Surrounding women, “peeling off their underwear” and “sticking their hands inside their clothes”… Shocking behavior of molesters who continue to radicalize.
Why is the current situation of daily molestation left unchecked?
Although molestation regularly becomes a social problem, no serious countermeasures have been taken, and many women continue to be victimized. In particular, the JR Saikyo Line, which is said to be one of the most crowded in Japan, has seen a string of molestations over several decades.
Although countermeasures such as announcements in stations and on trains, installation of women-only cars, and security cameras on trains have been taken, they seem to be largely ineffective.
In fact, when this magazine reporter boarded the Saikyo Line commuter rapid train (bound for Kawagoe) No. 1 at 18:16 on a weekday, she saw a man placing the back of his hand on a woman’s buttocks, a man dressed as a woman showing his chest and reaching for the lower body of a man around him.
Why does the current situation of rampant molestation continue to be left unchecked? It seems that circumstances unique to the Saikyo Line have created a situation where molestation has gone unchecked.
The Saikyo Line is extremely crowded with commuter rapid trains departing in the morning and evening, and the first car in particular has a high boarding rate because it is close to the stairs to the platform at terminal stations such as Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. This makes it easy for molesters to target them.
It is also difficult for the female victims to speak up because they think it is an irresistible force because of the crowded train station. Even when those around them catch a man who has molested a woman, she sometimes responds, ‘I don’t know if I was really molested or not, so I am troubled.
When I actually boarded the train, I found that there was almost no space between people and that my body was naturally in close contact with those around me. From the point of view of those who engage in molestation or exposure, it is easy to target and difficult to be detected.
Mr. H, who has used the Saikyo Line to commute to work for several decades and is wary of molesters when he sees them, describes the current situation as follows.
On the Saikyo Line, I think there are more people who target molesters from the start rather than those who do it because they are under the influence of evil. They follow women in revealing clothes on station platforms, or cut in line to get on a train near a weak-looking woman.
Some of them gather a group of friends on Internet bulletin boards and surround women with several people, pulling down their underwear and sticking their hands inside their clothes. Most of the molesters are men in their 30s or 40s, and even when they are subdued and turned in to station staff, they somehow return and continue molesting women again.
According to a white paper on crime published by the Ministry of Justice in 2003, the recidivism rate for molestation is 44.7%, which is higher than for other sex crimes, but this figure is probably due to the fact that it is easy to molest and difficult to be caught.
Impact of private arrests? There was even a police officer deployed on the platform.
When the activities of private arrest YouTubers, including Gutsch, Funaim, and others, became popular, the number of such YouTubers decreased considerably. The aforementioned Mr. H explains the reason for this as follows.
Whenever a YouTuber appeared on the platform, the perverts would share the information on the Internet bulletin board. They took the train every day to search for stories, so the number of molesters was decreasing then.
Also, when they sent a letter of inquiry to JR East regarding the anti-molestation manual and women-only cars, police officers patrolled the platforms for weeks after that. But they were not boarding the trains, so the effect was not as great.”
Molestation is an unforgivable criminal act that offends the dignity of the other person, falling under the violation of the Ordinance for the Prevention of Nuisance Activities and the crime of non-consensual obscenity. Despite this, women who use trains should never be subjected to molestation simply because they ride in a car near the stairs leading to the platform.
Measures that cause inconvenience to others, such as those taken by some radical private arresting YouTubers, are out of the question, but I believe that more in-depth measures are required.