By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, May 16 1996 (IPS)

A multi-million dollar sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America is a cause celebre for Japanese women who say they often face routine abuse by male bosses and colleagues in the workplace.

Management of the wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese car manufacturer, has in the past month come under mounting public pressure across the United States to clean up its act in the wake of claims of rampant sexual abuse against female staff.

The company, which has a total of 510 affiliated dealers across the country, faces a sexual harassment lawsuit filed last month by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Committee (EEOC) on behalf of more than 500 current and former company employees.

The EEOC accuses the U.S. Mitsubishi management of being lax in investigating a series of complaints against groping, obscene remarks and lewd graffiti on company premises.

The issue is getting major media attention both in the United States and in Japan and women’s rights activists in Japan hope it will give abused Japanese women renewed courage to similarly take on the country’s powerful business establishment.

In an article published Thursday in the daily ‘Asahi Shinbun’ Kanji Ishizume, a Japanese attorney of law specialising in international affairs wrote: “Mitsubishi must cooperate with the EEOC immediately and pay compensation to the women suing the company. This is the best way to stop the situation from getting out of hand, and would help save its international image.”

Analysts point out that the negative publicity of the Mitsubishi case may have repercussions on other Japanese enterprises relocating overseas — particularly in fast growing South-east Asia — in a bid to beat high labour costs at home.

“The whole issue of sexual harassment must be re-addressed in Japan from the point of view of this new thrust,” acknowledges Takako Suzuki, a labour counsellor at the Tokyo Metropolitan government office.

But women’s groups in Japan say the problem is not only a “foreign” one, and they intend to draw on the U.S. Mitsubishi case to press their own cause at home.

Complaints of sexual advances from male bosses in return for work favours are common in Japanese companies, says Keiko Fukahara who runs Mizura, a telephone counselling service for abused women employees.

“Sexual harassment is widespread in Japanese companies, both big and small. The U.S. case puts foreign pressure on Japanese companies to reform, ” she says.

She notes that ten years ago, Japanese women would silently bear the harassment, but in more recent times that trend has changed.

“Japanese women have suffered in silence because they fear losing their jobs or even being blamed for encouraging it. But international awareness has helped women to speak up,” she says.

Counselling services have also played a role.

Mizura, for example, encourages alleged victims to confront their abusers in the presence of a union official. More often than not, she says, the perpetrator then backs off.

Employing this tactic, she says, is “less traumatic” for women to adopt in the male-dominated Japanese society where company management either ignores the claims or sides with the male employee.

Japan’s first sexual harassment lawsuit was in 1989 when a woman working for a publishing company sued an editor, whose advances she had spurned, for spreading rumours that she was and alcoholic and promiscuous.

The landmark case saw the woman in question being awarded 1.65 million yen (165,000 dollars) in damages in 1992.

There have been other cases since, but women’s groups say that many more go unreported — particularly in the last two years of economic recession and the consequential job crunch.

More than job security concerns, however, is the problem of how Japanese society views women — and that is “unequal” to men, say activists. They say that in the workplace, this not only makes men think they have the right to harass women, but also puts them first in line for promotion and better salaries.

A spokesman for the Japan Overseas Companies Organisation also noted that while the women’s movement in Japan was active in the fight for the rights of women, it also has to put up with cultural obstacles.

“Take as an example, the furore caused in the United States over the female nude pictures that were reported to be posted up at the U.S. company (Mitsubishi).

“In Japan it is quite common to see such pictures even in regular news magazines and women are used to them. But in the United States, magazines like playboy are read in a discreet corner. That’s a big difference,” he says.

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