The Japanese rape fantasy:
I’d been working at Tokyo’s leading English magazine—Metropolis—for a good 6 months when I was approached to write a feature about the recently opened venue in Shinjuku– The chikansen.
The title being a play on words—a rarity in the Japanese language—a chikan is the colloquial term given to “train gropers”, men with a penchant for boarding crowded trains and pressing hard against unsuspecting women and well, groping them. The remainder of the term makes reference to the shinkansen, or bullet train.
I need to make a few points here about the chikan culture in Japan, Tokyo specifically, as the majority of my experiences during the 4 years I spent living there were of course, in Tokyo and Tokyo, in my opinion at least is somewhat juxtaposed to the rest of Japan. The chikan culture is so entrenched there that it’s not really something you often here people speaking about, so much so, it often goes largely ignored. A nation of those wanting to “keep the peace” renders most victims of anything mute.
One such example comes to mind. I was riding the tube home from work, a 13 minute express journey from Tokyo eki (station) to Shinkoiwa eki. The express train is always crowded, to say the least, and of course crowded in the Japanese sense… none of this oh boo hoo I’ve not enough room to rest my feet on the opposing seat.
On this particular occasion a chikan was pressing quite forcefully into a young woman standing with her mother. The girl, in typical Japanese etiquette was rising above it—ganbaru. Her mother also adhering true to her own culture was doing much the same—overcoming “the inconvenience.” As the chikan pressed his body harder and harder into the young woman’s she lowered her head, lower and lower, her mother asking intermittently, “daijabu desu ka? daija bu?” Are you ok? Still ok?
What has always struck me so profoundly about this phenomenon is the degree to which this kind of behavior is tolerated. Accepted, seemingly. The Japanese are such grand advocators of “rising above” the obstacle, the challenge, the hardship. I guess Western post-feminist culture approaches things from a silently different angle, and as such, I would often find myself reaching a point of no return. In this particular instance I did what anyone would do in a position of power—I pushed back. Hard. Repeatedly. It’s also important to understand how much of this is all so below the belt, under rug swept, so fucking Japanese. You can inflict a great deal of pain on someone standing right next to you in a crowded train without anyone noticing. Sharp elbows, spiky umbrella tips speared into the shoe of an unsuspecting chikan. Anything goes as long as no one notices. There are Japanese women I have known that do this. Not many though.
This kind of chikan encounter has happened to me on several occasions; it seldom lasts long, however. I’ve always been exceptionally strong for a woman and exceptionally intolerant of this kind of carry-on. The Japanese are always going to be staring at you so why not give them something to stare at? It may seem arrogant but this kind of change happens slowly and just like fashion, it only takes one person to pull of a feather fedora for the next to think they could emulate the exact same kind of look. For the first few years of my time in Tokyo I was convinced I could change the place in some little way. The slow trickle down effect. Cultural mores, however, are so entrenched that it was during my 3rd year in the City of T that I came to the conclusion that in order to see any real feminist revolution could take a life time and I’d always kind of had my heart set on living somewhere fabulous in Spain and being celebrated for all that I am, rather than criticized for all that I am not.
Which leads me to my next anecdote, but first let me tie up the whole notion of the chikansen.
Basically my editor was asking me to go and review this restaurant that had opened—the premise of the establishment being a simulated train venue where by over worked and under sexed salary men could pay 20,000 yen ($US200) to spend an evening riding this makeshift train, the waitresses posing as unsuspecting passengers, ripe for the unwelcome advances of the sexually repressed sarary man.
Great.
I invite you now to reflect on a scenario I found myself in several years ago in Nishi-Azabu, a rather funky little district of Tokyo (a stones throw from the red light district of Roppongi)—think models and actors and me and my Australian flat mate. To back track briefly my flat mate and I had been flogging Soccer t-shirts during the World Cup in Japan. Looking the way we did meant we made a fucking killing—some 500,000 yen ($US5K) during the grand final game in Yokohama. The stout little English man who’d been distributing these t-shirts had initially asked for a 10% cut of the takings. Upon hearing we’d done as well as we did he deemed it only fair to up the stakes. My flat mate and I spoke with great diplomacy initially, explaining that it was us who’d earnt the additional keepings, not the product itself. Reluctant to accept such a fate the relationship grew rather tumultuous rather quickly. Myself being the more dominant of the two had found that the task of “negotiating” was left largely up to me and he.
Leaving Roppongi (where she worked) somewhat tidily one evening my flat mate returned to our apaato (apartment) with the news that he, the stout Englishman had followed her home and now knew where we lived.
Great.
So begun the lengthy, laborious process of him arriving on our doorstep with vast regularity, pounding at the door, and demanding we give him “his money.”
I had, at the time, been learning some 82 Disney songs (for a role I’d nailed with Tokyo Disney) and thus, found myself turning my Disney CDs up to an unacceptable volume (by Tokyo standards) to drown out the sound of being abused by someone who, by this stage, was well out of line.
An awkward audition (The Tokyo Disney gig was never going to be a sure deal until I’d shown the advisory board that I could perform all 82 songs without deliberation or mistake—a process which, in itself, took some 3 months). So that kind of pressure and a few other stressors caused my flat mate and I to drink to excess one evening. Not “excess” by Australian binge drinking standards but a bottle each in the midst of a scorching Asian summer. This kind of heat drives you quite mad in next to no time. The thought of wearing clothes, for example is incomprehensible once in the safe confines of your own apaato. So we seldom did. Wear clothes, or answer the door.
It was my cigarette addiction that drove me to pop my mamma-chari (typical Japanese bicycles replete with basket) into the elevator, down to the bottom floor where I found myself, as I mounted the bike, confronted by none other than Mr. Nasty.
What happened next happened quickly and abruptly.
I was called a great number of unmentionables before being hit squarely in the face. The blow knocked me square off my bicycle as my head landed hard on the nearby bus stop post. I recall black but who ever really has any real idea of how long they are unconscious for? I came to, stood up and stared at the man long enough for him to feel some kind of remorse, or at least that’s what his face indicated.
What struck me most about this scenario, more than the blow to the head, and my now non-existent ego was/is that by the bus stop stood a procession of people, of all ages, waiting for a bus to arrive. People, who just stood there, watched the whole scenario play out and did sweet fuck all.
This is Japan.
Under rug swept.
The way adults look away when a child falls. If we don’t make eye contact maybe the child won’t cry. This is the rationale.
Though, I’m not a child and this kind of behavior is completely incomprehensible, in any culture, according to me.
I returned to my apartment that evening somewhat shaken and somewhat enraged. A Japanese girlfriend of mine arrived shortly after and accompanied me to the local koban (police box—on most street corners in Tokyo) to file a report. We spent some 3 hours at the station early that morning. The police officers photocopying everything from my passport to my gaijin (alien registration) card, to my VISA to a transcript of the interview. They asked me all manner of questions and seemed to be taking the whole thing a lot more seriously than I’d anticipated. My first real foray into the Japanese obsession with paperwork, details. questions, signatures and more paperwork.
I phoned the Australian embassy later that same day to update them on the situation and to seek further counsel. They insisted I come into the embassy in person the following day for an interview.
“You have three options Alexandra Coffey. The first being you pay this gentleman the money he deems owing and be done with the whole thing. The second option being you can file an AVO out on the man– which I must advise– is a pretty serious approach as an expatriate on a Working Holiday VISA. By doing this, as you would in Australia, he will not be able to come within 100m of your apartment or your person. He may also have great difficulty in securing any additional Visas for himself. The third and final option being you relocate back to Australia with a clean record and conscious. Entirely up to you.”
I could hardly breathe that day sitting in that interview room at the embassy. I didn’t want to play Good Cop/Bad Cop but I also didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my time in Japan. I’d never been struck by a man before and to say the least, it’d done somewhat of a number on my self esteem. So I opted for the AVO. The embassy also stated that they would be phoning the koban office where I had been interviewed to follow up on the report.
I received a phone call the following day from the embassy updating me on the progress of the report. “Your statement has been lodged on behalf of the Australian embassy. We have however, contacted Roppongi koban and discussed your interview and statement with them. Alexandra, unfortunately this is relatively common but they have absolutely no formal record of you ever attending the office, let alone making any formal statement in either English or Japanese.” My chest grew hard and heavy as it had done the day prior at the embassy. This was pretty serious shit. Suffice to say Mr. Nasty flew to Thailand a month later for a “VISA run” and upon return to Japan was refused entry for “no incited terms.”
So somewhere in between the chikansen and the nasty man we find ourselves occupying a lot of grey area. Marijuana procession is a greater criminal offence in Japan than rape. I have far too many stories of this nature too. Later.
