MeToo movement fails to gain traction in Japan where women seldom speak up

Japanese women who say “Me too” do so at their own risk.

Online comments accused Rika Shiiki of lying and being a publicity hound when she tweeted that she lost business contracts after refusing to have sex with clients. Some said that by agreeing to dine with a man, she led him on.

“The comments I received were disproportionately negative,” the 20-year-old university student and entrepreneur told a TV talk show in December. “We need to create a society where we can speak up. Otherwise sexual harassment and other misconduct will persist forever.”

The #MeToo movement has not caught on in Japan, where speaking out often draws criticism rather than sympathy, even from other women.

In a patriarchal society where women have long taken the blame, many victims try to forget attacks and harassment instead of seeking support and justice, said Mari Miura, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. “Japan lacks such a sisterhood,” she said. “It’s an exhausting and intimidating process. It’s quite natural that victims feel reluctant to speak up.”

One woman, journalist Shiori Ito, went public last year. She held a news conference after prosecutors decided not to press charges against a prominent TV newsman whom she had accused of raping her after he invited her to discuss job opportunities over dinner and drinks in 2015.

Many online comments criticised her for speaking out, looking too seductive and ruining the life of a prominent figure. Some women called her an embarrassment.

The October release of Ito’s book Blackbox detailing her ordeal came as the #MeToo phenomenon was making headlines in the United States. It prompted some discussion in Japan, but only a handful of other women came forward.

“Many people think Shiori’s problem has nothing to do with them . . . and that’s why #MeToo isn’t growing in Japan,” said lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda, an expert on sex crimes.

In Japan, sexually assaulted women are traditionally called “the flawed”, she said.

Nearly three quarters of rape victims said they had never told anyone, and just over 4 per cent had gone to police, according to a 2015 government survey. The study found that one in 15 Japanese women had been raped or forced to have sex.

Victims often shy away from going to court out of fear, privacy concerns or losing jobs, Tsunoda said.

Justice Ministry statistics show only one-third of rape cases go to court. Of the 1678 people tried for sexual assault in 2017, only 285, or 17 per cent, were sentenced to prison for three years or longer.

In November, Yokohama prosecutors, without saying why, dropped the case against six students from a leading university who had been arrested for the alleged gangrape of a teenage female student after getting her drunk. The university expelled three of them.

Conformist pressure in Japan discourages women from speaking out or saying “no” to many things, including unwanted sex, said Saori Ikeuchi, a former lawmaker and gender diversity activist. That mindset has silenced virtually all of Japan’s so-called “comfort women”, who were sexually abused as prostitutes for the wartime military, while Japan has shown little sympathy to victims from Korea and elsewhere, she said.

Ito, the journalist, said that after her attack she visited a women’s clinic that lacked expertise on rape, and called a rape victim support centre that refused to give her advice on the phone. Police required her to recount the ordeal repeatedly and to demonstrate it with a life-sized doll, she said. It took three weeks to get police to accept her criminal complaint and start investigating. Then a court-appointed citizens’ panel agreed with the prosecutors’ decision not to indict.

Ito has filed a civil lawsuit against the alleged offender, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, demanding compensation and seeking any clues as to why he was let go and never arrested.

“I thought about how I could change the situation, and I had no choice but to speak out about my experience,” she said.

A group of opposition lawmakers has started its own investigation, seeking to find if the charges were dropped because of Yamaguchi’s connections to powerful political officials. AP