The Night Train: A Lesbian Train Fantasy (Planes, Trains and Automobiles)

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The vision of Japan Truly is to make this accessible to the whole world. Japan, no doubt, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. But a lot of its beauty and essence is lost in translation. You can’t blame yourself. We’re trained for things all the time, but when they happen, sometimes you just freeze. When it comes to groping and sexual assault, Ogawa and Tabusa believe a real cultural shift will only come when more victims speak out. According to Goto, this idea is borrowed from the Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, but in Japan is largely understood as a young girl who is “the image of obedience, subservience”, and is reinforced in widely read manga. Despite such initiatives, experts say Japanese society remains willfully oblivious or unaware of how widespread this problem is and how often girls are assaulted.

First point to be noted was that less than 5% said that a target was noticed because of their provocative style of clothing. When talking about rape, the most common response, 45% of it, was that the victim seemed as if they wouldn’t report it to the police. Ogawa says many people believe men target schoolgirls because they are child molesters. “I think that’s true, too,” she says. But she also believes: “People want to target these kids and girls because they haven’t been touched; because no one has conquered them.” It would be improper to express anger towards an adult, she thought, and she worried about attracting attention. Besides, her parents had never spoken to her about such things and how she ought to handle them. But she also did not want to go to the police and does not want anyone to know. “I can’t talk about this – to anyone,” she says.My Streets, My Body: How street harassment impacts my weight, my eating habits, my health, Dechanique Matsunaga decided that Tonooka should not have to fight on her own, so she came up with an idea to involve others by crowdsourcing ideas for anti-groping badges. Last year, Japan’s labour ministry released findings from an unprecedented study, in which, of nearly 10,000 female respondents aged 25 to 44, almost one-third of women said they had been sexually harassed at work, with inappropriate touching being one of the most common problems. Fewer than 40 percent of women took action. A 52-year-old woman, who did not want to disclose her name or workplace, explained that she was recently sexually assaulted by someone, whose face she did not see, at her workplace in Tokyo. When she reported the incident to her employers, she says they were sympathetic but deterred her from going to the police, telling her to think about the company’s reputation and the trauma she would have to relive. She felt they simply did not want any trouble for the company.

The media always blames … the victims,” explains Goto, who points to the fact that Japan’s mainstream and social media is male-dominated. In Japan, multiple women go through this on a regular basis. Local and foreign. These women have come forward to reveal stories of how they dealt with chikan. The passenger, who was visually impaired, lost his footing and fell while alighting from the train because he was unable to safely negotiate the step down onto the platform end ramp. Another resolve is to report the matter to the station master. With the help of some of the passengers on the train with you, the identified chikan in Japan, can be taken to the station master and be put in custody for further action.If we talk about sexual violence, especially if the topic is about groping, the main … concern is about false accusation,” Ogawa says.

It needs to be taken seriously and more people need to be aware because the “groping victims are often children”, she says. Have you ever heard about the stories of dealing with chikan in Japan amongst woman? If not, I’ll tell you how horrible it is! When I was in high school, every [girl] was a victim,” says Ogawa. “[We] didn’t think we could do anything about it.” In 2015, she began writing about the country’s long-standing problem with groping – or chikan, in Japanese – often experienced by schoolgirls on public transportation. Many victims stay silent, unable to talk about their experiences in a society which, by many accounts, trivialises this phenomenon. Each of the badges sold by Matsunaga’s organisation comes with instructions for girls on how to prevent or respond to groping on trains [Shiori Ito/Al Jazeera]Tabusa, the manga artist, is heartened that the problem is increasingly being talked about, but says, “I don’t think there’s enough discussion yet.” Yayoi Matsunaga, 51, began her Osaka-based organisation, Groping Prevention Activities Centre, in 2015 after her friend’s daughter was regularly groped on the train [Shiori Ito/Al Jazeera] Such coming out stories leads to awareness amongst the public. The users of online media and the contributors of online media, all alike, should take it up as their responsibility to inform and educate people of what constitutes as chikan and how to ask for help when it happens. But from the women’s movement in the 1970s to, more recently, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s agenda to boost women’s participation in the workforce as part of an economic growth plan, men’s power has been challenged, according to Goto. The media [is] overly focused on this topic [of false accusations],” says Ogawa – who believes that false accusations and convictions are rare as compared to actual instances of sexual assault.

One morning in late January, the 51-year-old arrived at a coffee shop in the bustling neighbourhood of Shibuya with a suitcase of badges. Society also conflates groping with desirability. “I feel like people have this mindset that, if you are an old lady, you should appreciate that men still look at you like that or want to grope you,” she says.This sexualisation of schoolgirls extends to themed bars in red-light districts and exploitative “JK cafes” (JK stands for joshi kosei or high school girl) where adult men pay to chat to teenage girls, have their fortunes told or have their ears cleaned. Manga pornography depicting schoolgirls is also widely and openly available. It was only in 2014 that Japan criminalised the possession of child pornography. She recalls one incident particularly clearly. She was about 15 and on her way to school. A man began to touch her, putting his hand inside her underwear. He was aggressive and it hurt, she remembers. When the train stopped, she got off. But he grabbed her hand and told her: “Follow me.” Ogawa ran away. She believes that people saw what was going on, but nobody helped. Ogawa believes the media over-reported Yatabe’s side of the story, instilling fear about false accusations and creating a distraction from the problem of sexual violence. Worse, she says, it discouraged victims from being “able to talk about it [groping] – and that’s a problem”.