[NSFW links ahead - actual chikan sites restricted to Part 4]One may argue that modern public transportation creates a particular public space all its own, wherein traditional notions of civility and personal space are forcibly erased, allowing a sort of twentieth-century deviance heretofore unimaginable.
As a criminology journal article entitled
"Sex Crimes In The Subway" puts it:
"although neither exhibitionism nor genital rubbing (frottage) are confined to the subways, a quality peculiar to the physical setting of the subway makes it a preferred site for both of these types of sex offenders".
The pressed mob lets individuals within it lose their sense of proper socialization and responsibility; crushed together, the normal rules may appear not to apply, and amoral temptations flourish in this atypical environment.
Simply put, it is a
frotteur's paradise.
The phenomenon of unwanted groping or
sexual assault on public transit is
not a new one, and not one limited to any particular
place or culture;
Dan Hoyt and
Freddie Johnson, both out of
New York City, are
proof enough of that.
Still, as
interesting as
New York's
rubbers or
grinders may be, the particular form of groping known in Japan as
chikan is particularly fascinating for many reasons, and there is a deep (indeed seemingly endless) pool of resources on the subject online should one choose to have a look.
Suffice it to say that I've had a look and this is some of what I've found.
Chikan [
wiki] is a
term originally denoting pervert, and
later understood to refer specifically to groping on usually crowded subway trains; in addition, the word is properly a noun but can now be used as a verb as well. The female equivalent term would be
chijo, or lewd woman.
Chikan are so well-known in Japan that they have become a
stock manga character, and
even inspired a
hit song [
video].
1.
Japan has an
extremely popular public transportation system, so much so in fact that
oshiya (or 'pusher's) are
required to cram people into each last little bit of available space
onboard subway trains.
In this
packed environment, tensions are
already high. It is
not natural or comfortable (in the physical or psychological sense) to be
so constrained, and in such
proximity to strangers for what are often lengthy periods of time. In
such a situation, your personal space is invaded as it is. But when someone takes advantage of that enforced proximity to grope or molest, the ride to and from work can be a
terrible experience, an
ordeal to be endured.
What can one do? There are
words and
pictures available on how to
protect oneself from chikans. Women have also
organized workshops roleplaying likely situations. More recently,
text display messages on a cellphone have been suggested as being helpful. There is of course also the route of
danger signs (or,
in the U.S., consciousness-raising campaigns). Placing
video cameras on every subway car has been rejected as being too expensive. The conventional suggestion is to
grab the offender's arm and
raise it in the air, yelling "chikan" as you do so.
Perhaps the
most innovative solution to
the problem however has been
the introduction of
women-only public transit, whether by
bus, train or subway. If the men are absent,
the logic goes, so is
the chance of being flashed or
groped by one; for the duration of the ride at least, the fear is abated.
2.
Japan has had railways since 1872 and subways since 1927. It may surprise you to learn that all the way back in 1912, even before the subways had started, there were women-only railcars known as
hana-densha (or flower train).
By 1973, the women-only railcars ceased, and it was not until the 21st century dawned that the practice came back into effect - driven by the
alarming failure of
previous campaigns and increased police presence alone, and by
statistics suggesting the problem affected two-thirds of the trains' female passengers and had increased triple-fold in the previous decade.
This measure has been introduced around the world over the last decade in places like
Cairo,
Moscow,
Mexico City,
Rio De Janeiro, and most recently
Seoul.
In Tokyo, trailblazing efforts to solve what seemed a
hopeless cause took the form of a throw-back then,
women-only subway train cars, usually the first and last car on a train. The cars are identified by
pink mats on the station platform.
The
riders of these
josei senyou sharyou (women-only railcars) seem
happy with the
arrangement,
although some
feminists take
issue with
segregation between the sexes being
viewed as a solution to a
sexist problem.
It may still be too early to really critique this new system; nonetheless, it is fair to say the
reaction has thus far
been mixed. Many women would like to see the
program expanded and more such women-only cars made available.
Many men
treat such
trains as being
rather absurd and women on the general cars are now often inferred to be quite literally 'up for grabs'.
3.
Overall however, as the culture at large
transforms, the problem
seems to be taken more
seriously and
chikan are beginning to be
confronted and
challenged by the
public (and I'm not just
talking about
white male bloggers
either).
Former rock star/TV personality
Masashi Tashiro and former star economist
Kazuhide 'Mirrorman' Uekusa, perhaps the two most
high-profile individuals
charged with such crimes in Japan, are excellent
examples of the
social cost such actions now
extract there.
A price so very high in fact that it is now increasingly common to find oneself the victim of an
expensive new con if one is riding a mixed-gender train car: a woman accuses you of being a chikan, of having assaulted her. This is often followed shortly thereafter by a
second person coming forward who asserts that they saw the whole thing and are willing to testify to the veracity of the woman's claim. Of course there's no need to go to the police if a
settlement can be reached, the woman explains...and in this sly manner salarymen are parting with vast sums to protect their reputation.
Though I haven't yet seen it myself, I would be remiss if I didn't mention last year's
critically acclaimed film
Soredemo boku wa yattenai (I just didn't do it!), directed by
Masayuki Suo. The
story of a young man who is
falsely accused of being a chikan and his
travails through the Japanese courts system, it conveys something of the
fear and apprehension men are now sharing (if for entirely different reasons) with their female fellow passengers on the train.
The problem has
become so bad now that some men are
calling for their own
male-only train cars so that they may ride without fear of false accusation; the stations plead the
expense is too high or ignore the problem and hope it will disappear. Fearful male riders offer each other suggestions to
avoid accusation and on what to do
if accused; there is even a cottage industry selling
portable subway straps so that men can advertise the fact that their hands are occupied hands, thank you very much.
4.
And the men whose hands
are roaming,
what of them? What they have in common is obviously
a desire to engage in
frotteurism. As this used to be known as
frottage, gropers will often speak of needing to
frot or going frotting or the like (frot and frotting are also popular terms in the
gay community, where the
action is consensual and often seen as an alternative to anal sex).
The anonymity of the internet allows
such men the freedom to speak openly about
their drives and thus we are granted, should we choose, a
rare entry into their
minds and motivations.
Not surprisingly, chikan use the internet for their own ends as well, everything from
chat boards and
hall of fames to private yahoo groups and
sites selling
chikan-based
pornography. Stories of particularly great gropes are common, as are claims that their actions were thankfully - depending on the man's level of depravity - enjoyed or rejected. It is worthy of note that the largest gropers board I found also had a
section dedicated to helping users
stop groping; pretty unusual for an enthusiast's site, and very telling of the often-conflicted state of mind of the practising pervert.
Salaryman
Shigeru Oohori (a pseudonym) feels no shame however; instead, he took things up a notch back in 1999 and suggested his fellow chikan actually get together to meet and exchange ideas, leading to the creation of the
Chikan Tomo-no-Kai (or Gropers’ Brotherhood).
"Groping was once a solitary activity, but now thanks to the Internet it’s become easy to link up with people who share the same kind of sexual interests", he is
quoted as saying. The Brotherhood meets once a month,
counsels and encourages each other, and even has belts for varying degrees of groping (
5th dan black belt = 100 gropes a month).
Certainly one of the
stranger realities of this
whole subject is the existence of clubs - or
train cafes - which
cater specifically to the
tastes of chikans, creating detailed mock-ups of
train interiors and staffing them with
women to grope. The mind
boggles.
5.
In compiling this big batch o' links, it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that an awful lot of the stuff I was finding online related to this issue - whether "hard news" or blog, chat group or social comment - had a strong undercurrent of
xenophobia if not
outright racism to it.
The
degree to which this was so was surprising to me and it brings up an important issue: how different are media around these events than the events themselves? Events effect media in the obvious sense that news (and new products) obstentiously comprise media's reason for existence - but how does
media effect events? Does the very act of media's focusing on chikan possibly drive some people into that
lifestyle? Transgression needs expression, and the media have certainly provided that, with a heaping side order of titillation.
Can we really blame the media though? The fact is that sex is fascinating and breaking the rules is fascinating, and yes, breaking the sex rules is quite fascinating indeed. Even
Nobel Laureate author
Kenzaburo Oe employed
chikan themes in his novella "J" (or "Homo Sexualis") - about a rebellious young man who takes up with chikans, groping young women together on the trains. As one
reviewer puts it, "Oe uses rather extreme situations to highlight the difficulty or even impossibility of reconciling personal expression and social expectations".
I will close finally with another
insightful write-up on the same work, a comment I found thought-provoking:
"J can be read as an allegory about freedom, and about man — Everyman — in society. But it lends itself to a more personal reading, too. "I write with my genitals," Oe once said in an interview, in response to critics who had complained about his sexual explicitness. He now regards that statement as thoughtless, superficial, and immature — nothing but a young man's expression of anger — yet it is worth examining in this context. In the story, the sexual impulse can be seen as standing for a writer's creative urge — exhilarating in itself, and utterly irresponsible. But its author understands that the urge to self-expression, if not curbed by conscience, is a fundamentally antisocial thing...In J, Kenzaburo Oe was — at least on some level — examining questions about the selfishness of the creative artist..."
