Fleeing groper in Tokyo jumps train tracks, breaks hip

Another week, another chikan story.

As regular readers to this blog will know, groping on public transport is a serious problem in Japan, so much so that it has its own name (chikan) and tactics to deal with it — primarily women-only carriages.

This doesn’t seem to stop the perpetrators, though, but we also seem to spot an increasingly number of reports now about them being caught or having to escape in outlandish ways.

On the morning of Wednesday, December 15, an alleged male groper tried to evade justice by jumping from the tracks at Minami-Senju Station on the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line (a subway line, but here it runs aboveground) down to the JR freight rail line below. That’s a drop of around 10 meters! Needless to say, it didn’t go so well for the fugitive, who broke his hip and ended up not only detained by police, but taken to hospital too. That’s one hell of a way to start your hump day.

We especially like the news show’s graphic (at the 1:25 mark) that makes it seem like a giant man is running around Tokyo trying to grope women.

We sure it’s just a coincidence, but the Kozukappara execution grounds, where the criminals of Edo met their fates, were located near Minami-Senju Station — and part of the site is now located under the tracks of the Hibiya Line.

If you are gonna grope and try to escape, perhaps don’t do it in a place with an established track record for meting out justice to criminals.