Ito Shiori Wins First Defamation Lawsuit Against Twitter Troll

A Twitter troll claimed Ito Shiori, face of #metoo in Japan, was operating under a false identity - so she took him to court for defamation.

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To say that Ito Shiori, the face of Japan’s #MeToo movement, has faced ridicule since going public with her sexual assault in 2017 would be a gross understatement. She’s had to deal with threats, malicious rumors, and slander from people as high-profile as Liberal Democratic Party politician Sugita Mio. Ito, whose powerful memoir Black Box is now available in English, already won her toughest battle yet in her lawsuit against alleged rapist Yamaguchi Noriyuki. Now she’s taking to task people who slander and defame her online.

This month she claimed her first victory in a defamation lawsuit filed in April. The defendant was AI business CEO and former University of Tokyo associate professor Osawa Shohei. Ito claimed a June 2020 tweet by Ousawa caused her mental anguish and damaged her reputation – a reputation that’s taken a constant beating for years. The court ruled in Ito’s favor and ordered Osawa to pay compensation and delete the tweet. [2]

Osawa already has a history of problematic Twitter behavior. In 2019, he posted series of derogatory anti-Chinese tweets that quickly earned him the ire of many Twitter Japan users. His then-employer University of Tokyo issued a public apology for his tweets.

False Names and Bankruptcy?

Osawa posted the defamatory tweet about Ito in June 2020, the same month Ito filed a string of defamation lawsuits against four people. He tweeted “Ito Shiori is totally a fake name!” (伊藤詩織って偽名じゃねーか!) with hashtags like #性行為強要 (“Sexual Extortion”). He included a picture of a newspaper column detailing how a foreign national going by the name Ito Shiori had begun bankruptcy proceedings. According to Ito’s complaint, the tweet had more than 600 retweets and over 1,000 likes by July 2020 [2].

While it’s certainly not the most viral of tweets, Ito considered it sufficient enough to hurt her economic and social credibility. In the filed complaint, Ito’s team iterated that no, the Ito in the newspaper is not the same Ito Shiori they’re representing. She has always gone by her real name, and she hasn’t filed for bankruptcy. Her team asked for 1.1 million yen (roughly $10,000 USD) in compensation and the deletion of the offending tweet.

In their rebuttal [3], Osawa’s team claimed there was no way to prove Osawa was referring to the Ito Shiori in question since there are many Twitter users with that name. The court didn’t buy it, deeming the tweet malicious in its intent. On July 6, they ordered Osawa to delete his tweet and pay Ito 330,000 yen (about $3000 USD) in compensation.

After the July 6 ruling, Osawa took to Twitter [4] to celebrate and thank the presiding judge for a “fair judgment”… even though Ito legally won the lawsuit. He went on to tweet that Ito couldn’t claim to have won the lawsuit since the final compensation was less than half the original amount. His tweets predictably enough earned him scores of insults and “Are you an idiot?” comments on the Twitter-sphere.

Black Box by Ito Shiroi
Black Box, Shiori’s memoir detailing her sexual assault and the personal and social movements that followed.

Taking Online Slander Seriously

The vicious online harassment pro wrestler Kimura Hana suffered that ultimately led to her death became a rallying cry for Japan to take online slander and abuse much more seriously. In a personal statement filed with her original lawsuit against Osawa [5], Ito expressed how fear of slander eventually hindered her from using Twitter:

情報を扱う、伝えるという仕事をする私にとって、Twitterは情報を得たるために大切なツールです。でも私は1人ではTwitterにログインすることすらできなくなってしまいました。….いつの間にかネットは私にとって、顔が見えない人から突然、尊厳を傷付けられる暴力的な場所になっていました。 顔が見えないということは恐ろしいことです。

“As someone who covers the news, Twitter is an important tool for me to obtain information, but I’ve become unable to even log in to Twitter by myself…. The Internet had suddenly become a violent place for me where faceless people attacked my dignity. It’s terrifying not being able to see their faces.”

Ito has two other high-profile defamation lawsuits pending, both having to do with slander on Twitter. One is against the aforementioned Sugita Mio, who already has a history of derogatory comments about violence towards women. The other is against manga artist Hasumi Toshiko, who made a comic insinuating Ito had in fact slept with Yamaguchi to help advance her career. Both of the accused advanced a narrative that hindered Ito’s credibility and inspired more hate towards her.

At a July 7 press conference [6], Ito expressed her hope that this lawsuit will inspire stricter legal reform and force social networking sites to crack down on malicious and slanderous posts:

言葉は人を傷つけるだけでなく、人の命を奪ってしまう可能性がある、とひとりひとりに考えてほしい

“I want each and every person to consider how words can not only hurt people’s feelings but can also destroy someone’s life.”

What to Read Next

Review; Black Box – The Memoir That Sparked Japan’s #MeToo Movement

#KuToo: A Revolt Against Pumps in the Japanese Workplace

Sources

[1] 伊藤詩織さんの裁判、「偽名」とツイートした元東大特任准教授に33万円命じる. https://www.buzzfeed.com/jp/kensukeseya/shiori-ito-20

[2] 「ネットの誹謗中傷をなくすための一歩」伊藤詩織さんが判決後に語ったこと 元東大特任准教授に賠償命令. https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/entry/story_jp_60e40b00e4b0e01b6b221de4?ncid=tweetlnkjphpmg00000001

[3] 伊藤詩織さんを「偽名」とツイート、元東大特任准教授・大澤昇平さんに賠償命令【UPDATE】. https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/entry/story_jp_60e2a42be4b094dd268d1efe?ncid=tweetlnkjphpmg00000001

[4]. Ohsworks tweet. https://twitter.com/Ohsaworks/status/1412266059713843207

[5] 【取材レポート】伊藤詩織さん意見陳述全文 ー安心して道を歩ける日常をー. https://d4p.world/news/10113/

[6] Twitterの影響力は週刊誌以下? 伊藤詩織さん裁判「賠償33万円」が呼ぶ波紋. https://www.businessinsider.jp/post-238247

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