Without massive demonstrations or spectacular positions, and despite resistance from a power dominated by conservatives, the #metoo movement has made its way in Japan. Evidenced by the apologies made on September 29 by the Chief of Staff of the Self-Defense Forces (FAD, the Japanese army) for the attack on Rina Gonoi when she was a soldier.
After having denounced his three attackers, Mme Gonoi had seen his harassment case, which occurred in front of a dozen witnesses, rejected by the prosecution in early 2022, for lack of evidence. The ex-soldier then chose to publicize it on YouTube. “I can’t sit still thinking about the women of the SDF who have suffered the same thing”, she explained. The initiative convinced 146 soldiers to send him their testimonies of assaults.
Since the beginnings of #metoo in Japan, public exposure of attacks has multiplied and ended up moving police or judicial institutions that until then had little to listen to the victims. Journalist Shiori Ito obtained in 2022 the civil conviction of Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a former journalist for the TBS channel, for having raped her in 2015 in a hotel room. In 2018, Junichi Fukuda, a senior finance ministry official, had to resign after his victim, a TV Asahi journalist, revealed he was harassed in the press.
Tremors
But these cases are just tremors in a country ranked 116e out of 146 in terms of gender equality in 2022 by the World Economic Forum, and where public denunciation is not without consequences. In 2020, politician Shoko Arai was expelled from the city council of Kusatsu (center) for revealing that the mayor, Nobutada Kuroiwa, assaulted her.
The strong resistance explains the change from #metoo to #wetoo (“us too”), which wanted to be better suited to Japanese society by sparking demonstrations of solidarity for the victims. The evolution has been accompanied by mobilizations, such as those of the Flower Demo group, a women’s association, which regularly demonstrates against harassment.
A few rare legislative advances have accompanied the movement, in particular the adoption in 2022 of laws on the follow-up of teachers convicted of sexual assault and against the exploitation of young adults in pornographic content. On the other hand, the legislation on rape remains highly criticized. Revised in 2017 for the first time since 1907, the penal code raised the minimum prison sentence for such acts from three to five years. But the text continues to require victims to prove their inability to resist. In 2019, a man walked free from court despite being found guilty of raping his daughter when she was a teenager. His victim had not been able to prove that she had done everything possible to escape the rapes.
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