Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Occupy Anime Street
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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The actual frequency of rape in japan might be something of a rhetorical red herring, or at least more a symptom than the point itself. I could easily believe that there is some, perhaps even significant, under-reporting of rape and sexual assault, perhaps even more than other nations, but what might be more interesting is what that could indicate about gender roles and the status of women in Japanese society. Political outcomes are determined by how influential the constituencies for them are. The criminal treatment and punishments for rape and rape generally are generally of concern chiefly to women, while the position of men is more indifferent. So, a possible inference from the relatively lax punishments for rape, regardless of what punishment is really ideal or effect, suggest that women, the likely constituency for harsher punishments for rape or greater protections for victims, are relatively weak. It's not necessarily a matter of rape being commoner in Japan, but that the group that would object to its portrayal in media and agitate for policy changes is relatively marginalized. This might be exacerbated by the same mechanism of strong group identity and its concomitant strong social rules that cause the low crime rate, because that mechanism could also discourage dissent against the established social order. Subjects like this are usually a nuisance because the discussion tends to get hung up on tit-for-tat opposition between countries or societies, which is especially likely in present company. It is, at any rate, something not quite simple enough to be justly understood through the anecdotal lenses of scattered news reports and selections from popular entertainment, the plural of data not being anecdote, and all that. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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The thing is that can just as easily be applied to the US's rate as well, but yes, some are going to go unreported. Though the difference in the ratio is pretty big, so I don't think the room for error would matter too much. America: 3.01 per every 10,000 people Japan: 0.17 per every 10,000 people About 18 times the difference. Course, rape is a common trope in romance literature as a whole, it's just manga has a lot of romance as opposed to it mostly being stuck in books in America in the romance section rather than comics or cartoons. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14763 |
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Of course, ya can find those reports in every country. But high officials cabinet ministers saying such things? Minimum for rape is only 2 years (less than the minimum 5 years for robbery)? Even when they planned to increase the minimum to 4 years, that's still less than that for robbery. Where does their priority lie?
And Japan has a higher chikan rate than the US. To a lot of women, that counts as a form of rape. Check J-news all the time, and you'd probably encounter a J-cop doing extracurricular voyeurism every other day. Ask the J-residents - it's a running joke over there. ("Peeping tom?! It's probably a cop!") Regardless, it's not all about crimes. For every dollar that a man earns for the same jobs, Japanese women earn a lot less than their US counterparts. J-women are treated as more 2nd-class citizens than US women are.
Not as much as J-cops. Check out the Lucie Blackman murder case and the Tatsuya Ichihashi murder escape police screwups. These are serious cases. J-cops are seen pretty much as a joke with anything that requires serious work. (Ironically, it's because serious crimes are unusual in Japan that's one reason why Japanese police can be so flat-footed in dealing with them. They would have pursued such cases more vigorously and effectively if they are more experienced in dealing with serious crimes.) Anyways, just to put this back on the lighter side, here's a J-news story that made the rounds worldwide "Japanese Police Run From Man Armed With Bat" - here's a Youtube video. 
Or how about this one: "Foreigner goes for a nude swim in Imperial Palace moat - Japanese police run in fear."
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Wow, now I'm wondering if the Japanese police actually make people feel safer or not. British cops aren't as well-armed as Japanese cops, but at least they don't flee from the people they're trying to catch. They were always right there at the riots earlier this year, for instance. I mean...cops have to deal with the worst among people--I'd think it would be basic logic to be at least as tough as they are if your job is to catch them.
And yeah, now that I think about it, there IS a lot of rape in those romance novels you find near the cash registers in American supermarkets. |
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2798 |
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I'd heard about the Lucie Blackman case a few years ago on "20/20." I hadn't heard about the Tatsuya Ichihashi/Lindsay Hawker case until just now. But,I remember a particularly sad murder case in Japan a few years ago on an international edition of "America's Most Wanted." The guy's name was named Scott Kang.
He and his family emigrated to America from South Korea in the 1990's. Some years later,they became naturalized American citizens. He'd hoped to be a lawyer or enter government service. He was going to college on a scholarship when he discovered he didn't have enough money. He returned to Korea to teach English there. In 2010,he was on a trip to Tokyo with two friends when he was found bleeding at the bottom of a stairwell. He lingered in a coma for days before dying. The police in Tokyo chalked all up to an accident but there is a video in which he was seen struggling with someone hours before his death. His family believe that the reason that the case has drug on for so long was because Scott was Korean and they've been the victims of discrimination in Japan for years now. A friend of the family summed up their feelings this way. He said "If Scott had been killed in America,his killer would have been sitting in jail a long time ago." To this day,the Kang family have no idea what really happened to their son. The case was featured on "America's Most Wanted" but as of this date,no other information come to light. As of this date,the case remains unsolved. |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11299 Location: Frisco, TX |
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