This book provides a detailed examination of judicial decision-making in Japanese cases involving sexual violence. It describes the culture of 'eroticised violence' in Japan, which sees the feminine body as culpable and the legal system which encourages homogeneity and conformity in decision-making and shows how the legal constraints confronting women claiming sexual assaults are enormous. It includes analysis of specific case studies and a discussion of recent moves to address the problem.

This book provides a detailed examination of judicial decision-making in Japanese cases involving sexual violence. It describes the culture of 'eroticised violence' in Japan, which sees the feminine body as culpable and the legal system which encourages homogeneity and conformity in decision-making and shows how the legal constraints confronting women claiming sexual assaults are enormous. It includes analysis of specific case studies and a discussion of recent moves to address the problem.

A comprehensive examination of the pervasive and persistent social problem of sexual violence and abuse that plagues millions of women, children, and men across the globe. Sexual Violence and Abuse: An Encyclopedia of Prevention, Impacts, and Recovery coalesces the vast amount of information available on the subject, providing a convenient and comprehensive resource on sexual violence and abuse for students, practitioners, and general readers. It is the first of its kind to bring together a full range of topics on sexual violence and abuse across a human lifespan in a single work. The entries are written by a range of professionals who represent academics, researchers, and individuals working in the field of sexual violence and abuse. The two-volume work contains 264 fully cross-referenced entries in alphabetical order, starting with abortion and ending with yoga therapy. The bibliography provides important books, articles, online resources, and videos on a wide range of topics. The encyclopedia also includes a list of key topics with corresponding entries to assist readers needing to examine a group of related entries.

Bringing together two voices, practice and theory, in a collaboration that emerges from lived experience and structured reflection upon that experience, O’Mochain and Ueno show how entrenched discursive forces exert immense influence in Japanese society and how they might be most effectively challenged. With a psychosocial framework that draws insights from feminism, sociology, international studies, and political psychology, the authors pinpoint the motivations of the nativist right and reflect on the change of conditions that is necessary to end cultures of impunity for perpetrators of sexual abuse in Japan. Evaluating the value of the #MeToo model of activism, the authors offer insights that will encourage victims to come out of the shadows, pursue justice, and help transform Japan’s sense of identity both at home and abroad. Ueno, a female Japanese educator and O’Mochain, a non-Japanese male academic, examine the nature of sexual abuse problems both in educational contexts and in society at large through the use of surveys, interviews, and engagement with an eclectic range of academic literature. They identify the groups within society who offer the least support for women who pursue justice against perpetrators of sexual abuse. They also ask if far-right ideological extremists are fixated with proving that so called “comfort women” are higaisha-buru or “fake victims.” Japan would have much to gain on the international stage were it to fully acknowledge historical crimes of sexual violence, yet it continues to refuse to do so. O’Mochain and Ueno shed light on this puzzling refusal through recourse to the concepts of ‘international status anxiety’ and ‘male hysteria.’ An insightful read for scholars of Japanese society, especially those concerned about its treatment of women.

In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence—2,700 court opinions—describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation. Sometimes judges’ views about love, sex, and marriage emerge from their presentation of the facts of cases. Among the recurring elements are abortions forced by men, compensated dating, late-life divorces, termination fees to end affairs, sexless couples, Valentine’s Day heartbreak, "soapland" bath-brothels, and home-wrecking hostesses. Sometimes the judges’ analysis, decisions, and commentary are as revealing as the facts. Sex in the cases is a choice among private "normal" sex, which is male-dominated, conservative, dispassionate, or nonexistent; commercial sex, which caters to every fetish but is said to lead to rape, murder, and general social depravity; and a hybrid of the two, which commodifies private sexual relationships. Marriage is contractual; judges express the ideal of love in marriage and proclaim its importance, but virtually no one in the court cases achieves it. Love usually appears as a tragic, overwhelming emotion associated with jealousy, suffering, heartache, and death.

This book examines the impact of global human rights norms on the development of women's, children's, and minority rights in Japan since the early 1990s.

In 1999, responding to international concerns about the sexual exploitation of children, the Japanese Diet voted unanimously to ban child prostitution and child pornography. Two years later, in the wake of 9/11, Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet radically shifted government counterterrorism policy toward new military solutions, and away from an earlier emphasis on law enforcement. Although they seem unrelated, these two policies reveal the unintended consequences of attempts to enforce international norms at the national level. In Think Global, Fear Local, David Leheny posits that when states abide by international agreements to clamp down on transnational crime and security concerns, they respond not to an amorphous international problem but rather to more deeply held and proximate fears. Although opponents of child prostitution and pornography were primarily concerned about the victimization of children in poor nations by wealthy foreigners, the Japanese law has been largely used to crack down on "compensated dating," in which middle-class Japanese schoolgirls date and sometimes have sex with adults. Many Japanese policymakers viewed these girls as villains, and subsequent legal developments have aimed to constrain teenage sexual activities as well as to punish predatory adults. Likewise, following changes in the country's counterterrorism policy, some Japanese leaders have redefined a host of other threats—especially from North Korea—as "terrorist" menaces requiring a more robust and active Japanese military. Drawing from sources as diverse as parliamentary debate records and contemporary film and literature, Leheny uses these two very different cases to argue that international norms can serve as political tools, allowing states to enhance their coercive authority.