Check out this video by Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reporting from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.
Transcript after the jump.
Few can go to Japan in spring time and not be enthralled by the cherry blossom that flourishes in abundance and a country that is at the forefront of technological development.
Hiromi knows a different and painful aspect of side to life which is not progressive or seasonal. She is a victim of domestic violence one of a number of women who are increaseingly seeking protection. Few years ago that couldn't have happened in a male dominated society, where spousal abuse is once taken for granted.
A friend of mine told me these things are common and happen quit often. The police told me that even if I seek help from public services that they will not take the issue seriously, and I was afraid of the consequences if he found out I was doing this.
Sometimes her daughter witnessed the beatings which spanned 2 years, until Hirami could take no more and went to the police.
According to a study last year, 25,000 women were violently beaten by their partners, an increase of 20 percent. 1 in 3 Japanese women have been physically assaulted in their relationships and 1 in 20 feared for their lives.
For 4 years from the age of 20 Sachi Nakajima was brutally beaten by her partner, many times she thought she was going to do.
Things happening in my life i had only seen in horror movies, but it was really happening to me. if i couldn't believe it, no one would.
There are 150 shelters for women in Japan in back alleys without signs. Japanese women are terrified to speak out and shelter staff are often threatened with weapons.
Many shelters do anti-violence training. One advocate says,
They believe they can use their power to control their gfs and wives. They can do things to their partners they can't do to others. Men think that as long as their is love, violence is permissive, just as a parent can slap its child to teach them how to behave.
That's exactly how this man felt, he is too embarrassed to be identified, but he regularly beat his wife for the smallest of reasons. He can't promise that he will never use violence, but he has learned important lessons.
About being equal in the relationship, I think was only imposing my opinion and not listening to her and now I care more about what she is saying and why.
But it appears few violent husbands feel the same, some are changing their tactics from physical to mental and sexual abuse and women's orgs believe that in this first world country many women will remain second class citizens.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Domestic Violence in Japan.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/13336
I've also noticed a trend where a lot of Western men love to move to Japan, or marry Japanese women. I've heard and seen a few blogs where the men talk about how great Japanese women are, and how much better they are than Western women.
Yeah, I noticed that too. They have this assumption the Western women are "too demanding," not "feminine enough," etc. And seek Asian women in general, because they believe they're these "submissive" docile women who are more feminine. Quite racist and sexist in my opinion.
Also, Japan is one of those countries were gender roles are still very strict. Also it's a culture where things that happen in private must remain private. It doesn't seem that domestic violence in Japan is widely discussed.
I do remember that many of the men in my study abroad group seemed to be of the "party" type than studious when it came to our abroad experience, but that might have just been because I got stuck with a group of extroverts.
While I was in Japan, I read this book which I can't recall for the life of me, but was written by some Australian guy who had married a Japanese woman. He walked the Shikoku pilgrimage. While it was an interesting read about his journey, it was so sexist I almost gave the book up. He didn't respect his wife's wishes at all, and every woman was either described by her bust size or missing hair and teeth.
Ugh. I very, very briefly dated a guy with this mentality. Needless to say, we didn't date long.
Note: I'm a white American female. Yeah, way to go insulting the girl you're dating like that ON TOP OF the obvious asian fetish rooted in racism.
It's worse when you consider ... a lot of Japanese women prefer foreign men because they think foreign men will treat them more equally than Japanese men will. Western men come to Japan to find women because they think they can treat them just as badly as Japanese men do.
And then those same western men are shocked--SHOCKED!!--when she takes the kids and runs to her mom's house and he never sees them again. (This seems to happen with startling regularity if GaijinPot is to be believed.)
As a western woman living in Japan I really can't imagine dating a Japanese guy. Some of them are nice-looking enough, but the sense of ownership that men in general feel that they have over their girlfriends, including sex on demand, is disturbing enough to make me very wary of the men here. Surely some of them aren't awful, but I've already had several guys WHO I WAS NOT EVEN DATING try to take ownership of me and get extremely possessive, tossing HUGE hissyfits when I had other plans that did not involve them. It was ... awful. When three different people in a short time (about one month) do this, you start to notice a trend ...
1,000 thank yous. I'm writing a paper on feminism and Japan, and will be traveling there from mid-May to early-June.
Apparently the sense of entitlement over women's bodies is more open in Japan than in the USA (not worse, just more open according to my sensei). Just look at the letters for husband and wife... Master Person for Husband and Inside House for wife. It was pretty recently that husbands referred to their wives as 'wife.' My group was also told that we (as in the women) need to be careful of men on Subways grabbing us... my sensei is afraid I will be kidnapped in Akihabara, the geeky district of Tokyo. I'm going to pay close attention to whether or not I think public displays of sexism are worse here or there... If DV was reported and filed as often that it happens, the crime rate would spike a lot.
I'm super excited the learn about the differences between American and Japanese sexism and feminism.
You should always watch out for yourself in any foriegn situation (be it a big city in America or a small one in another country), but I went to Akihabara alone and never had any trouble with the local population.
What I did have trouble with was the pornography. Be aware; if you're into stuff like anime and manga and looking for shops with pillows, figurines, and the like (which you'll find plenty of), there will be sexual images, figures, and books mixed in with everything else (most of it will be women with oversized boobs and/or cum dripping off them). One store I went into had five floors, and floors three and four were dedicated entirely to porn (three to "guy/girl" and four to "guy/guy"). You have to go past these shops to get to the top floor, which sells all the generic stuff that I bought for my friends and family. XD
I have lived in the outskirts of Tokyo for two and a half years. Japan is a very safe country to live in (except, obviously, if you're trapped in an abusive relationship). I have never felt as safe on the street as I do here.
Tourists do not get systematically kidnapped in Akihabara or anywhere else. I don't know why your teacher is making you nervous on this score. Groping does happen, but if you can avoid rush-hour then it won't happen to you, as the men need the anonymous crush of bodies to operate. It has never happened to me. If you would like to discuss these issues more, let me know and we can talk off-thread.
Honestly, if you have blonde hair, I would dye it brown for your trip. You will get a lot less attention that way. It's stupid, but probably the most useful thing you can do.
Otherwise than that, you couldn't be any safer!!
(I lived in Japan)
Thanks to everyone who has replied.
My hair is strawberry blond. I'm actually dying it before I go, though. We will always be with at least one other person, most of the time we will be in a group. She really only means me getting kidnapped as a joke, but she still thinks I'll get a lot of attention. I'm going from blond to... blond, black, purple, and pink. So I'm sure I'll still get stares anyway XD
That doesn't really work. I have light brown hair and I get stared at and grunted at, especially in Akihabara (seriously, it's like they've never seen a woman before--like I dropped out from the sky or something).
I've also been followed, groped, flashed, propositioned, etc. Hair color will NOT help you.
The rule of thumb is to remember that you're worse off in the suburbs than in the city. In the city there are usually people around and jerkoffs will be less likely to act like jerkoffs out of that social fear of making a scene. Go into a quiet residential area and the weirdos start popping out of the woodwork.
Hey, no dissing the suburbs! I live in deepest darkest suburbia (Wakoshi) and I don't think we have a higher weirdo quotient then anywhere else.
In the interests of full disclosure, if I'm on foot I'm usually accompanied by a small child, so I may well be considered off limits by those who would be skeevy in my general direction. Or maybe the average Japanese skeevemonger finds me irredeemably unattractive. Who can say?
I've lived in Tokyo for 16 years, and let me reassure you that if you are kidnapped, it won't be in Akiharbara. LOL! Kabukicho is the place you need to be aware of- that's in Shinjuku, by the way. At any rate, Tokyo is actually quite safe when compared with cities in western countries. I live in Shinjuku, but it's actually safe enough on the streets that you can walk alone, even late at night. The worst that has ever happened to me in sixteen years was getting cat-called. But ya- stay out of Kabukicho unless you know where you are going. It's not exactly dangerous, but it IS pretty skeezy. Do use your street-smarts.
As for the subway gropers, they don't usually bother western women because they know western women won't just stand there and take it the way Japanese women do, so they're too afraid of getting caught to even try. The couple of times I WAS groped, it didn't go far- all I had to do was say, "Don't even THINK about it" and look him in the eye- and the hand that was brushing my leg disappeared, and the guy got off the train.
As for the problem of domestic violence, I know it all too well. I was married to a Japanese man, and he actually did hit me once when he lost his temper. The difference is, that when he did it, I hit him back- and told him that if he ever did it again, he was going to the hospital. He believed me, and never tried it again. We later divorced, but it was for reasons other than that.
I think the tendency toward domestic violence here stems from two things- one, the infantilization of women in Japanese society, and two, the lack of feminist influence here.
Child-like women are idealized, and the more helpless, cute, and silly they are, the more men like it, as it doesn't challenge their ego and makes them feel strong in comparison. Generally speaking, Japanese men have a real problem with strong women- they're scared of them- and instead seek out girls who will stroke their ego, and whom they can look down on. It's easy to imagine how that would easily lead to domestic violence. I know you'll say, "But that isn't so different from the US." but it's actually a LOT more than that- I'd say they are at least 30 years behind us. They haven't had their sexual revolution yet.
The word "feminist" is a huge insult in Japan- the connotation is that the woman is morally deficient and lacks femininity. Morally deficient because in selfishly pursuing her own happiness, she is not fulfilling her duty as a female to make babies and care for men.
I could go on and on about this, but perhaps should stop now before I use up all of feministing's bandwidth. :) If anyone cares to discuss it further, they can contact me.
If you are looking for some Japanese feminist reading, you should look into Ueno Chizuko. She is definitely the most prolific feminist academic writing in Japanese.
"Help centers for women which try and educate women about their rights and men about the wrongs."
This small sentence does say a lot. It's good to see the 'why this is wrong' side included.
I've read in a couple of places that the Japanese 'sex rate' (the number of times the average person has sex per year) is one of the lowest in the world, and dropping.
Meanwhile their porn industry is expanding. 'Hentai' is far far more offensive than most American pornography. Rape themes dominate, though I can't cite any studies, I think rape may be depicted more frequently than consensual sex. For every strong female character in regular anime and manga, there is a hentai book where she gets raped. This includes depictions of monsters raping women.
I think the two are closely linked in a cause-effect loop. Reconciling traditional views of women with western feminism is impossible for many men. A sense of hostility forms. Hentai caters to this. But young men exposed to it gain a warped sense of sexuality and may have trouble approaching women, or forming decent relationships. This of course leads to more frustration with women and a desire for more violent porn.
Certainly Japan is in many ways a progressive country. The island nation is a powerhouse of technological development, and they have an incredibly low amount of street violence. I am no expert, but it seems that their male-female relations however are completely fucked.
The figures are pretty shocking for the country always touted as a model for low violent crime rates. I guess there really is no special conundrum after all.
Just goes to show how people care more about stranger violence though. Intimate violence isn't taken as seriously.
"For every strong female character in regular anime and manga, there is a hentai book where she gets raped."
The men too, iirc...
A good and interesting report. Although the report is well done it seems to imply at the end that nothing is going to change for a long time about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.
Here, as in any other country in the world historically, there has been domestic violence in all types of societies, not in the least of course in societies and cultures that have taken a sexist ('paternalistic') view that women were not as equal as men and could be beaten and suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands.
Now, thanks to the work of volunteer women's groups and activist lawyers in Japan who have worked hard against this problem of violence against women and children in their homes, the Japanese government enacted the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims in 2001. This was the first official recognition by Japanese politicians and law makers in Japanese history that domestic violence is in fact a crime. As a first step it was an important recognition of the widespread problem of spousal violence against women in Japanese homes throughout Japan. However there was considerable criticism that the low financial fines on Japanese husbands who attack their wives and the limit of only 1 month long restraining orders on men who abused their wives and children did not go far enough to provide Japanese women with a credible degree of legal protection and safety from further violent attacks. The law was revised to some extent in 2004 but still met with criticism as not going far enough to protect the victims of domestic and also for not focusing on the men who are being violent toward their wives and children:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20041204f2.html
Amendments to the Domestic Violence Prevention Act were passed and became law in July 2007 but did not receive so much attention in the media as would have been desirable:
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
However more and more Japanese women are taking action in Japan and, like the women featured in the video above, are no longer to suffer without protest former generations have had to do without any effective legal protection. The following links are to articles on domestic violence and National Police Agency reports that have appeared in the media this year that show that modern Japanese women in 21st century Japan are standing up against violent husbands and using the existing laws to protect themselves and their children:
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
These brave women need and deserve stronger and even more effective legal protection for themselves and the children they are trying to protect from their own fathers hands. There needs also to be considerable public and national political will focused on providing Japanese wives and partners with safe emergency residences and legally protected abuse shelters. I think it is also of vital importance that serious decisions to provide and implement official funding to ensure that refuge and protection to all women who are suffering domestic violence of all forms.
Hi again. It seems some of the links I posted didn't appear in full. So I hope you don't mind me posting them again. If they don't show up please add the numbers after the forward slashes.
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
/
However more and more Japanese women are taking action in Japan and, like the women featured in the video above, are no longer to suffer without protest former generations have had to do without any effective legal protection. The following links are to articles on domestic violence and National Police Agency reports that have appeared in the media this year that show that modern Japanese women in 21st century Japan are standing up against violent husbands and using the existing laws to protect themselves and their children:
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
/
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com//
/
both the article and many of the comments are really interesting, and will be quite useful to me also as they're relevant to my undergrad dissertation (about how such issues are dealt with in the work of contemporary japanese women writers). thanks for posting the clip and thanks to those who've shared their experiences.
i spent a year in japan as part of my studies, and i do think that it is generally much much safer than the uk (where i'm from), though obviously there are exceptions. it's quite difficult, because i love so much about japan, but i am also very aware of many unpleasant aspects of the country, particularly regarding the position of women.
if anyone wants to know more about these issues in japan, i can probably recommend some good articles, books, dramas etc - let me know!
"if anyone wants to know more about these issues in japan, i can probably recommend some good articles, books, dramas etc - let me know!
"
Does anyone understand the paradox of women in Manga and Anime and Video Games? Some of the strongest women I've seen in fiction have been female Anime characters. Obviously, there's stuff out there that's pretty degrading to women too, but in general they've been portrayed quite well.
I think it depends on the specific anime or video game you're talking about. Then again, women in western media aren't always portrayed well. I wouldn't necessarily say the women are universally depicted as stronger. Then again, I've seen some strong female characters that would be hard to find in western media, so maybe it varies based on the series.
I think it's interesting that some of the most popular manga in Japan are guy/guy. It's marketed toward women, usually, but it seems that homosexuality at least in literature is more commonplace in Japan than in the US. Much of the girl/girl romance is for teenage boys (not much different than in America, really), but I have seen some that was clearly written for lesbian and bisexual women.