Posted by ccld201
21 April 2026Her gaze is direct and serious, but not severe; it is open, dignified, and even gentle, showing no trace of self-pity but graceful determination. Her photograph accompanies a newspaper article which reveals that, as a former member of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDFs), she was visiting its headquarters in Tokyo to hand in a petition demanding that the Ministry of Defence investigate the scale of sexual harassment inside the SDFs, including her own case. The petition carried about 105,000 signatures she had collected online.[1]
Rina Gonoi joined the SDFs in 2020 at the age of 19, and experienced daily sexual harassment, including an especially humiliating instance when she was called by three male colleagues to their tent, where they had been drinking with a dozen others. They asked her to join their practice of ‘martial arts’ as an entertainment, which involved acts of a sexual nature. She reported the incident to her superiors, and when they did not respond, to the SDF’s internal police. They sent a document on the three men to the public prosecutor’s office, but the office decided not to charge them formally. Gonoi left the SDF in June 2022 and began to speak about her experiences on Youtube and in other media outlets. Two months later, Gonoi visited the Ministry and handed in the petition, when her case became widely known.
The Defence Ministry responded quickly, commencing an internal investigation into sexual and other forms of harassment, apologised to Gonoi, and three months later dismissed the three men. The prosecutor’s decision was overturned, and her case went to court. In December 2022 the district court found the three men guilty of an act of obscenity by force, and gave them a suspended two-year prison sentence. Earlier this year Gonoi received compensation from the government in a separate civil case.
One of the most noticeable developments in Japan over the past few years is that victims of sexual violence have begun to speak about their experiences, and their actions are making visible changes to the country’s archaic legislation on sexual offences and the culture of male dominance.
Gonoi has a notable predecessor. In 2017 then 28-year-old freelance journalist Shiori Ito held a press conference and made public the sexual assault she had suffered from a senior journalist two years earlier. The publication of her book Black Box, based on her experience, followed. She had reported the case to the police immediately after the incident, but the prosecutor’s office decided not to prosecute due to ‘insufficient evidence.’ Ito went public, asking why the country’s sexual assault law trivialised her ‘emotional sufferings from sexual intercourse she did not consent to.’ In 2019 Ito filed a civil case against Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the journalist: the Tokyo District Court upheld Ito’s claim and the ruling was confirmed by the Supreme Court.
If it is hard for a victim of sexual offences to come forward and openly seek redress in any society; doing so is especially difficult in Japan because gendered stereotypes are so deeply ingrained as social norms, and the government and legislators have done so little to remove the prevailing bias. The persistent patriarchal ideals in Japanese law survived post-war reform and the gendered division of labour was reinforced during the country’s rapid economic growth, pushing many women into a confined role as a carer dependant on her husband. This historical background partly explains why the country’s law on sexual offences was almost unchanged since its enactment in 1907, when Japan’s modern Criminal Code, enacted in 1880, was extensively revised in 1907 in response to rapid industrialisation and the prevailing belief that criminal law served a function of social defence. Consequently, rape and other sexual offences were conceptualised as violations of social order and morality, rather than infringements of individual bodily integrity and dignity. Although the Code was substantially revised again in 1947 under the new Constitution to emphasise individual rights, as discussed below, this underlying conception of sexual crimes persisted until the 2023 revision.
The male point of view permeated the legislation. Thus, the law did not take sexual offences seriously. If rape was taken more seriously, this is because it was thought to damage the women’s reproductive role as her virginity was essential to preserving the sacredness of her family. But even for rape, the minimum jail sentence was set at two years (extended to three years in 2004), compared with five years for violent robbery. This imbalance was not corrected until 2017 when the minimum jail sentence for rape was increased to five years.
To establish the criminality of a sexual offence also required ‘evidence of the use of violence or threat strong enough to prevent the victim’s resistance.’ Behind this provision is the misogynistic and brutal idea that normal sexual intercourse also involves some degree of violence, thus violence is permissible to a degree. Prosecution for sexual offences also required the request of the victim, except for cases where two or more culprits were involved; the state did not to intervene automatically until the 2017 revision.
Incremental changes have been made since 2004 due to various factors, including a series of gang rapes involving elite university students as offenders, international pressure such as UN recommendations, and the global MeToo movement. However, a major change, which one expert describes as ‘one step closer to the international standards set by treaties such as the Istanbul Convention’, came after women became vocal against sexual violence.[2] In March 2019 a series of court rulings acquitted the defendants in rape cases, including a father accused of raping his own daughter when she was younger. One evening in April, more than 500 women stood together in Tokyo Station, carrying a placard and a flower in protest. The movement, named Flower Demo, spread to other major cities in the country.[3]
The 2023 revision of the Criminal Code redefined sexual offences as a sexual act without consent. Until then, the victim had to prove that resistance was not possible. Now it is the culprit who has to ensure that a person consents to the act; otherwise, it may be considered as an offence.[4]
Now more women (and men) who have been victims of sexual assault are coming forward, telling their story of suffering but also claiming their own voice and person, including Riho Fukuyama, Eichō, Tokie Tanaka, Kauan Okamoto, and Harumi Suzuki.[5] The journey that Gonoi, Ito, and many other survivors of sexual violence have taken to seek redress and restore their individual dignity can only create a more caring, democratic, and fairer society, and we all owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.
Translation from Japanese is by the author.
Hiromi Sasamoto-Collins is a tutor in Japanese history, politics, and society at the University of Edinburgh. In the 1990s, she worked in Tokyo for Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading daily newspapers, and its English-language edition as a translator and reporter. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and taught at Durham University before returning to Edinburgh.
[1] ‘Moto-Jieikan Sei-higai Chōsa Yōkyū [Ex-SDF member calls for probe into sexual harassment]’ The Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo, 1 September 2022) 4.
[2] Mana Shimaoka, ‘Keihō ni okeru Seihanzai Kaisei no 20 nen’ [Two Decades of Reform: Changes to Japan’s Penal Code on Rape]’ (2024) 39 Chiba Journal of Law and Politics 1; Yukiko Tsunoda, ‘Sexual Harassment in Japan’ in Mackinnon, C. A. and Siegel, R. B. (eds), Directions in sexual harassment law (Yale University Press, 2003) 618-632.
[3] E. Dalton and C. Norma, ‘Kitahara Minori: At the Heart of Japan’s Feminist Movement of the #MeToo Era’ in Dalton and Norma (eds), Voices from the Contemporary Japanese Feminist Movement, Palgrave Macmillan Studies on Human Rights in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2022). Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2228-2_2.
[4] Lee Smith, ‘Breaking the Black Box: The Impact of the 2023 Changes to the Japanese Penal Code on Rape’ (2025) 34 Wash. Int’l L.J.50. Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol34/iss2/2.
[5] Maki Ōkubo and Amane Shimazaki, ‘Kao mo Namae mo Kakusazu Tsutaeru [Coming Forwards with Faces and Names]’ The Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo, 23 March 2024) 1.