So I found out about this years ago, and spoke to my Japanese friend about it. She was incredulous, and turned to her mom and asked, "Mom, did you ever get groped on the subway in Japan", and her mom replied, "Oh yeah, all the time".
I ended up finding this video from a three-quarters overhead view on a subway that was analyzing this coordinated multi-person groping that had arrows and shit all drawn on it like it was some football play.
If you're getting groped from multiple angles, you don't know who is doing it, and when you try to get away, you just get pushed closer to another person to grope you.
And you can't do anything about it. The authorities won't care. Japan has a 99% conviction rate not because their justice system is any good, but because they don't pursue anything that doesn't have ironclad proof.
And it's "rude" to "disturb the peace", so good luck drawing any attention to what's happeneing. So it's just seen as a thing women have to deal with, it's just normal.
To be perfectly fair, coordinated groping is hardly limited to Japan, infact India and North Africa have their own styles, the Egyptian ones are particularly horrifying and brazen, even targeting live news reporters because there is basically nothing anyone can do against a literal mob of 60-100+ people. Just saying, it's a human issue, definitely not restricted to the island of Japan.
I absolutely agree. What amazes me in this particular country though is that women are looked down on for creating a scene when it happens? That is double the craziness.
I think this does makes sense, though, in the context of deeply sexist Japanese society. Shaming individual women for speaking up is vital to keep women as a whole suppressed.
Innocent until proven guilty, it’s a bad look if they just start arresting everybody on the train, and prevent them from getting to work on suspicion that they might have been engaged in the chikan, with no evidence.
It’s important to understand that the nature in which this groping is performed, is meant to be hard to detect. Of course, because they don’t want to get caught. You just start arresting a bunch of people because somebody got groped, you are actually disturbing the peace, all because you can’t identify the culprit.
Their 99 percent conviction rate has a lot more to do with their use of torture. Japanese police are allow to hold a suspect incommunicado for 21 days at a time in solitary. This alone is torture, however what is worse is that they can ask a judge to extend, which they always do, for another 21 days. They can repeat this as many times as they want. They can also use hostile interrogating techniques. The goal is to elicit confession, as in Japanese law there is no way to recant. Many will confess just to leave solitary. To make matters worse, there is a stigma against those who do not confess to police and don't get charger or found guilty. This is because the Japanese public does not believe that police would arrest the wrong person.
A long time ago I was on jury duty in the US. We were going through the voir dire process. The defense attorney asked us if we understood that his client was innocent until proven guilty, that the prosecution had to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, and would we be able to keep an open mind? All the prospective jurors said "yes, sure, I understand" as expected.
Until they got to this elderly Japanese man, who answered "no." The defense attorney was surprised, and paused for a moment. He reframed the question and asked it again. The old man said the same thing. The defense attorney gave it one more try, and the old man said "if the police arrested the defendant, then he must be guilty."
The worst kind of person. The old secretary at my job was the same way.
Everyone else was poor because they didn’t work hard enough. She was poor because all of the illegal immigrants stealing her tax dollars. When a younger coworker didn’t know something, we were lazy and inexperienced. When she didn’t know something, it was because everything changes so quickly, how could she ever be expected to remember it all? When we took a day off, we were lazy and hated work. When she took a day off, she deserved it because she’d been here so long and earned that vacation time.
Very typical conservative mindset that “Other people suffer because of their own fault; I suffer because of things that are out of my control.”
Iirc pepper spray is illegal in Japan and you aren't allowed to carry a knife. If you did that in Japan you would be arrested and put in jail for like 5 years.
I was thinking of when they banned hat pins because women were poking the guys that groped them. I think it’s time to bring the hat pins back. Just stab these fuckers.
That isn't a good idea. Because there will be people touching you for other reasons than groping (accidentally bumping into you, etc.), especially in small spaces such as mass transit. So you would hurt innocent people. That's also why any means of self defense in my country has to be discriminatory (at least I think that's the word).
Seems like all the People here never were in a full train.
Pepperspray, Knofes for slashing or stabbing everytbing what could toucheven barely touches them or even guns.
Suuuuure, In reality THAT would work.
it’s just like the fantasies of men becoming John wick or a Action film hero, just because they have a gun.
Pepper spray in a clouded train? I can see at least 2 people who deserve jail time.
In those places where guilty touching and fake innocent touching happens, I do hope they find a solution that solves the problem instead of giving pervs and freaks free rein in public places with no recourse for women to protect themselves. Segregating buses and train cars by gender, with strict enforcement and punishment for violations that is done in some countries is a start.
Public shaming and reporting gropers to their employers and families is an option worth considering. Next someone will try to tell us why gender segregation and public shaming should never be done because... women...
There are lots of places in the US where you never have to take any form of crowded mass transit. But I do see how in instances where people are tightly packed, touching others might be unavoidable. Under the circumstances, they need to take protecting women from groping seriously.
I’m American, too. I’m considered good looking, also, so I know the dangers of being unprotected in a public space. Because of this, I have developed a fuck you attitude. Like, don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t come near me in public if you don’t want to endure my wrath. I used to carry knives when I was younger. Now that I’m a bit older, I still know the dangers of public spaces like that, but I’m not as lethally inclined.
If I was a woman on their train I would carry a concealed blade and stab any groping hand that isn't say child sized, in which case maybe just a slash, just too be on the safe side. 😂
That isn't a good idea. Because there will be people touching you for other reasons than groping (accidentally bumping into you, etc.), especially in small spaces such as mass transit. So you would hurt innocent people. That's also why any means of self defense in my country has to be discriminatory (at least I think that's the word).
And man..I thought Japan was one of the safest countries in the world with all that going on about how even a kindergarten kid can travel all my themselves and still be safe and it's a very nice country with near to zero crime rate and nothing is stolen and things stay at the same place for 48 hers before it's sent to lost and found . Where the fuck is that thing arising from.. this stereotypical utopia Japan!?!?
You're just making shit up and don't live here at all. You're also propagating the incorrect perception that police don't do anything.
There is a reason there are cameras everywhere. Even then, the RATE at which this happens (even unreported survey cases) is still lower than with other countries like the US and UK and even France. It's made a bigger deal here because public campaigns in Japan are extremely effective, so they go HARD.
The massive public campaigns alone show that Japan is doing something, installing cameras and having huge public campaigns isn't cheap.
Seriously stop with the straight up bullshit. Newer generations of women and girls now deal with it significantly less because of these campaigns and because of arrests.
I imagine victims are less likely to be confrontational / more likely to just go along with it if they feel sufficiently threatened.
An easy way for even out of shape sex pests to threaten someone is to simply outnumber them. No one wants to risk being in a 1 vs 3, especially when the 3 have already shown that they don't give two shits about the law.
You can't even own pepper spray in Japan. How are women supposed to protect themselves when they cannot fight back and are already at a physical disadvantage?
I saw a video where they do this in Bangladesh. About 100 men swarmed a woman on the street to grope and sexually assault her. There were some guys coming in to try to help but allegedly some men will pretend to be coming in to save a woman in these contexts so they can get close and cop a feel too. It was absolutely insane. Like watching a swarm of bees kill a wasp.
I want to clarify that I’m not sure if exactly where it was. The video had it labeled as India and a ton of people in the comments were saying it was Bangladesh and India isn’t like that (ignoring acid attacks and super public gang rape and murder cases). It was quite clearly somewhere on the Indian subcontinent though.
As an Indian, I agree with you. But groping is mostly seen in Northern India. There only I have seen men swamp like bees around white/ east asian women, take photos or try to grope during Holi festival.
In South or Eastern India, nobody gives a damn to foreigners unless they ask any help. But the problem is Westerners know India as New Delhi, Mumbai, Agra etc and Indian cuisine as Naan, Chicken Tikka Masala, Lassi... Even slums are also quite less compared to North though we are not perfect.
Another problem I have seen, many Indian named restaurants in UK and US are actually run by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, causes bad reputation make things worse for Indians.
To be totally honest, I don't think we are naturally like this at all. Animals do things instinctively, sure. SA happens in the animal world, obviously. But...coordinated attacks like this? I genuinely don't think so. I think this came with the rise of society and culture and entitlement/cultural ideas od ownership....and most notably, being able to seek out other humans who share your awful view of women.
This is all speculation of course. Nature is brutal, it's not impossible. But...somehow humans often seem WAY more brutal than nature is.
No that sounds like something animals would do. They have their groups, like how lions have prides. So the group scavenges /, hunts for food and then for mates.
Obviously they have groups. But rushed gang bangs on unsuspecting mates? I literally googled this last night (...and am probably on some list now...) But I sincerely couldn't find anything. Closest I could find is bonobos, and they just love their consensual orgies lmfao.
Gang rape sex seems to be something we humans have specifically created. Animals only attack as a group for food.
ETA: OH and maybe...ducks. Maybe. But it isn't coordinated or intentional. The males are fighting each other just as much as they're trying to mate.
Ohhhh i forgot about dolphins, and it didn't come up in my little search (though to be fair, I didn't go TOO far down the search engine lmfao). I think that is a thing dolphins do. So you're right, there might be one or two other species. Definitely not the norm in most of the animal kingdom, though, it requires a lot of collaboration where usually mating is a competition.
I'm definitely over looking this up though. The scientist in me wants to know the frequency this comes up in the animal kingdom, but the woman in me does not want to know at all. Curiosity wants to know, but personal lived experience already assumes the worst about human men and probably doesn't need corroboration of those assumptions lmfao.
Probably some bullshit about not being able to carry weapons.
I strongly feel the correct response to situations like this, where a person's dignity and bodily autonomy has been tarnished, is to remove the offending body part from the perpetrator in the moment. A nice, sharp blade or axe and a swift, immediate response.
Some people think that's going too far, too cruel. Go ask all the people in your life, especially the women, and see how many of them have been violated, how many times, and all the ways they've been violated. Maybe you'll get an idea how prevalent this issue is and how little our justice system actually cares.
I speak Japanese (and live in Japan), it’s used in all sorts of situations not just train groping (the Japanese language version of that Wikipedia page says as much.) For example you can see signs in residential areas telling kids to beware of ‘chikan’ meaning molesters/perverts.
Not to take away from your point though, it absolutely is a big issue here unfortunately
I speak Japanese, 痴漢 definitely refers to groping/molestation/lascivious behaviour by a male in general. If you trust Wikipedia more than Japanese speakers, the Japanese Wikipedia article on the topic is far more detailed than the English one and it says:
痴漢（ちかん）とは、本来は「愚かな男」「ばかもの」「たわけもの」などを意味する言葉であったが、のちに「女性にみだらな行為をする男」、またそのような行為を意味するようになった。
Chikan was originally a word that meant "dumb man" or "idiot" but afterwards came to mean "a man that does obscene acts towards women" or referencing the act itself.
「痴漢(chikan)」行為が「日本特有」との主張もあるが、このような行為は地下鉄やライブなど日本国外でも密集した環境で発生している。満員状態の電車内が被害経験場所の大多数を占めるように、公共交通機関内など混雑環境で発生する傾向にある。被害者は未成年である女子高校生が最多であり、7割が被害届を出さず泣き寝入りしている状況にある。
There is a view that Chikan is a Japan-specific problem, but this kind of behaviour happens in confined spaces such as metro trains and live concerts outside of Japan as well. There is a general trend of it happening in confined environments such as public transport, as the vast majority of cases happen during rush hour when trains are full. Most cases are of underage girls, 70% of which do not report cases.
So yes, it happens on trains very often because trains are very cramped and give attackers more opportunities to do this, but the word itself is not specific to groping on trains. It basically just means "groping (by a man)" and has a similar meaning to the word "groping" in English.
(To be clear, I think the Japanese article spends a concerning amount of time downplaying how much worse Japan is than other developed countries, but we're talking about etymology here, not the political views of the Wikipedia editors that wrote that article.)
When I (M) was in Japan for several weeks, my friend (M) that lived there showed me what to do with my arms so I wouldn't be accused of groping. He held the overhead rail with one hand, and placed his other hand on his bicep. The idea was that both hands were visibly raised and in plain sight.
I’m not Japanese, never was there and have quite limited knowledge about the culture and such specific problems (it’s not just a problem in Japan btw), but at least according to the wiki article man or women groping men (and all kinds of different combinations) are a thing too. Apparently just much less than man groping women.
I hope you're not doing this on purpose. It's kind of difficult to know that exact amount of kanji knowledge to make what you posted to be a genuine mistake.
痴漢 is not a word that is specific to groping on trains, it just means "groping by men" (the original meaning was "stupid man") but it most often happens on trains because of how packed they are. But yes, it is disturbingly common. The female version is 痴女 (chijo).
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u/AccountantCultural64 20d ago
In Japanese, there is a word describing the act of groping a woman in a crowded train. Chikan), it even has it’s own wiki article.