Foreigners victims, perpetrators of sekuhara

Japan sees progress on sexual harassment, but stories suggest it still has a long
way to go
By Steve Silver
The Japan Times
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20101026zg.html
While there has been much progress in combating sexual harassment
since the issue first entered the public consciousness in Japan in the
late 1980s, sekuhara remains a serious and widespread problem for
both Japanese women and foreign women living in Japan. While the
Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) was passed in 1985, it
was not until 1999 that revisions to the law included definitions of
sexual harassment and legal penalties for employers. There are,
however, no punitive measures to enforce the law aside from making
the names of the offending companies public something which the
UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
raised concerns about last year. There has been, however, an
increase in public awareness of sexual harassment in Japan.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, there were
8,120 women who filed sexual harassment complaints with equal
employment opportunity offices in 2008, compared with 7,706 in
2004 and 2,534 in 1997. Much of this increase in awareness came
about through increased international attention as well as a higher
level of domestic attention to the issue. Yet despite this increase in
awareness, relatively little is known about how sexual harassment
affects foreign women living in Japan.
When Tracy, an American woman then in her late 20s, first started her career
in Japan as a JET instructor for Chuo High School in Kagoshima nearly twenty
years ago, nothing in her prior training could have prepared her for what she
witnessed.
The Japanese teacher who she worked with at the school one of the few
women who taught there would constantly be asked by her male colleagues
when she would be getting married. Male students would call her anonymously
and proposition her for sex. Condoms were left on her computer keyboard every
morning, and every morning she would brush them aside toward the trash bin in
quiet humiliation as the other teachers chuckled.
Soon she too became a victim of harassment. At a bonenkai (end-of-year party),
one of the vice-principals sat next to her and grabbed her breasts. Why do you
hide these? he said, as all the men burst into laughter.

She responded by gesturing towards his crotch and asking, Why do you hide
this? This time there was no laughter, but a stunned silence. The administrator
refused to speak to her for the remaining two years she worked at the school.
While there has been much progress in combating sexual harassment since the
issue first entered the public consciousness in Japan in the late 1980s, sekuhara
remains a serious and widespread problem for both Japanese women and
foreign women living in Japan. The first successful litigation against sexual
harassment was in 1992, and by 2000 there had been over 100 cases filed,
including 10 cases that were heard by Japans highest court. One of the most
famous cases was that against former comedian-turned-mayor of Osaka,
Knock Yokoyama, who was forced to resign after being successfully sued by a
university student he molested while she was working on his campaign.
More recently, Rina Bovrisse, a senior retail manager at Prada Japan, has filed
suit against the Italian company for sexual harassment and discrimination,
alleging that the company demoted female store managers for being too short,
too old, or not cute enough, and that she herself received the same
discriminatory treatment after she raised objections to the policy.
While the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL) was passed in 1985, it
was not until 1999 that revisions to the law included definitions of sexual
harassment and legal penalties for employers. There are, however, no punitive
measures to enforce the law aside from making the names of the offending
companies public something which the UN Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women raised concerns about last year.
There has been, however, an increase in public awareness of sexual harassment
in Japan. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, there were
8,120 women who filed sexual harassment complaints with equal employment
opportunity offices in 2008, compared with 7,706 in 2004 and 2,534 in 1997.
Much of this increase in awareness came about through increased international
attention as well as a higher level of domestic attention to the issue. Public
support for womens employment rights in Japan has increased since the
passage of the EEOL, says Chika Shinohara, a professor of sociology at
Momoyama Gakuin University in Osaka. In addition, younger workers have
entered the work force at a time when the concept of sexual harassment has
already begun permeating the legal and cultural framework of Japanese society,
and are therefore much more aware of what constitutes sexual harassment.
Younger women are also more likely to report incidents of sexual harassment
than their older colleagues.
Yet despite this increase in awareness, relatively little is known about how
sexual harassment affects foreign women living in Japan. The government does
not disaggregate data on sexual harassment complaints by nationality or
ethnicity, and there is little research or data regarding foreign victims of
harassment. Foreign women themselves are often hesitant to discuss it for fear
of it affecting their employment, as well as their reluctance to be perceived as a

victim by their social community. Therefore, there are often incidents of sexual
harassment that go unreported.
One such incident or rather, a series of incidents happened to Kristine, a
young American woman in her early 20s. During the year she lived in Japan as
an exchange student, she received the usual staring. Being a natural blonde, I
stand out a lot, and lots of Japanese men at least give me a second glance, she
says. However, the worst that happened to her was having been asked on one
occasion if she wanted to work as a hostess.
When she returned to Japan recently to work as an assistant language teacher
in Saitama Prefecture, her experience would be altogether different. At the
junior high school she worked at, the verbal harassment began almost
immediately after she started. The boys asked her what her bra size was and
when she first had sex. They even asked her if they could touch her breasts.
When she wore additional layers of clothing in an attempt to hide her figure,
boys would yell from across the classroom or the hallway that they thought she
was getting fat. When she wore collared shirts, they complained that they could
not see her chest well enough and asked if she could unbutton her shirt so that
they could touch her breasts.
She didnt complain to her supervisor about the harassment at first, hoping that
it would stop over time. The first forms of sexual harassment were mostly
verbal, and I assumed that if I ignored their inappropriate questions and told the
students to knock it off, they would stop, she explains.
The harassment only became worse, however, when the new semester began.
As she ate alone in the lunchroom one day, two boys began touching their
groins and asked her if she wanted to watch. Another day, two girls grabbed one
of her breasts and exclaimed, So soft!
She finally complained to the supervisor at the local board of education, which
had assigned her to the school. He brushed it off as boys being boys, and
suggested that her dress may be causing the problems even though her
principal had told her on more than one occasion that she always dressed
professionally.
The breaking point finally came when several boys pulled on her shirt and
looked underneath, announcing to the class what color bra she was wearing.
She left the school building, rode her bicycle home, and contracted into a fetal
position, crying the rest of the afternoon. Despite her formal request for an
immediate transfer, the board of education forced her to finish out her term at
the school before the transfer request was finally granted.
*****

When Elizabeth came to Osaka in her early 30s to work for NOVA, the nowdefunct English-language teaching chain, she had heard the oft-repeated
mantra of Japan being one of the safest places in the world.
For Elizabeth, however, life in Japan was anything but safe.
The company had housed her in a mens hostel in Osaka. On her first day in
Japan, a man grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. She spoke no
Japanese at the time, and only could understand one word he said: Hotel. She
eventually was able to break his grip and escape.
The harassment and assault from men came on an almost daily basis in the
elevator, on the street, and on the train. Strange men would ask for her panties
or simply climb up to her second floor balcony and remove them from her
drying rack. Men constantly approached her and asked her to accompany them
to a hotel; with her long, blond hair, they would assume she was a Russian
prostitute, even after she would attempt to convince them otherwise. Being
molested on the train was a common occurrence as it is for most women in
Japan and on one evening a man masturbated on the seat in front of her.
Her work at NOVA offered no respite. She was assigned to work an 11PM 7AM
shift at a video conferencing center, providing English lessons in real time over
the Internet. Men would engage in behaviors ranging from taking her
photograph to masturbating on live camera. Her complaints to her managers
both white Western men went unheeded. They were clients, and they could do
what they like, they would say.
On her way to work, a man on the train stuck his hand up her skirt and molested
her. She had reached her breaking point. She arrived at her office in tears, and
she told her managers of the assault.
Thats going to happen a lot to you here, one of them said, laughing. You
better get used to it.
She had never in her life suffered the level of harassment, assault, and
humiliation that she experienced in those four weeks. I never felt so pimped
out as I did at NOVA, she says. The whole system was geared to put white
women on show.
Then Lindsay Hawker, a NOVA teacher from Britain, was murdered, making
national and international headlines. The parallels between her life and
Lindsays were chilling, she says. She started to have panic attacks on trains,
and was often too afraid to leave her apartment. To make matters worse, the
company wasnt paying her what they had promised, and she was having
trouble paying her bills. Finally, she had enough, and she quit.
At that point she would have returned home if she could afford it, yet neither
she nor her family had enough money to purchase a plane ticket. She was stuck

in a foreign country with no job, little ability in the language, and few viable
options.
She found jobs bartending at establishments frequented by foreign clientele,
and at times would go to drink with friends in the area. On one occasion, her
drink was drugged, and she started vomiting she smelled a bleach-like
substance, she says. She remembers little from the night, and was unable to
leave her apartment for two days.
One morning she found that the air valve on one of the tires on her bicycle had
been removed, and she was unable to use it due to the flat tire. A few days
later, she found that a new air valve had been installed and the tire inflated. In
her mailbox she found the parts of the old air valve. She had a stalker, and he
knew where she lived.
One of her friends at the bar she worked at knew a police detective, and called
him for assistance. The middle-aged detective came to meet her, and she
explained the situation.
You should be flattered, he said. Youre beautiful. Its a compliment, of
course.
But if it would help you feel safe, I can stay at your apartment overnight, he
added, smiling. She moved out of her apartment soon after.
Yet even this was not her most frightening experience in Japan. As she was
leaving the bar where she worked, a man attacked her on the street. Youre so
pretty, he said, and you smell so good. As she struggled to break free, he
became more excited, and she could feel his erection pressed against her body.
She cried out for help, but people continued to walk by on the street without
stopping. She finally was able to push him away, and she escaped.
Japanese men have this idea that I get up in the morning and go out in the
street for their pleasure that I was put on this earth for their pleasure, she
says. Theyre like children they want what they want and the culture supports
them. There are bad people, like there are bad people everywhere. The
difference is the apathy of the good people in Japan who are allowing this to
happen, who dont say its wrong. And its not only Japanese individuals. Every
time there has been a foreign man in a position to help me, they havent.
It has been nearly four years since Elizabeth first came to Japan. During that
time, she has been harassed, molested, stalked, and assaulted repeatedly. She
was forced to teach men that masturbated on camera. No one would help her
not Japanese bystanders, not foreign men, not the police. The attitude was
always the same I was a pretty, young, blond, blue-eyed white woman, so of
course this would happen to me, what did I expect? she says. If you fit a
certain profile, then your life will be a lot more difficult in Japan.

She is working as an English teacher again, this time at a high school. She has
learned Japanese, and has also learned to be more forceful in dealing with the
men who continue to harass her. She is more careful where she walks, where
she goes, and who she goes with. Occasionally, she still gets panic attacks, such
as when there was a large group of intoxicated men riding the train in the
evening. But she wont give up.
This country wont turn me into someone I dont want to be, she explains. I
wont be a victim. I either have to live here and be me, or go back home. And I
decided that I didnt want to lose.
While she doesnt have as many problems now as she did when she first arrived,
the problems do continue. Recently, a 16-year-old boy entered her faculty room,
took off his shirt and asked her, You like this? You want this?
He likes you, a female teacher said, smiling. He thinks youre pretty.
*****
In addition to Japanese boys and men harassing foreign women, there also
exists the reverse foreign men harassing Japanese women.
After spending over six years in Canada, Midori Hirayama returned to Japan to
work for Koekisha, a funeral home chain in Osaka. Among her duties was
translating and interpreting for one of the companys star employees, an
American man recruited for his cutting-edge embalming techniques.
The harassment started almost immediately. He would come out of his office
and sit across from me at my desk, just staring at me, Ms. Hirayama recalled.
He would ask me out to go drinking at least every week, even though she
always declined.
In meetings he would often lean over and caress her arm. Another Japanese
employee would always pretend he wouldnt see it, so she asked another
Japanese co-worker to come to the meetings to witness the behavior which he
did.
Still, she could not muster the courage to report his behavior to the president.
He had been headhunted by the company, she explained. The president
really liked him. They were very close. They would go on trips together.
She dreaded coming into work. Her stress increased, and her health worsened.
The staring and the touching continued. Then, following a company bonenkai,
he followed her, grabbed her arm and began kissing her hand. She pulled away,
rushed back to the station, and washed her shaking hands for several minutes
before returning home.
Ironically, a short time after, she was asked to translate the companys newly
adopted sexual harassment policy into English. It was at that time that she fully

realized that she herself was the victim of harassment. She finally confronted
him directly. He became enraged, yelling and cursing at her in front of the staff.
Soon after, she found herself transferred to another branch, one that was much
farther away from her home just for two weeks, the president said, while they
investigated the situation. Her harasser denied everything, and she heard from
a co-worker that the president openly questioned Midoris truthfulness,
suggesting that she was interested only in financial gain.
The two weeks became a month, then two months, and her requests to return to
her prior office were denied. She was on an annual contract, and the time to
renew was approaching. She was offered a new contract this time reclassifying
her as a part-time worker, with a significant cut in pay and benefits. She was
told that the company was transitioning all the full-time translators to part-time
status as part of their cost cutting measures even though Midori knew that
another full-time translator at a different branch was kept on as a full-time staff.
It was clear retaliation for her reporting her being the victim of harassment, and
she refused to sign the new contract. At the end of her contract period, she was
terminated.
She could have gone away quietly, like many women in Japan before her.
Instead, she chose to fight. She contacted a lawyer, protested through her
union, and met with representatives from several womens rights organizations,
including the Working Womens Network in Osaka. She started talking to the
media about her case, both to pressure the company, but also to give
encouragement to other women who were also suffering from sexual
harassment. Despite the union protests and the media attention, the company
refused to back down and Midori filed suit.
The court case began in April 2004 and lasted a year and nine months. In the
end, Midori received a monetary settlement and a commitment from the
company to conduct annual seminars on sexual harassment, as well as to set up
a confidential telephone hotline to take reports from victims.
The ordeal of the case was difficult for her many of her co-workers lied in
court, she says, for fear of losing their job but Midori has never regretted her
decision. For her, it was not only a question of principle, but a way to make a
stand for other women who suffered from harassment as well.
In fact, one woman read about Midoris case in the press and contacted her
about a similar situation that she was enduring in her company. Through
Midoris encouragement, she decided to take action she got her union involved
and filed a lawsuit.
When she protested with her union in front of her place of employment, Midori
came and stood with her to show solidarity.
There are so many women out there who are quiet, but are crying out for help,
Midori explained. I want them to know that they are not alone.

SIDEBAR
What should you do if you are a victim of sexual harassment?

Kyoko Ogura, an attorney based in Tokyo who specializes in sexual

harassment law, says that documenting the harassment is important. Any
kind of harassment should be written down in detail on the date that it
occurs.
Chika Shinohara, a professor of sociology at Momoyama Gakuin University
and an expert in sexual harassment issues, suggests talking to co-workers
and making allies.
Midori Hirayama and Rina Bovrisse both recommend contacting an NGO to
get advice, support, and references to attorneys. The Action Center for
Working Women (acw2.org, 03-5304-7383), is a nationwide network based
in Tokyo. Another organization is the Womens Working Network (wwnnet.org, 06-6941-8700), based in Osaka. For women living in Osaka
prefecture, the Dawn Center (www.dawncenter.or.jp/english, 06-6944-8242)
has free counseling available in person or on the telephone.
Yoko Hayashi, an attorney and member of the United Nations Committee on
the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), advises victims
in academic settings to go through their own internal mechanisms at their
school or university. The failure of implementing such mechanism is one
factor of compensation for damages, she says.
Fiona Creaser, a lecturer at Tama University who is an expert on sexual
harassment on college campuses in Japan, suggests contacting the following
organizations:
Network for Action against Academic Harassment (www.naah.jp, 066353-3364)
Support House Jomu (www15.ocn.ne.jp/~jomu, 03-3320-5307)
Tokyo English Life Line (www.telljp.com, 03-5774-0992)
Human Rights Counseling for Foreigners
(www.moj.go.jp/JINKEN/jinken21.html)