Sexual harassment on trains is incredibly commonplace in Japan. When women are groped or harassed, the blame is usually placed on them — it’s their fault they dressed a certain way, and so on. We’ve covered the issue before and how women defend themselves from such unwanted advances. There’s even an app called Digital Police (デジポリス) that enables groping victims to use a variety of features to alert the police and ask for help from fellow passengers.
Since 2018 a new breed of chikan (痴漢; pervert, groper) has appeared — the AirDrop pervert (エアドロップ痴漢) where men send women unsolicited obscene images through Apple’s file sharing app on iPhones. Prefectures have since started warning people to be careful when receiving files from strangers, but sexual harassment incidents still occur. But in Fukuoka, the prefectural police are actually cracking down against one of these AirDrop perverts in a historic first.
The accused is a 37-year-old salaryman who sent an explicit image to a 34-year-old male on July 5th. The victim declined to receive the image, but after receiving it a second time he opened the file, which was of an explicit image of a woman. He then tailed a suspicious-looking male passenger with an iPhone and called the police to make a report.
When questioned by police, the perpetrator stated he wanted to see the man’s reaction to receiving an image like that. The police have filed reports to the local prosecutor stating the 37-year-old salaryman violated the prefecture’s public nuisance prevention law (県迷惑防止条; Ken meiwaku bōshi jō).
This isn’t the first arrest of an AirDrop pervert. In May 2018 an office worker was arrested on suspicion of sending obscene images to a woman riding the train in Hyogo Prefecture. Another office worker was arrested in Osaka based on similar suspicions. However, arrests are still far and few between because it’s difficult to ascertain who sent the files in crowded settings like a train.
Reactions were mixed. Twitter users started sharing instructional videos on how to limit who can send files over AirDrop. Twitter user @yuamysunshine said the situation might have ended differently had the victim been a woman:
It’s one thing when it’s a man against man, but honestly, if it were a woman up against a man, she’d be too scared to tail him or anything.
Others wondered if it was really considered harassment since the victim was male. (Of course, men are victims of sexual harassment as well, but the overwhelming majority of groping and sexual harassment victims are women. And it’s possible the attacker didn’t know his victim’s sexual identity before sending the pic.)
It’s sad to even think this, but I wonder if the police would have acted accordingly had the victim been a woman, or if she would have been victim-shamed and told it was her fault. Most women are deterred from filing a police report due to societal pressures. If there is a conviction in this case, will it embolden people to continue preying on women since it was a man who notified the police, or will it send a message that AirDrop harassment will now be taken seriously? We’ll keep tabs on this case and let you know how it unfolds.
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