Public Meets Private

Japan is a conservative shame-based collectivist culture. Abuse of girls has been overt since the 1980s. In particular, fetishes such as the “schoolgirl” obsession plague the country. Privately, Japan has a history of incest, close family structures, and few home interventions to stop this abuse. As a masculine and patriarchal society in which men recently saw their status change during Japan’s last recession, sexual taboos have been both normalized and ignored in the public domain, resulting in fetish clubs, virtual reality dating sims, love hotels, and burusera shops. Groping of girls on packed trains has become so rampant in Japan that offenders now have their own name—“chikan.” The rise of technology has helped facilitate these fetishes, crossing borders and requiring a transnational understanding and response to address these issues. Movements such as the “stop chikan campaign” and gender-specific train cars are local remedies that have garnered international support.