unheard of and instead, knife attacks are between families and groups of young people etc.

I always find it curious that a news organisation would pick a single case of DV while there would have been dozens if not hundreds, across the country on the same day (some with police involved, most not). How does that happen?

> GaijinjlandToday  11:24 am JST

I don’t feel sorry for the woman and don’t need to know her circumstances leading up to this. Whatever her situation was leading up to this she should have found a hospital room instead of a hotel room. Even if she had no money, a hospital in Japan is not going to turn a woman in labor away.

It's soooo easy to sit there and type that, isn't it?

Reality is vastly different from the idealised world we might conjure while sitting in the comfort of our rooms.

Arresting this woman is the opposite of what should be done.

She needs help from social welfare not the police. WFT

Japanese criminals are becoming very active in the Asia Pacific region partly due to the crack down on Yakuza in Japan.

JohnFeb. 23  06:48 pm JST

These creatures killing their babies and throwing in the rubbish bins aren’t really human beings. For some reason, their shape is in human form, nature’s mistakes.

You have no idea what it was like for the woman who did this so you're not really in a position to judge.

DanteKHFeb. 23  04:37 pm JST

Again?!?

This has become weekly news!

How can a person lack all the empathy and love for her own flesh and blood baby!?!

There is absolutely no excuse, none, not one so ever, to kill your own inocent and pure baby.

From your position, it's very easy to say that.

I hope John Stewart covers this!

MarkToday  12:41 pm JST

my kids are happy in Japanese schools, i have no troubles at all with their staff / teachers, everything is taking care to the full details. I will say, their school management system is best of the world

It's fairly well organised, but it tends to stifle creativity and individuality and tends to focus on rote learning.

It's also highly stressful for both the kids and the teachers with a strong emphasis on testing and there is very little teacher training and development or internal or external assessment of teacher performance.

Then it breaks down below international standards in universities, apart from a few outliers (i.e. Todai).

桜川雪Today  11:17 am JST

Why only sx crimes? Do 20 years or more background checks for people who steal, kidnap, etc. Who'd want to hire them? Protect the adults too.

A background check is usually a police report that would include any crimes they committed so fret not 桜川さん

I recall a time I was teaching English to kids in the community in the suburbs of Tokyo.

I would be left with young children the parents of which had just met me. They knew nothing about me and of course no background checks.

When I came back to my own country I went to do individual interviews with schoolchildren. Background checks were required and a video camera was in the room.

girl_in_tokyoToday  07:03 am JST

No country is "safe" for women, not even Japan. There is no place where women don't have to be cautious, stay aware of their surroundings, give the name of the man they are meeting for a date to a trusted friend, or the myriad of other things women have to do to try and protect themselves. We do these things wherever we go.

Allowing ourselves to be lulled into a sense of complacency because "Japan is safe" would only open women up to danger. And then you guys would be saying, "Well, why did you go home with him/why did you walk alone at night/why did you go into that park at night..." and blame women for being lulled into a sense of complacency.

And let's not lose sight of what this article is about. This actress was sexually assaulted by a director - someone she worked with and saw as a mentor and as a safe person to be alone with. As this case demonstrates, most cases of sexual assault and rape are not perpetrated by strangers - the men are known to them. Yet much of the rhetoric around sexual assault blames women for not being aware of stranger danger.

What women need to worry about the most is not walking alone at night, but whether her boss decides to assault her or the guy she has been dating plans to rape her. This is not predictable or avoidable, and knoweldge of crime stats does not help women to avoid this.

Agree with you. I would add that women in Japan need to be especially aware of specific sexual crimes such as sexual assault (chikan) on public transport, sexual harassment from colleagues and bosses, upskirt and toilet photography, underwear stealing and stalking.

Change is coming slowly in Japan, which consistently ranks near the bottom in international gender equality surveys and where sexual misconduct complaints are often disregarded. Victims tend to face criticism for speaking up.

Expect a growing watershed of sexual assault and sexual harassment cases in Japan as Japanese women finally grow in courage to speak up against the nation's sex crime problem.

> girl_in_tokyoFeb. 21  08:44 pm JST

finally richToday 06:40 pm JST

If someone punched me, stole from me, vandalized my car or worse, I'd go to the police the next day, or within the week/month if the trauma was too big to recover, regardless if I had any evidence or not.

Invalid comparison. A more valid question to you is this:

If someone raped you, would you go to the police the next day?

Would you have the mental strength to tell a room of male police officers exactly what happened to you, down to the last detail, as they asked invasive and embarrassing questions?

Would you manage to hold onto your sanity as they take you back to the scene of the crime and then photograph you in various positions with a life sized figure of a man to demonstrate exactly what the rapist did to you?

Would you then feel strong enough to go through a medical exam where you had to allow a stranger to look at your privates and photograph your injuries even as you are suffering from the images and flashbacks of your assault?

Would you be able to hold up with allowing the investigation to continue in spite of seeing your name plastered all over the internet, and read commentary about you calling you a liar, all sorts of other derogatory names, and saying you probably deserved to be raped because you were foolish enough to let it happen?

If you can say yes to all of this, and truly imagine what it is like to be raped, then congrats - you'd be one of the only 4% of people strong enough to do so. The rest of the men and women suffer in silence.\

Thank you. Hopefully, this will give some folks here the perspective they need to see that rape is unlike any other crime they are comparing it to and reporting it is extremely difficult everywhere but in Japan in particular.

That's why less than 5% of all rape victims in Japan ever come forward. Most of them take the pain and torture that is rape to their graves. Deeply sad.

MocheakeToday  05:50 pm JST

Fellas, no matter what happened many years ago, any woman can wait as long as she wants to accuse you of whatever. By this story, it seems he's already guilty as they brought up other incidents and arrested the guy and only her recollection matters it seems. Where's the evidence for arrest? We suspect you of committing a crime 8 years ago, even though it took her 6 full years to report it and two more years for us to arrest you. Have a witness every time you even get close to a woman. Soon men are going to start to use "Me too."

I am curious why some men have this irrational fear of being falsely accused of sexual assault.

As a male myself, I can't even get into that mindset if I tried. It's a bit like being worried about being struck by lightning.

I am far more concerned with the overwhelmingly higher likelihood of someone close to me, like my daughter, being sexually assaulted at some stage in their lives.

I'm not surprised, given the weak yen. Japan's economy will now have to rely on a weak yen going forward because if Japan gets expensive again tourism will likely fall and fewer cars will be sold.

Mr KiplingToday 01:06 pm JST

Victim blaming or common sense?

> A famous soccer player and his friend meet you in a bar, they buy you some drinks then invite you to go to one of their hotel rooms.... What do you think is their purpose? Sure it could be to watch the wonderful selection of on demand videos but probably not.

Who knows, do you know? There may have been any number of reasons.

kohakuebisuToday  10:25 am JST

This is far worse than Itoh, the footballer. The people selling date rape drugs should also heavily punished, using undercover operations to catch them.

I'm sure you'll agree though nothing is worse than rape.

> kohakuebisuToday  11:23 am JST

Japan is a very patriarchal society and women's rights are clearly not regarded as highly as men's rights.

Thank you for making my point. Itoh is responsible for his own actions only, not any reality or perception of Japan as a patriarchal society. It would be unfair and highly unproductive to judge or punish him for Japanese society.

You are welcome!

It's good to see at least some of us understand the terrible trial victims of rape in Japan face.

YubaruToday  11:27 am JST

1 year or more (there are two trials, one criminal, the other civil

> What is unusual here is the speed with which he is filing the lawsuit. It sends a message that, at least to him, he sure as hell didnt do anything wrong and is going to fight.

Pure conjecture.

There could be any number of reasons - perhaps he just believes he can get away with it because it's hard for the women to prove. And he has a lot to lose.

MarkToday  10:32 am JST

If he is found to be innocent , I hope he takes them and their supporters to the cleaners.

I really hope he doesn't because the barriers to women who are raped in Japan are already usually insurmountable for the vast majority. Less than 95% of women who are raped have the courage to report it.

kohakuebisuToday  10:21 am JST

What is indisputable is that the authorities are hopeless at handling rape cases, both prosecuting them and handling the victims. There should be far more outrage about this.

However the correct outlet for such outrage should not be any single rape accusation. Even if Itoh is punished severely, it will not affect what happens in 99 point whatever other cases, most of which are far worse, involving intimidation or actual physical force.

Japan is a very patriarchal society and women's rights are clearly not regarded as highly as men's rights.