Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Population

RIGHTS-JAPAN: Women Need Protection from Spousal Rape

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jun 24 2003 (IPS) - In October 2002, Junko decided she would tolerate no more abuse from her live-in boyfriend. Scared and hurt, the 22-year-old mother relied on help from her friends to escape, but the fate of her infant daughter is now uppermost in her mind.

"A major question for me is: how I can force him to admit and pay for his sexual violence?" said Junko. "Only when I get him to apologise and give me back my daughter can I be free of my trauma."

Making the decision to leave an abusive partner was difficult enough for the young woman, but Junko also attends a drug rehabilitation programme to cure her habit, which she developed before she left her partner. She pays for the programme with money sent to her by her parents.

Scarred as she is, Junko cannot look forward to recompense from the law. Lawyer Noriko Kyoto explained: "While there are ways to charge her boyfriend for domestic violence, Japan does not have laws that specifically target spousal rape, which means it is difficult for women to seek redress on this issue."

While living together with her boyfriend Junko would be considered a common-law wife, but that definition does little to protect women like her. For, as Kyoto said, a law convicting men of spousal or date rape is long overdue in Japan.

Against a backdrop of growing violence against women and a social tradition where women are expected to be subservient to men, Kyoto explained, "Almost all of the divorce cases I handle include various forms of sexual violence against wives." She added, "The situation calls for new laws to protect women."

Indeed, lawyers say that Japan’s laws on rape are mild compared with those on other offences. The typical rape sentence starts at three years and the maximum is five, compared with the average of five years for theft.

While civil society, women’s rights activists and lawyers continue to seek change in the way rape is recognised and dealt with, the Japanese Union for Survivors of Trauma (JUST) this year became the first civic group to offer an advocacy service for victims of sexual violence.

Set up in 1997 as a non-governmental organisation offering support for women, the Tokyo-based group offers a telephone hotline for group and individual counseling. It also works with public-welfare officials to take abused women to doctors and hospitals, and arranges legal assistance for them.

"When a Japanese woman is raped or sexually abused, very often she has no one to help her," said Akiko Yanagishita, a counsellor and a rape victim who was helped by JUST two years ago. "The role of the advocate is especially important against this social backdrop."

JUST estimates that it receives about 140 calls a year on its hotline and the group said it has heard shocking revelations – some women have broken almost 30 years of silence to talk about rape. Those lobbying for better representation of and protection for women’s rights point out that Japanese traditions have forced women to appear docile and eager to pander to the whims of men.

Supporting the JUST view are the official numbers, for surveys indicate the urgent need for Japan to make spousal rape a crime. Statistics from a survey – conducted between January and October in 2002 in Yokohama – indicated that 1,371 women were victims of domestic violence, and that 89 reported being forced to provide sex.

In 2001, according to the National Police Agency, rape accounted for 2,238 cases or 10 percent of serious crime. And these numbers exclude indecent assault – attempted rape, harassment and other offences.

Furthermore, they also exclude spousal rape, as this is not yet an offence that can be charged, even though over 90 percent of the assailants were known to the victims. Activists said the actual number of victims could be much higher because women are reluctant to seek official help when raped.

Junko provided an insight into the condition. "We lived together for two years and it was a living hell," she said. "He used sexual violence to subdue me into acting like a frightened animal."

Kyoto however is not optimistic that Japan’s authorities will respond the way women’s groups want them to. Given that any form of sex between partners is seen as a private affair, she said, "Finding proof to support a testimony that sex was not consensual will be difficult."

Illustrating the reluctance of Japanese society to tackle rape within a relationship is the fact that Tokyo’s first Rape Crisis Centre, established only in September 1983. The centre defined for the first time that any sex against a woman’s will is rape. At the centre, volunteers provide telephone counseling and the centre estimates that 5,500 have called in so far.

Now there are emotional outlets via the Internet too. One of them, Ongaku Essay, has several messages posted by victims who talk about losing self-esteem, suffering from depression and resorting to alcohol in an effort to tackle the trauma associated with sexual attacks by lovers or husbands.

Victories have been few. Among the most recent came in March 2003, when a politician was given a jail term for raping a nightclub hostess in a hotel. It is a landmark judgment for women’s rights in Japan and when the politician denied rape, arguing sex was consensual, the judge’s response was: "He committed the crime out of arrogance."

Yet it remains an exploitative gender relationship whose burden is borne by women. "Women have had to sacrifice their individuality for the sake of keeping the traditional image of ‘good’ wife and mother," said Yukiko Yamaguchi, director of the feminist group Ishikawa Kinenen Memorial. "Only by raising awareness can we bring gender equality." (END/IPS/AP/HD/PR/SK/RG/JS/03)