A producer on the famous anime Your Name got his day in court. However, some are calling the sentence light given the scope of his sexual predation.
According to 8 Kantere (via Yahoo! News JP), prosecutors say that Ito Koichiro, 53, paid over 100 women for sex over a period of 10 years. Among those, at least 11 were minors. Ito filmed at least 10 of those instances of statutory rape. One case involved outright nonconsensual sex.
That totals up to at least 22 separate charges of statutory rape, rape, and child pornography. Ito admitted to the charges against him.
However, despite the litany of charges, prosecutors only requested a six-year sentence. That’s the same sentence handed to a local politician recently for a single instance of statutory rape and prostitution.
Even this request seemed to Internet commentators to be extremely light. One popular X news account noted the disparity between this sentence and the one handed to Watanabe Mai, a.k.a. Sugar Baby Riri. Watanabe, who became addicted to a host at one of Tokyo’s many host clubs, forged fraudulent financial relationships with men to pay off her club debt. Watanabe received a full nine years for her crimes. (Her sentence has since been reduced to 8.5 years.)
However, Wakayama Court judge Fukushima Keiko thought even six years was too much. While saying his crimes had a “significant negative impact” on his young victims and that he bore “great responsibility,” she only gave him four years in jail.
Activists in Japan have long held that crimes against women aren’t taken seriously. Many sexual crimes, such as molestation, go unreported because women don’t believe police and prosecutors will actively pursue them.
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