Women in Japan have argued for decades that the Japanese legal system fails to protect them adequately, especially in cases of sexual assault. Many victims don’t even pursue charges out of fear the police and prosecutors won’t believe them.
Two new cases reveal that this fear isn’t unfounded. A woman is suing the Japanese government and the Tokyo prosecutor whom she says humiliated her while taking her statement. In a separate case, a female prosecutor in Osaka was forced to quit her job after accusing her boss of raping her.
Plaintiff: Prosecutors “humiliated” me
The anonymous plaintiff says she was the victim of non-consensual sexual intercourse (不同意性交; fudōi-seikō) in June 2023. She says that, after pressing charges, the prosecutor who took her statement repeatedly questioned her credibility.
“Much of what you’re saying isn’t believable,” he flat out told her. He also accused her of making a “false report” and said that other people would think she was only filing “for the money” (i.e., for a settlement to make the case go away – a common practice with sexual assault cases in Japan).
The plaintiff further claims that the prosecutor and police never launched an investigation to corroborate her statement. The prosecutor’s office ultimately dropped the case without charges. He also never recorded her statement and didn’t let her record it herself, leaving no evidence of the proceedings.
On May 22, 2026, the woman sued the state and the prosecutor for five million yen ($31K). The lawsuit follows a similar, successful suit in July 2024, when the Tokyo District Court awarded 1.1 million yen ($6,900) to a plaintiff after prosecutors used insulting language, calling them a “kid” and “child-like.”
Osaka prosecutor forced to quit after accusing her boss
This plaintiff isn’t the only one who says the system failed her.
In a separate case, a woman, Ms. A., stayed silent for six years after she alleges her boss, former Osaka District Prosecutors Office head Kitagawa Kentarō, sexually assaulted her at his home while she was intoxicated. Initially, Kitagawa admitted to the charge; he later reversed his admission, forcing A to testify in court.
A contends that Kitagawa waged a campaign to silence her. The prosecutors office refused to launch a third-party committee to investigate the allegations. Later, another prosecutor in the office leaked her name to the press, violating her anonymity. He was never charged over this gross violation of his duty.
A reported suffering ongoing harassment at work over her accusations; one of her defenders, she alleges, was transferred to another department against his wishes. She quit her job on April 30, 2026, claiming she was treated like an “invisible person” at work who “didn’t exist.”
A hasn’t stopped fighting, though. She’s now leading a signature campaign demanding that the prosecutor’s office hold itself accountable. So far, she’s gathered nearly 90,000 signatures.
“If you raise your voice, you end up like me,” she told reporters during a press conference. “Most people are too afraid to report.”
Ongoing secondary victimization
The first plaintiff was only able to file charges at all because of a 2023 revision to Japan’s sex-crime statutes. Previously, accusations of sexual assault had to prove forcible sexual intercourse (強制性交等罪), which meant proving there was violence and intimidation. This led to obscene decisions in which abusers got off scot-free, such as a father who was found not guilty of raping his 12-year-old daughter because she couldn’t “prove” she didn’t consent.
Under the new standard, women only have to prove non-consensual sexual intercourse (不同意性交等罪). That changed the standard to proving lack of consent according to eight criteria. Japan also raised the statute of limitations from 10 to 15 years and raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 years old.
For years, sexual assault victims in Japan have reported suffering humiliation at the hands of the people who were supposed to protect them. Itō Shiori, who filed rape accusations against a prominent Japanese journalist, said police discouraged her from filing and made her re-enact her assault with a dummy.
While the law has changed since Itō’s case, attitudes, apparently, have not. Itō has since gone on to write a book and direct a documentary about her ordeal in a bid to raise awareness about the reality of sexual assault in Japan.
Barriers to reporting
This hostile environment sends a clear message to women in Japan: don’t even bother reporting crimes because no one will take you seriously.
This comes out clearly in numbers surrounding train molestation. Private research estimates that as many as 80% of groping cases go unreported because victims don’t think that police and prosecutors will believe them. In 2023, the Japanese government had to send a memorandum to schools asking them not to mark students as late or absent if they went to the police to report an assault.
The stigma against reporting means most women have to defend themselves. One woman recently received near-universal praise on Japanese social media when she posted about how she stabbed a groper with a safety pin.
Good for her, of course. But it shouldn’t have to come to that. While Japan is a generally safe place, it’s not always safe for everyone. As these two cases show, women are particularly vulnerable – victims of a system that works assiduously, not to seek justice for them, but to protect the perpetrators.
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Sources
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