Pre-modern Japan was traditionally less patriarchal, according to Emiko Ochiai, a sociologist and historian at Kyoto University. “In the ancient period, Japan had female kings, but it became rare in the later period. In the medieval period, there were female warriors or generals,” Ochiai says. RAIB identified two underlying factors, that Great Central Railway did not have effective processes for learning lessons from operational experience, and had no effective process to support the identification, management and monitoring of risk. Recommendations I just go there to have fun,” he adds. In his opinion, these bars can prevent someone from groping in public. I hear many girls telling me that they have experienced men’s hands under their skirt, and the groper’s fingers in their vagina,” Matsunaga says. “It is rape.” The media always blames … the victims,” explains Goto, who points to the fact that Japan’s mainstream and social media is male-dominated.

My Streets, My Body: How street harassment impacts my weight, my eating habits, my health, Dechanique If you’re being groped in a public space, just raise your voice and catch the attention of fellow passengers. In most cases, someone will come to your aid and shame the assaulted. Stories of dealing with chikan in Japan, unfortunately, is quite common now.

In his opinion, men who grope on trains are motivated both by the public nature of the act and the fact that it is non-consensual. Confucianism influenced the declining status of women in [Japan],” she says. That ideology was spread by popular stories and dramas and was “reinforced in the process of modernisation under the impact from the West”. When asked about the perception of schoolgirls, Araki and others refer to the archetype of “Lolita”.

Hiroko Goto, a feminist, professor of criminal law at Chiba University and vice president of Japan-headquartered NGO Human Rights Now, believes many people do not consider groping to be a crime. “[For] society at large, it’s not a big problem; that’s the kind of double standard [between] the victims’ viewpoint and the social viewpoint.” In Japan, multiple women go through this on a regular basis. Local and foreign. These women have come forward to reveal stories of how they dealt with chikan. If we talk about sexual violence, especially if the topic is about groping, the main … concern is about false accusation,” Ogawa says. One reason to do groping is to show their power to women and the younger girls,” Goto says. She believes offenders carefully target vulnerable-looking schoolgirls. She worries that as older schoolgirls begin to speak up, perpetrators will begin to target even younger girls.This was shared over 43,000 times and encouraged more victims to tell their stories of dealing with Chikan. A girl in school uniform stands on the street to gather customers for a JK cafe, while two men look at the price and service list [Shiori Ito/Al Jazeera] Dissuaded from reporting Such coming out stories leads to awareness amongst the public. The users of online media and the contributors of online media, all alike, should take it up as their responsibility to inform and educate people of what constitutes as chikan and how to ask for help when it happens. At 11:50 hrs on Saturday 14 January 2023, a passenger alighting from a train at Great Central Railway’s Loughborough Central station lost his footing and sustained a serious injury. The train had made a planned stop at platform 1. The door used by the passenger opened onto the platform end ramp, approximately 1.6 metres beyond the end of the level part of the platform.

That absence of victims’ perspectives, is why Aiko Tabusa, a non-fiction manga artist, started blogging about groping in 2011. “There was either groping porn or innocent gropers’ stories,” the 38-year-old explains. She points to the widely reported story of Koji Yatabe, whom a district court found guilty of forcing a young girl to touch his penis in 2000. Yatabe, who fought his conviction and eventually had it overturned by a high court judge, co-wrote a book with his wife about his case. That was then turned into a film called I Just Didn’t Do It. First point to be noted was that less than 5% said that a target was noticed because of their provocative style of clothing. When talking about rape, the most common response, 45% of it, was that the victim seemed as if they wouldn’t report it to the police. When I was in high school, every [girl] was a victim,” says Ogawa. “[We] didn’t think we could do anything about it.” By involving students, Matsunaga believes she’s encouraging them to talk about this issue from a young age.Another resolve is to report the matter to the station master. With the help of some of the passengers on the train with you, the identified chikan in Japan, can be taken to the station master and be put in custody for further action. Women also make light of the issue, she reflects. “People just think this happens every day, so they have to laugh about it.” The reason they can’t say [anything] is because they’re ashamed,” Ogawa says. “And sometimes, if they talk about it, some people think they are just bragging: I’ve been groped.” Apart from making the badges more widely available, Matsunaga also wants offenders to see them and think: “The world is changing, some people have started talking about it.”