Say the word "feminist" to a young Japanese guy and you may be surprised by the negative reaction you get. This is partly because the word in Japanese has a stronger connotation, implying what we might call a radical feminist in English.
Nonetheless, anti-feminist attitudes can be surprisingly ingrained.
And while we might ascribe this to the old geezers who run the country as the senior figures in the civil service and government, and as the board members and executives at major corporations, the one survey has found that a significant number of Generation Z men also have reservations ...
#MeToo has yet to make inroads in Japan, despite a few scandals and efforts by feminist campaigners. In that respect, South Korean women are doing a better job at raising awareness of such problems as sexual abuse in the entertainment industry and secret recording of women in public toilets.
A new campaign has launched, though, which shines a light on a different aspect of Japanese women's plight: high heels. Dubbed #KuToo (a play on the Japanese word for shoes, kutsu, and pain, kutsuu), the campaign calls on employers to stop enforcing dress codes that require female workers to wear ...
A new commercial for German DIY store chain Hornbach has stirred controversy. It shows two unkempt and decidedly unhandsome white men getting all sweaty outside in the garden, watched by two scientific-looking bods. The men are then instructed to strip for the observers and hand over their apparently smelly briefs.
The scene cuts to an unnamed East Asian city that looks like Hong Kong or a futuristic Tokyo. A woman approaches a vending machine and buys a package. it turns out to be one of the hairy German guys' briefs, sealed and fresh. The woman, who looks Japanese, gleefully opens the ...
Well, as we know from recent weekly magazine content ranking which college girls are easiest, MeToo in Japan has yet to arrive fully.
Now here's another example to add to the litany of shame, at least in the eyes of feminists.
The most recent episode of Ken Shimura's comedy TV show, Shimura Ken no Bakatono-sama, on Fuji TV that was broadcast on January 9th included a sketch involving a "flesh futon" (niku-futon, literally "meat futon"). Inevitably this meant scantily-clad ladies.
During the course of the sketch, Shimura was squeezed snugly between four pairs of women in bikinis and ...
Campaigners have launched a petition on Change.org in protest at a recent article by the weekly magazine Spa! that ranked female Japanese university students by how easy they are to sleep with.
The activists say: "Japan, stop objectifying, sexualizing and disrespecting and looking down on women."
Demanding an apology and retraction of the "easy college girls ranking" article (titled "ヤレる女子大学生RANKING" in Japanese), the petition is presented in Japanese, English and Spanish.
Here is what the petition, which is led by Kazuna Yamamoto, says.
2018 was a year where ...
The South Korean film director Kim Ki-duk has been accused of assault and attempting to coerce a actress into performing sex scenes for his movie Moebius.
The unnamed actress has accused the critically acclaimed and award-winning Kim of slapping her during preparation to perform an unscripted, violent sex scene. The allegations first came out in the summer but there were some new developments this month. Now Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said that it has indicted Kim on a summary offense with a penalty of $4,570 (KRW5 million).
It is still not known who the actress was, ...
The Guardian has profiled the porn star Kurumin Aroma, another example of the chronic problem of coercion in the adult video industry in Japan.
Though long widely known for some time, the controversy over the coercion and exploitation of female performers has recently scandalized the industry, leading to a lot of press attention, a public apology and even arrests. Several prominent performers have come forward with stories of how they were tricked and forced into performing.
Aroma wanted to be a gravure idol and was spotted by a scout while still at college. Then when she had a ...
After the media controversy comes the government crackdown.
The biggest story in the adult industry last year was when the widespread coercion in the porn industry was finally exposed after several famous performers came forward, in addition to multiple arrests and prosecutions.
It led to an official apology from the industry, though can we really hope that things will really improve when the industry is so large and its needs so rampant? (After all, such coercion is also endemic for gravure idols, music idols and the general entertainment world.)
Kyodo now reports that the ...
A Japanese newswire article about sexual harassment among aspiring models and idols is doing the rounds, confirming what we've been saying for years.
Apparently, a government survey has shown that 26.9% of Japanese young female models and starlets have received "unwanted requests for sexually oriented photo shoots."
This comes hot on the heels of last year's controversy about widespread coercion in the porn industry.
In the first survey by the Cabinet Office on sexual abuse against young women, 7.7% of respondents had been offered contracts to become models or starlets.
Asked about ...
