Womanhood in Japan (January 2024)

“Womanhood in Japan” series column rounds up Japanese news related to women’s daily experiences of sexism here and considers what we can do to increase the pace of change.

Japan faces another a MeToo moment

One of the most powerful men in Japanese television is facing allegations of sexual assault made in a magazine article published at the end of December. Comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto has responded with the rare move in non-litigious Japan of suing the publisher.

Matsumoto has denied the allegations published by Shukan Bunshun that he forced a number of women into sexual activities in 2015, and is seeking a correction and the payment of damages.

The magazine has continued to publish comments from women who say they were at a drinking party in a hotel suite arranged by Matsumoto and some of his junior comedian pals, where they say they were sexually assaulted by him and in some cases threatened about speaking out.

Predictably, public figures have been making comments such as why didn’t the women, who were also in the TV industry, just leave, or have accused them of seeking blackmail money from Matsumoto.

One of the accusers is quoted as saying that she was inspired to speak out after seeing a young man come forward publicly last year about being sexually assaulted by the former head of Japan’s largest talent agency, Johnny and Associates (now attempted to rebrand to “Starto Entertainment”).

Rumors about the late Johnny Kitagawa sexually abusing boys contracted to his company began decades before his death in 2019, but went largely unreported by Japanese media, who feared angering him would hurt their access to leading talent. Even in 2003 when the Tokyo High Court found in a libel case that claims of sexual abuse of minors by Kitagawa made by the Shukan Bunshun were true, the wider media barely took notice. Kitagawa was never criminally charged. In September last year, Julie Fujishima, Kitagawa’s niece and president of the agency after his death, publicly acknowledged the abuse by him.

The incident exposed the media’s complicity and has also clearly shown that the cultural norm in Japan of not questioning higher-ups is dangerous. It adds an extra layer to the inequal power structures of all abusive relationships. The Kitagawa incident also showed that not questioning is dangerous for everyone—male and female.

Japan is still a long way from believing accusers as a matter of course while investing the facts of the situation. If the accusations against Matsumoto turn out to be true, perhaps Japan will edge closer to such a situation.

The strength of victims coming forward is impacting society. In a separate incident, a woman alleging sexual assault against her by a foreign priest has revealed her name publicly as she sues a Catholic congregation for mishandling her allegations, saying that she was inspired by Risa Gonoi doing similar in her public appeal against acts of sexual indecency made against her by fellow soldiers in Japan’s Self-Defense Force. Asahi Shimbun reported the woman, Tokie Tanaka, as saying, “I haven’t done anything wrong. Why do I need to hide?”

Let’s hope that Japan is on a path out of victim shaming and away from the cultural norm of casting the more socially powerful person as superior and more believable.

Key to the Kitagawa case was “gaiatsu,” which is a Japanese word meaning external or foreign pressure. The consequences for Kitagawa and his talent agency came only after Britain’s BBC in March 2023 ran a report on the abuse allegations. The Matsumoto case may provide an indication of Japan’s ability to uphold justice around allegations of sexual abuse itself, without help from outside.

Men need to stop viewing women as their caregivers, says Mieko Kawakami

In an article in The Economist in which she responds to the magazine’s question, “What should fathers teach their sons to make the world better for women?,” novelist Mieko Kawakami cites ending their perception of males as the recipients of women’s care. But they need to teach that via their actions, not their words, she stresses.

Kawakami says that in Japan it is a common belief that women, due to their maternal instincts, are innately good at caring for others, and that they even feel fulfilled by those actions. Where mothers take care of the family’s needs, their children grow up taking their labor for granted. And those sons grow into husbands who expect the same, she says.

She points out that since children learn more from what they experience rather than what they are told, it is no good if a father preaches the importance of gender equality while letting his wife carry the bulk of the labor of care. Typically, this labor division is justified by men earning more than women and it therefore being logical to give the husband freedom to work whenever he can by placing childcare and home duties on the wife. It is a pervasive dynamic throughout Japanese society. The view that it penalizes the wife’s career is rarely acknowledged.

Luckily, Kawakami offers a solution. “I urge women to relinquish, therefore, some of the housework and care that have long been taken for granted. Through your actions, with an iron will, reject the assumption that mothers and wives are the caring sex, and show that women and men are the same human beings.”

Two appointments make key female firsts

January saw the achievement of two key firsts for women in Japan.

Mitsuko Tottori, 59, was named the new president of Japan Airlines. When she assumes her position on April 1 she will be the first female president of a Japanese carrier and the first to have a background as a member of the cabin crew. Tottori joined the airline in 1985 as a flight attendant and climbed the ranks to senior management.

The Japanese Communist Party has made Tomoko Tamura its new chairperson, the first time a woman has led the party. Tamura, 58, was elected to parliament in 2010 and became the first female policy chief of the party in 2020.

Womanhood in Japan series