Japanese social justice advocates have long accused their country of being soft on sexual assault and abuse. Two recent lopsided verdicts have people up in arms as a woman who took money for men gets a harsher sentence than a man who raped his own daughter.
(Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault.)
Six years for treating his family as his “property”
Like other male-dominated countries, Japan has had a chronic problem siding with the victims of sexual assault. Many victims of train groping, for example, don’t even bother to report the crime. Most believe (not without evidence) that police will instinctually side with the accused.
Even when a severe crime has obviously taken place, Japanese courts have often been reluctant to enforce the law. In an infamous case a few years back, a father evaded charges of raping his 12-year-old daughter because a judge ruled she hadn’t resisted loudly enough.
The latest case drawing headlines centers around a former Japan Self Defense Forces official who raped his 14-year-old daughter. The man admitted to the court that, in the past three years, he’d sexually assaulted her 20 times.
“I thought of my family as my property,” the rapist told the court. “I couldn’t control my urges.”
The proceedings were held in private to protect the identity of the victim. The 14-year-old bravely told her own story in a written deposition.
Prosecutors requested eight years in jail. However, the judge ruled that the man seemed “remorseful” and knocked his sentence down to a mere six.
Outrage on social media over light sentence
The light sentence produced outrage across the political spectrum. According to local news reports, Egyptian-born entertainer Fifi posted about it on her own social media, saying, “these punishments are too light, always, always.”
She wasn’t the only one who thought the sentence didn’t go far enough. “There’s no way he’s ‘remorseful’ after assaulting her 20 times,” one commenter said.
Commenters on a Yahoo! News JP post on X were equally outraged. “It should be six years per assault for a total of 120 years,” one wrote. “The only option is a lifelong sentence!” proclaimed another.
Why did a woman convicted of fraud get a harsher sentence?
A number of other commenters noted that this case is a stark contrast to the case of a woman recently convicted of fraud.
Watanabe Mai – a.k.a. “Sugar Baby Riri” (頂き女子りり) – was accused and found guilty of defrauding men of money by creating fake romantic relationships. Watanabe wrote a manual on how she worked her scheme, which she sold to other women. In the manual, she recommended strategies such as faking emergencies to convince men to give you money – even going so far as to cut off contact a few days before to make it more believable.
What Watanabe did certainly crossed a line. However, she also had extenuating circumstances: Watanabe was feeding a severe host club addiction.
Host clubs are nightlife businesses where attractive men entertain a largely female client base. In exchange, their customers pay for overpriced champagne and other goods in a bid to make their oshi (favorite) the number one earner at their club.
The host club business is under fire in Japan recently. Until recently, many clubs supported a loan system that enabled women to rack up tens of millions of yen in debt. To pay it off, many hosts – who are on the hook personally if their customers don’t pony up – have persuaded or even forced women into prostitution to pay it off.
Watanabe’s nine year sentence reduced…by six months
For her crimes, Watanabe got nine years in prison – a whopping three years more than a man who admitted to raping his own daughter 20 times. She was also ordered to pay 80 million yen (USD $538K) in fines.
Her lawyer appealed this verdict, arguing that Watanabe had apologized to the victims and that her host addiction was an extenuating circumstance.
A judge in Nagoya agreed. However, the judge knocked a mere six months off, taking the sentence down to eight years and six months. Which is still 2.5 years more than the former SDF officer got her sexual assault.
One X user summed up the contrast in a tweet with 50K likes (warning: graphic description of rape):
“Sugar Baby Riri got nine years. A man who went into his daughter’s room and assaulted her while she was sleeping, restraining her with zip ties and forcibly raping her, gets six years. (And his lawyers asked for a suspended sentence.) Talk about male chauvinism. Throw this animal in jail for life.”
The outrage likely won’t change either verdict. But hopefully this leads to a deeper conversation about how Japan prosecutes and punishes men who commit crimes against women.
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Sources
「反省してるわけない」「殺人に値する罪」元陸自の男が14歳の娘と20回性行為…懲役6年判決に怒り殺到. FLASH
Tweet by user @6wQC4HBl1f19712. X
フィフィ 自衛官が14歳娘に性的虐待、不同意性交罪で懲役6年に「毎度毎度、刑が軽すぎるんだよ」. Sponichi Annex
【独自】 “頂き女子りりちゃん”母は「涙がダー」控訴審判決で6カ月の“減刑”…「ままがすきだよ」母に当てた直筆の手紙入手. FNN Prime Online
