While the is certainly true now, it was far less so ten or so years ago before the tsunami of illegal aliens inundated the U.S. and the defund the police madness took hold. Japan is not as safe as we would like to think, as the Japanese would like us to think. To get to truth of the matter will take a long posting, which I very well may undertake on my own substack. I do not wish to hijack yours for one of my pet peeves. However, I can say this, until I can to Japan I did not understand why pride was a deadly sin. I do now. Briefly I can relate a little.
The two women who once lived next door were murdered, roughly a month apart ten years ago and the creep who did it still brings the kairanban around. I was interviewed by the police after each killing, the perp coming over and interrupting the first interview and standing in the second story window listening to the second. The brilliant keystone cops interviewing me deciding to do so in the approach to my home. There are few things in the world that actually exist that are rarer than a criminal pathologist in Japan. My prefecture as none, as do most in Japan.
Years ago, in response to an article on rape of gaijin women in Japan, I wrote an letter to the editor of the Japan Times detailing what I knew of rapes of students at my university. I will try to post it here later if I can.
I agree Japan is not as safe as some people claim. I do think that it is way safer than almost anywhere else, even if you include estimates for the underreporting of rapes etc. you mention.
It is certainly safer than just about anywhere in the US right now and the reason for the decline of that once great nation is well known.
As I used to tell my students, no place is safe, well nothing is safe. “Safe” means less unsafe than other options. However, even this idea of safety is erased if we are not on guard. I’d bet that the majority of rape victims in Japan would not be in the States or other places up to around 10 years ago or so. They know that other countries are dangerous so they take precautions. Here, through, they live under a false sense of security and all but advertise to be raped. One of my two students was raped in her apartment because she open the door without checking the peep hole when the rapist said “Takubin” when she used the intercom. She open the door and a masked man forced his way in and held a knife to her throat until he took what he wanted and left. I doubt she would have been so careless in the States.
The false sense of security leads to all sorts of bad outcomes and so many here have this in abundance.
Now though, the States and most of Europe are a mess.
A Tokyoite reassesses her view of Japan after another violent encounter is ignored by passers-by, police
By Holly Lanasolyluna. Oct 23, 2013
I’ve lived in Japan on and off for several years, and I’ve always felt safe on my bicycle here, particularly as I often see young and old women alike biking at all hours of the night. But after an event a few weeks ago, I feel as if this false sense of security has been stripped away.
Cycling home at 8:30 p.m. on a well-lit street in Tokyo, I sensed another biker by my side, so I slowed down to let him pass. At that point he suddenly cut over, trapped me against a parked car and grabbed my tire.
He began yelling at me in Japanese, but the only thing I could clearly understand was “You stole this bicycle!” I insisted that I had not and tried to pull away, but the man was strong and continued yanking on my bike. I bought it from a shop brand-new, so I knew it wasn’t stolen. I
also didn’t believe that it was my bicycle he wanted.
I yelled, both in English and Japanese, “Help! Call the police!” Many people observed the fracas but did nothing to help. He pulled me across a street full of traffic, briefly blocking cars, but almost everyone just seemed to ignore it.
It felt like hours of struggling, but then a young woman on a bicycle appeared. By now I must have had tears streaming down my face and my voice was almost gone. She said to me calmly: “I know this man. You stole this bicycle. I’m calling the police.”
Were this man and this girl working together? Or was it just so believable that a foreigner could have stolen the bike that she instinctively believed him? And if they were a team, what did they want? A mama chari worth $100? I didn’t think she was actually calling the police, but I had no idea how to describe my exact location to call them myself, and I didn’t want to wait to see what would happen next. My instinct told me to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Noticing the man had loosened his grip on my bicycle, I pulled it out of his hands and took off, with the sound of the pair yelling fading behind me. I biked away so quickly that they couldn’t catch up, to a convenience store about 10 minutes away. My arms and head were throbbing.
Seeing a police car pull up at a red light, I waved and yelled at them. Somehow the officers didn’t see me and drove away, so I met up with my boyfriend, who happened to be nearby, and we went to a kōban (police box) together.
At the kōban, the police officer’s response went as follows: “Wow, that’s strange. Were they Japanese? Well, I can’t really do anything because I’m here by myself and they’re probably not there anymore. You’re a young girl, and maybe you shouldn’t be out by yourself alone at night.”
No details about the incident were recorded. Not only had every bystander ignored my pleas for help, but the police had also given me a terribly disappointing response — basically, “Shō ga nai, ne?” (“What can you do, eh?”).
This was not the first time that something like this had happened to me in Japan. The last time was in Osaka one morning, around 10 a.m., when a stranger picked me up and tried to carry me into a love hotel. Then, I kept kicking and punching until he dropped me. I tried to run away, but he was much taller than me and kept catching up.
Our struggle went on for at least 10 minutes, and none of the many onlookers helped or even appeared concerned. Finally, I saw a police officer down the street and screamed at my attacker, “Look! Look! It’s the police!” That seemed to frighten him, and at that point he walked over to a nearby vending machine, bought me a water, said “gomen nasai” (sorry) and walked away.
At that time I had few friends in Japan, and everyone I told said first, “Was he Japanese?” and second, “Things like that never happen in Japan.” (I hadn’t even thought about his ethnicity; he was Asian and had spoken to me in Japanese.)
Everyone made it seem like it was such a random experience that I almost, in fact, felt ashamed,
thinking I must have done something to provoke this bizarre behavior. When this second incident occurred, I started to suspect that these events weren’t unusual. I posted a description of what had happened on Facebook and asked if people had had similar experiences.
The response was overwhelming: stories of being attacked while jogging, being stalked by male and female students, being groped on the street in broad daylight, men masturbating on trains, attempted kidnappings. All of these stories came from strong women who put up a vicious fight but still walked away with psychological (and sometimes physical) injuries. In all of these stories, the victims had been in a “safe” public place but no one tried to help them or call the police. If this is so common, why does Japan maintain a reputation for being so safe? And is this image of safety actually facilitating these incidents?
Many say Tokyo is the best place to host the Olympics because it is safe. And in many ways it is: Foreigners are astounded to walk into Starbucks and see iPhones left unattended on a table to reserve a seat, for example. When I lived in Barcelona, my phone wasn’t safe even in my pocket. Still, the two most aggressive attacks in my life happened in Japan, not in “unsafe” countries I backpacked through alone and at a younger age. Thus I don’t think Japan is as safe as the image propagated about the country suggests. It seems that just about every foreign woman I know has a terrible story to tell. I have no way of knowing if this number is as high for Japanese women, because only foreign women shared their stories with me.
Some of us do wonder: Are these types of attacks more prevalent among foreign women? It is hard to tell, but perhaps for the attacker such a target could be less risky. Many foreign women would not know where and how to report such an incident. Even in my case, having a Japanese boyfriend to go with me and translate, the police still didn’t record any information or search for the people involved. Moreover, since foreigners are often associated with crime, bystanders might be less likely to intervene or call the police.
After all these years, I clearly remember anti-groping cartoon posters in the Fukuoka subway depicting a man with dark skin touching a white woman. Even at the time, I thought it reflected a still-prevalent view in Japan: Crime and criminals are non-Japanese. When a crime happens, people almost always ask, “Was (s)he Japanese?” Of course, Japanese people too commit crimes, and “othering” the victims and perpetrators only makes it easier for crimes to go unaddressed, thus making society less safe for both foreigners and Japanese.
As I’ve mentioned, for all I know these types of attacks are just as common among Japanese women. Rather than jumping to conclusions, I’m simply hoping to start a dialogue that might help bring about solutions. I have always known that Japan had perverts — like anywhere — but until recently they had seemed fairly benign.
As a minority in Japan, foreign women do receive a lot of male attention and are often offered work as hostesses. They also complain to me about how they feel objectified in Japan. White models and mannequins are seen everywhere, even though white women represent a tiny percentage of the population.
In a way, white women become plastic here: imports without feelings — strange, exotic dolls. And
if we are dolls, perhaps the groping, leering, stalking and attacking is somehow justified in the perpetrator’s mind as a game rather than a crime.
When I first moved to Japan, I tolerated the staring, following and persistent nampa (pickup artists), but after being assaulted twice in public, they have taken on darker undertones. I now know I can’t rely on the goodwill of strangers, as I have in the past when I was verbally harassed in countries such as Mexico. Interest from strangers that I could have dismissed as innocent curiosity a few years ago now gives me the chills.
Despite its many stereotypes and inconveniences, I love Japan. So do a lot of the women who shared their stories with me. I am attracted to Japan because it’s so different from my culture. I want to keep living here and unlocking the mysteries I encounter every day, but I have ideas about how it could be made a safer place. Just because I love this country, it does not mean I have to love it unconditionally and ignore those things I might disagree with.
Experiencing these incidents and hearing other women’s stories has altered my daily behavior. I have vowed to be more careful as I calculate risks in my daily life. I carry Mace. At night, I take roads that have lots of kōbans on them, and I know how to explain my route should I have to talk to a police officer.
I’m not paranoid, but I also won’t let surprise be a weapon.
Holly Lanasolyluna is a professor, photojournalist and toy songwriter from California. Foreign Agenda offers a forum for opinion on fourth (and fifth) Thursdays. Send comments
I have personally thrown a scumbag off a train when I saw him expose himself to a woman near me on a busy train. He seemed most upset to be left on the platform with his dick hanging out as the doors shut and the train left the station.
Did any of the erai Japanese business men aid in the detraining of the perv? Been a few years ago now, but a guy was finally arrested for grabbing female passengers and hauling them into the onboard restroom to rape them. I think her was arrested after the third such rape. No one on the trains helped any of the victims.
Then we have the two women who were murdered next door about a month apart by a relative in the house. Turned out that I actually heard the second one. Actually, I could go down quite a long list of violent crimes that have taken place near to me here in Japan. Called the police on one next door when I lived within Tokyo itself. A Chinese woman was recently murder near my ten year old’s school is the most recent.
Years and years ago, like close to 30, an American classmate related a story that his JN girlfriend shared with him. She had studied in the US and had picked up some or the customers there. After retuning to Japan, she was gripped on the train. She stomped on the perv’s foot, kneed him where it counts and screamed. Afterwards, the other women on the train scolded her, she did not react as a proper Japanese lady should. Things are changing, sometime for the good.
Here is the response I sent in. It was published Nov 4. 2013.
No safe country for foreign women: the debate
“Japan: no safe country for foreign women (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2013/10/23/voices/japan-no-safe-country-for-foreign-women/),” Holly Lanasolyluna’s article published in the new Foreign Agenda slot on Oct. 23, attracted an unprecedented number of online comments. More than 5,000 people also answered the accompanying poll about safety in Japan. Here are just some of the mails and comments.
Not a strictly foreign problem
Yes, Japanese women are also victims. I teach at university and have had the following stories related to me by students.
While at a birthday party for a classmate, a friend of two of my students received a phone call from her boss at her part-time job. She worked for a dentist in Shinjuku. He said he needed to meet with her about something work-related.
It was around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night and she didn’t want to meet him, and asked if it could wait until the next time she was at work. He insisted, and said that he would drive out to where the party was and pick her up. Her friends — my students — overheard the conversation and joked that he was going to profess his love for her. She responded that she would not like that at all.
He called again around 11 p.m. to tell her he had arrived. Expressing disgust, she told her friends that she would be “right back” and left the party, leaving her book bag, club gear and purse behind. Her friends have not seen nor heard from her since.
After weeks of searching (they didn’t go to the police out of fear of “making it worse”) they found a friend of a friend of her family. All they were able to learn was that she was alive. They got her home address to send her purse and other belongings to her. A month later, all the students in the same year as her were called together and told that she dropped out of school and that they should not try to contact her. That was October 2010.
One of the girls who used to know her said that four other of her friends have also been raped. Only one went to the police, and after her experience with them, she said that if ever she was raped again, she would not report it. The police at the kōban [police box] where she reported the attack made her show them what he did to her and where he touched her. She felt as if she had been raped a second time by the intrusive questions and contact by the male police officers taking her report.
The second attack was on a longtime student of mine. She related her experiences during our discussion class, made up of a small group of close friends, all of whom were my longtime students. As she was walking home from her station in downtown Tokyo late at night, a man grabbed her from behind and, with his hand over her mouth, carried her between two office buildings and raped her.
Afterwards, she immediately ran to the kōban to report it. The officer on duty there cautioned her that if she filed a report the police would have to inform her parents, even through she was of adult age. Voicing her desire not to have her family, especially her father, know, and yet afraid of being attacked again, the police officer told her, “Don’t worry, this is a safe area.” She left for home without filing the report.
Later, she would tell her family, except for her father. Once her father did learn of it, he became infuriated and did not speak or even look at her for a month. Getting over his anger at her, he and the rest of her family then urged her to file a report. It was then at least a couple of months since the attack. I haven’t had contact with her since so I do not know the outcome. I do know that I have read about neither in the newspapers nor heard about them via any other news media.
A few years ago my wife was given the following warning from a member of a group we were members of. The speaker was a police officer assigned to the labor ministry to investigate workplace crime. She told all the female members of the group not to go into any bathrooms in
any of the department stores in Shinjuku alone. She was investigating reported rapes numbering in the hundreds. Men would either follow a victim into the restroom or be waiting for them inside.
Whenever I try to tell anyone about any of this, the first thing they ask is always, “Are [the rapists] Japanese?” Second is, “In Japan?” Most of the Japanese men I tell this to get very angry, call me a “lying Japan-basher,” and disassociate themselves from me. Several Japanese women have responded the same way. Others are shocked and outraged. Some just look down in silence.”
I will add here that the story of the rapes in Shinjuku restrooms infuriated my wife as these rapes were obviously reported, otherwise, how could our friend be investigating them. I leave that to be pondered.
Really? Did I post that already? I know I sent my reply to a female friend who moved to Japan after several bad encounters with migrants in Sweden. She felt perfectly safe here and I wanted her to know she needs to be an her guard here too.
Most of my students are female, so this is of particular concern for me.
We know from Xi's visit to San Fran that it's possible to clean up the streets if there is political will. The same could be said for El Salvador.
Why the lack of political will?
I think part of the answer is that it's easier to be tough on crime when there isn't a lot of crime.
Something like 1/3 of all adult black men have felony convictions in the USA. That means that probably almost every single black person is one or at most two degrees removed from a felon. The criminal class isn't some "other" that is distinct from the society and you can do what you will with them. They are cousins and nephews and sons.
Even El Salvador got around this by basically declaring people with tattoos an "other", which worked for much the same way it works in Japan (only criminals get tattoos).
By contrast since the Japanese are so law abiding there is a really strong separation between the criminals and the citizens. If the cops are harsh on criminals the citizens aren't worried about it affecting them.
In the USA, especially with blacks, the citizens identify with the criminals to some degree. In the USA OJ Simpsons recently died, and they had interviews with the jurors and others. Many admitted that they knew OJ murdered those people, but they supported the fact that a black man had killed two white people and wanted him to get away with it! People would just say this on national television. Could you imagine this in Japan?
Another reason is that Japan's criminal caste are generally high IQ asians. They also "behave" within the context of being criminals. Violence is purposeful rather than random, most of the time.
Finally, the use of hard drugs in a recreational setting by UMC and above creates a constituency that doesn't want drug laws enforced too harshly. But hard drugs fuck up the lives of most people who take them. Japan doesn't have this problem.
While the is certainly true now, it was far less so ten or so years ago before the tsunami of illegal aliens inundated the U.S. and the defund the police madness took hold. Japan is not as safe as we would like to think, as the Japanese would like us to think. To get to truth of the matter will take a long posting, which I very well may undertake on my own substack. I do not wish to hijack yours for one of my pet peeves. However, I can say this, until I can to Japan I did not understand why pride was a deadly sin. I do now. Briefly I can relate a little.
The two women who once lived next door were murdered, roughly a month apart ten years ago and the creep who did it still brings the kairanban around. I was interviewed by the police after each killing, the perp coming over and interrupting the first interview and standing in the second story window listening to the second. The brilliant keystone cops interviewing me deciding to do so in the approach to my home. There are few things in the world that actually exist that are rarer than a criminal pathologist in Japan. My prefecture as none, as do most in Japan.
Years ago, in response to an article on rape of gaijin women in Japan, I wrote an letter to the editor of the Japan Times detailing what I knew of rapes of students at my university. I will try to post it here later if I can.
I agree Japan is not as safe as some people claim. I do think that it is way safer than almost anywhere else, even if you include estimates for the underreporting of rapes etc. you mention.
It is certainly safer than just about anywhere in the US right now and the reason for the decline of that once great nation is well known.
As I used to tell my students, no place is safe, well nothing is safe. “Safe” means less unsafe than other options. However, even this idea of safety is erased if we are not on guard. I’d bet that the majority of rape victims in Japan would not be in the States or other places up to around 10 years ago or so. They know that other countries are dangerous so they take precautions. Here, through, they live under a false sense of security and all but advertise to be raped. One of my two students was raped in her apartment because she open the door without checking the peep hole when the rapist said “Takubin” when she used the intercom. She open the door and a masked man forced his way in and held a knife to her throat until he took what he wanted and left. I doubt she would have been so careless in the States.
The false sense of security leads to all sorts of bad outcomes and so many here have this in abundance.
Now though, the States and most of Europe are a mess.
Oh absolutely being lulled into a false sense of security is a problem.
Here is the article that prompted my response.
Japan Times
Japan: no safe country for foreign women
A Tokyoite reassesses her view of Japan after another violent encounter is ignored by passers-by, police
By Holly Lanasolyluna. Oct 23, 2013
I’ve lived in Japan on and off for several years, and I’ve always felt safe on my bicycle here, particularly as I often see young and old women alike biking at all hours of the night. But after an event a few weeks ago, I feel as if this false sense of security has been stripped away.
Cycling home at 8:30 p.m. on a well-lit street in Tokyo, I sensed another biker by my side, so I slowed down to let him pass. At that point he suddenly cut over, trapped me against a parked car and grabbed my tire.
He began yelling at me in Japanese, but the only thing I could clearly understand was “You stole this bicycle!” I insisted that I had not and tried to pull away, but the man was strong and continued yanking on my bike. I bought it from a shop brand-new, so I knew it wasn’t stolen. I
also didn’t believe that it was my bicycle he wanted.
I yelled, both in English and Japanese, “Help! Call the police!” Many people observed the fracas but did nothing to help. He pulled me across a street full of traffic, briefly blocking cars, but almost everyone just seemed to ignore it.
It felt like hours of struggling, but then a young woman on a bicycle appeared. By now I must have had tears streaming down my face and my voice was almost gone. She said to me calmly: “I know this man. You stole this bicycle. I’m calling the police.”
Were this man and this girl working together? Or was it just so believable that a foreigner could have stolen the bike that she instinctively believed him? And if they were a team, what did they want? A mama chari worth $100? I didn’t think she was actually calling the police, but I had no idea how to describe my exact location to call them myself, and I didn’t want to wait to see what would happen next. My instinct told me to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Noticing the man had loosened his grip on my bicycle, I pulled it out of his hands and took off, with the sound of the pair yelling fading behind me. I biked away so quickly that they couldn’t catch up, to a convenience store about 10 minutes away. My arms and head were throbbing.
Seeing a police car pull up at a red light, I waved and yelled at them. Somehow the officers didn’t see me and drove away, so I met up with my boyfriend, who happened to be nearby, and we went to a kōban (police box) together.
At the kōban, the police officer’s response went as follows: “Wow, that’s strange. Were they Japanese? Well, I can’t really do anything because I’m here by myself and they’re probably not there anymore. You’re a young girl, and maybe you shouldn’t be out by yourself alone at night.”
No details about the incident were recorded. Not only had every bystander ignored my pleas for help, but the police had also given me a terribly disappointing response — basically, “Shō ga nai, ne?” (“What can you do, eh?”).
This was not the first time that something like this had happened to me in Japan. The last time was in Osaka one morning, around 10 a.m., when a stranger picked me up and tried to carry me into a love hotel. Then, I kept kicking and punching until he dropped me. I tried to run away, but he was much taller than me and kept catching up.
Our struggle went on for at least 10 minutes, and none of the many onlookers helped or even appeared concerned. Finally, I saw a police officer down the street and screamed at my attacker, “Look! Look! It’s the police!” That seemed to frighten him, and at that point he walked over to a nearby vending machine, bought me a water, said “gomen nasai” (sorry) and walked away.
At that time I had few friends in Japan, and everyone I told said first, “Was he Japanese?” and second, “Things like that never happen in Japan.” (I hadn’t even thought about his ethnicity; he was Asian and had spoken to me in Japanese.)
Everyone made it seem like it was such a random experience that I almost, in fact, felt ashamed,
thinking I must have done something to provoke this bizarre behavior. When this second incident occurred, I started to suspect that these events weren’t unusual. I posted a description of what had happened on Facebook and asked if people had had similar experiences.
The response was overwhelming: stories of being attacked while jogging, being stalked by male and female students, being groped on the street in broad daylight, men masturbating on trains, attempted kidnappings. All of these stories came from strong women who put up a vicious fight but still walked away with psychological (and sometimes physical) injuries. In all of these stories, the victims had been in a “safe” public place but no one tried to help them or call the police. If this is so common, why does Japan maintain a reputation for being so safe? And is this image of safety actually facilitating these incidents?
Many say Tokyo is the best place to host the Olympics because it is safe. And in many ways it is: Foreigners are astounded to walk into Starbucks and see iPhones left unattended on a table to reserve a seat, for example. When I lived in Barcelona, my phone wasn’t safe even in my pocket. Still, the two most aggressive attacks in my life happened in Japan, not in “unsafe” countries I backpacked through alone and at a younger age. Thus I don’t think Japan is as safe as the image propagated about the country suggests. It seems that just about every foreign woman I know has a terrible story to tell. I have no way of knowing if this number is as high for Japanese women, because only foreign women shared their stories with me.
Some of us do wonder: Are these types of attacks more prevalent among foreign women? It is hard to tell, but perhaps for the attacker such a target could be less risky. Many foreign women would not know where and how to report such an incident. Even in my case, having a Japanese boyfriend to go with me and translate, the police still didn’t record any information or search for the people involved. Moreover, since foreigners are often associated with crime, bystanders might be less likely to intervene or call the police.
After all these years, I clearly remember anti-groping cartoon posters in the Fukuoka subway depicting a man with dark skin touching a white woman. Even at the time, I thought it reflected a still-prevalent view in Japan: Crime and criminals are non-Japanese. When a crime happens, people almost always ask, “Was (s)he Japanese?” Of course, Japanese people too commit crimes, and “othering” the victims and perpetrators only makes it easier for crimes to go unaddressed, thus making society less safe for both foreigners and Japanese.
As I’ve mentioned, for all I know these types of attacks are just as common among Japanese women. Rather than jumping to conclusions, I’m simply hoping to start a dialogue that might help bring about solutions. I have always known that Japan had perverts — like anywhere — but until recently they had seemed fairly benign.
As a minority in Japan, foreign women do receive a lot of male attention and are often offered work as hostesses. They also complain to me about how they feel objectified in Japan. White models and mannequins are seen everywhere, even though white women represent a tiny percentage of the population.
In a way, white women become plastic here: imports without feelings — strange, exotic dolls. And
if we are dolls, perhaps the groping, leering, stalking and attacking is somehow justified in the perpetrator’s mind as a game rather than a crime.
When I first moved to Japan, I tolerated the staring, following and persistent nampa (pickup artists), but after being assaulted twice in public, they have taken on darker undertones. I now know I can’t rely on the goodwill of strangers, as I have in the past when I was verbally harassed in countries such as Mexico. Interest from strangers that I could have dismissed as innocent curiosity a few years ago now gives me the chills.
Despite its many stereotypes and inconveniences, I love Japan. So do a lot of the women who shared their stories with me. I am attracted to Japan because it’s so different from my culture. I want to keep living here and unlocking the mysteries I encounter every day, but I have ideas about how it could be made a safer place. Just because I love this country, it does not mean I have to love it unconditionally and ignore those things I might disagree with.
Experiencing these incidents and hearing other women’s stories has altered my daily behavior. I have vowed to be more careful as I calculate risks in my daily life. I carry Mace. At night, I take roads that have lots of kōbans on them, and I know how to explain my route should I have to talk to a police officer.
I’m not paranoid, but I also won’t let surprise be a weapon.
Holly Lanasolyluna is a professor, photojournalist and toy songwriter from California. Foreign Agenda offers a forum for opinion on fourth (and fifth) Thursdays. Send comments
I have personally thrown a scumbag off a train when I saw him expose himself to a woman near me on a busy train. He seemed most upset to be left on the platform with his dick hanging out as the doors shut and the train left the station.
Did any of the erai Japanese business men aid in the detraining of the perv? Been a few years ago now, but a guy was finally arrested for grabbing female passengers and hauling them into the onboard restroom to rape them. I think her was arrested after the third such rape. No one on the trains helped any of the victims.
Then we have the two women who were murdered next door about a month apart by a relative in the house. Turned out that I actually heard the second one. Actually, I could go down quite a long list of violent crimes that have taken place near to me here in Japan. Called the police on one next door when I lived within Tokyo itself. A Chinese woman was recently murder near my ten year old’s school is the most recent.
No one exact;y helped me. But they didn't object either or complain that I shouldn't have done it.. The ladies all thought it was great though.....
Years and years ago, like close to 30, an American classmate related a story that his JN girlfriend shared with him. She had studied in the US and had picked up some or the customers there. After retuning to Japan, she was gripped on the train. She stomped on the perv’s foot, kneed him where it counts and screamed. Afterwards, the other women on the train scolded her, she did not react as a proper Japanese lady should. Things are changing, sometime for the good.
Here is the response I sent in. It was published Nov 4. 2013.
No safe country for foreign women: the debate
“Japan: no safe country for foreign women (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2013/10/23/voices/japan-no-safe-country-for-foreign-women/),” Holly Lanasolyluna’s article published in the new Foreign Agenda slot on Oct. 23, attracted an unprecedented number of online comments. More than 5,000 people also answered the accompanying poll about safety in Japan. Here are just some of the mails and comments.
Not a strictly foreign problem
Yes, Japanese women are also victims. I teach at university and have had the following stories related to me by students.
While at a birthday party for a classmate, a friend of two of my students received a phone call from her boss at her part-time job. She worked for a dentist in Shinjuku. He said he needed to meet with her about something work-related.
It was around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night and she didn’t want to meet him, and asked if it could wait until the next time she was at work. He insisted, and said that he would drive out to where the party was and pick her up. Her friends — my students — overheard the conversation and joked that he was going to profess his love for her. She responded that she would not like that at all.
He called again around 11 p.m. to tell her he had arrived. Expressing disgust, she told her friends that she would be “right back” and left the party, leaving her book bag, club gear and purse behind. Her friends have not seen nor heard from her since.
After weeks of searching (they didn’t go to the police out of fear of “making it worse”) they found a friend of a friend of her family. All they were able to learn was that she was alive. They got her home address to send her purse and other belongings to her. A month later, all the students in the same year as her were called together and told that she dropped out of school and that they should not try to contact her. That was October 2010.
One of the girls who used to know her said that four other of her friends have also been raped. Only one went to the police, and after her experience with them, she said that if ever she was raped again, she would not report it. The police at the kōban [police box] where she reported the attack made her show them what he did to her and where he touched her. She felt as if she had been raped a second time by the intrusive questions and contact by the male police officers taking her report.
The second attack was on a longtime student of mine. She related her experiences during our discussion class, made up of a small group of close friends, all of whom were my longtime students. As she was walking home from her station in downtown Tokyo late at night, a man grabbed her from behind and, with his hand over her mouth, carried her between two office buildings and raped her.
Afterwards, she immediately ran to the kōban to report it. The officer on duty there cautioned her that if she filed a report the police would have to inform her parents, even through she was of adult age. Voicing her desire not to have her family, especially her father, know, and yet afraid of being attacked again, the police officer told her, “Don’t worry, this is a safe area.” She left for home without filing the report.
Later, she would tell her family, except for her father. Once her father did learn of it, he became infuriated and did not speak or even look at her for a month. Getting over his anger at her, he and the rest of her family then urged her to file a report. It was then at least a couple of months since the attack. I haven’t had contact with her since so I do not know the outcome. I do know that I have read about neither in the newspapers nor heard about them via any other news media.
A few years ago my wife was given the following warning from a member of a group we were members of. The speaker was a police officer assigned to the labor ministry to investigate workplace crime. She told all the female members of the group not to go into any bathrooms in
any of the department stores in Shinjuku alone. She was investigating reported rapes numbering in the hundreds. Men would either follow a victim into the restroom or be waiting for them inside.
Whenever I try to tell anyone about any of this, the first thing they ask is always, “Are [the rapists] Japanese?” Second is, “In Japan?” Most of the Japanese men I tell this to get very angry, call me a “lying Japan-basher,” and disassociate themselves from me. Several Japanese women have responded the same way. Others are shocked and outraged. Some just look down in silence.”
I will add here that the story of the rapes in Shinjuku restrooms infuriated my wife as these rapes were obviously reported, otherwise, how could our friend be investigating them. I leave that to be pondered.
I think I've see you post that or something like it before.
Really? Did I post that already? I know I sent my reply to a female friend who moved to Japan after several bad encounters with migrants in Sweden. She felt perfectly safe here and I wanted her to know she needs to be an her guard here too.
Most of my students are female, so this is of particular concern for me.
We know from Xi's visit to San Fran that it's possible to clean up the streets if there is political will. The same could be said for El Salvador.
Why the lack of political will?
I think part of the answer is that it's easier to be tough on crime when there isn't a lot of crime.
Something like 1/3 of all adult black men have felony convictions in the USA. That means that probably almost every single black person is one or at most two degrees removed from a felon. The criminal class isn't some "other" that is distinct from the society and you can do what you will with them. They are cousins and nephews and sons.
Even El Salvador got around this by basically declaring people with tattoos an "other", which worked for much the same way it works in Japan (only criminals get tattoos).
By contrast since the Japanese are so law abiding there is a really strong separation between the criminals and the citizens. If the cops are harsh on criminals the citizens aren't worried about it affecting them.
In the USA, especially with blacks, the citizens identify with the criminals to some degree. In the USA OJ Simpsons recently died, and they had interviews with the jurors and others. Many admitted that they knew OJ murdered those people, but they supported the fact that a black man had killed two white people and wanted him to get away with it! People would just say this on national television. Could you imagine this in Japan?
Another reason is that Japan's criminal caste are generally high IQ asians. They also "behave" within the context of being criminals. Violence is purposeful rather than random, most of the time.
Finally, the use of hard drugs in a recreational setting by UMC and above creates a constituency that doesn't want drug laws enforced too harshly. But hard drugs fuck up the lives of most people who take them. Japan doesn't have this problem.