Sexual assault or Rape, is a notoriously difficult crime to prove in any legal system. It is often perpetrated without any witnesses other than the victim and aggressor, and it is necessary to prove something which does not need to be proved in any other crime: the lack of consent. Objective evidence, except in the case of serious physical injury, is often absent, and thus it is necessary to rely on the testimonies of the accuser and the defendant. However, in legal systems around the world, further problems tend to arise from the fact that the systems are often fraught with systematic gender bias.

In the different societies all over the world, the male and female sexualities are understood to be constructed differently. However, in Japan there are more specific conditions than the usual ones – particularly the prevalent sex industry and the widespread availability of violent pornography – which have an important impact on the understanding of male and female sexuality.

Using prostitutes is less stigmatized in Japan than in other countries, where the female sexuality is turned into a commodity, which can easily be stolen, sold, bought, bartered, or exchanged by others. This changes the perception of rape, from a violent and humiliating attack on a person’s autonomy, to theft of a possession. Women are perceived as merely the passive objects of male desire.

As the saying goes, ‘a man’s character should not be judged from below the bellybutton’. This viewpoint is conceptualized exclusively from the male standpoint, and denies women’s sexual autonomy. The Japanese societal value of “traditional male domination and the pressure to understate individual emotions for the sake of group harmony,” also attributes to the reluctance of most women to act against sexual violence in the country.

Gender-biased stories or rape myths handed down from generations to generations, falsely assert that being a victim is more traumatic for chaste than promiscuous women. Rape is socially regarded as a sexual act caused by a woman, who provoked a man into losing control of his powerful innate sexuality. Rape myths also dictate who qualifies as the true victim. A rape victim must be someone that falls within the category of ‘a young, innocent female out doing good deeds who is attacked by an unknown stranger.’ Basically, the victim must be proven to be a chaste woman.

According to the Japanese law, the fundamental characteristics to establish the crime of rape against a person over the age of thirteen are: the use of violence or threat; the victim being female; and that the attacker must be male. The law requires that there be penetration of the vagina by the penis, without the consent of the victim, achieved by the use of violence or threat, and criminal intent.

In other words:

Rape in Japan is limited to vaginal penetration by a penis only, therefore downgrading forced oral and anal penetration and penetration by any other object to indecent assault.

Consent to sexual conduct is gauged by the level of violence inflicted during the sexual assault. Physical struggle is the only way in which a woman can express non-consent. Without any physical evidence of physical struggle, the conviction of rape will usually be very difficult, if not impossible.

Criminal intent is established from the point of view of the attacker. If no harm was meant, no harm was really done. Sexual advances that are unwanted by the female point of view do not mean that the male attacker held any criminal intentions. If the attacker mistakenly, but honestly believes that his victim wanted violent, forced sex, in the eyes of laws, this would not constitute as having criminal intent.

Most rape victims in Japan are very reluctant to come forward after being sexually assaulted. If a victim feels that, because of the bias in the system, she will have to undergo the trauma of a trial with little chance of getting justice, she will be discouraged from taking the case to court.

Under Article 248 of the Code of Criminal Procedures, a prosecutor is allowed to suspend the case and not take it to court if he so feels that prosecution unnecessary for any reason – even when the defendant is guilty and strong evidence is present. This is usually applicable for cases where the defendant is a powerful person, and the victim does not have substantial social status.

Additionally, prosecutors are encouraged to drop cases due to the negative view of acquittals. Acquittals are seen as a disgrace by prosecutors, the media, and the general public, and could damage a prosecutor’s future career prospects. Therefore, prosecutors usually screen cases before putting them forward to trial, and those which are more likely to end in acquittal are more likely to be dropped. Japan’s current lack of jury trials makes it easier to predict the outcome of a given case and this further encourages prosecutors to drop cases which are deemed too risky.

The legal profession really needs to reconsider the ways in which it understands sexual assault, altering its perspective to place more emphasis on the victim’s point of view instead of the attacker’s perspective. Apart from the $1 billion net worth pornography industry and the highly acclaimed sex industry, SOME men have even more reasons to move to Japan.

Sick.