The Japanese government has published this curious poster warning of the dangers of domestic violence, for some inexplicable reason illustrating it rather tastefully in manga style with a fierce looking lady.
The actual content of the poster, published under the auspices of the Cabinet Office, is probably best ignored – it claims 10.8% of married women are victims of “domestic violence,” but the results are based solely on a survey of women, with traditional and highly reprehensible “physical violence” lumped in together with the exceedingly ambiguous “psychological attacks” and “sexual demands.”
Or in other words, the number is made up to make the problem seem terribly bad and justify some agency’s budget.
This does not answer the question as to just why a manga style illustration was chosen for the poster however…
My favourite poster still seems to be up on the Shinakansen platforms of Kyoto station. It depicts a schoolgirl, policewoman and policeman in an illustrated style. It’s warning people not to take pictures of schoolgirls with their phones, but the best part is that the policewoman is just standing there looking pissed, whilst the policeman is speeding quickly towards the viewer holding the phone.
Sure, police are gender-friendly, but it’s the men who do all the work still, yeah? Apparently so.
shut your trap You Feminazi
As in all countries in the world, there is a lot of domestic violence in Japan too. For anyone interested in the severe problems faced by victims of domestic violence in Japan check out this report in April this year from Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reports from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem.
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/japanese-women-hit-back-at-domestic-abuse-25-apr-09/17189639
Although the report is well done well researched it seems to imply at the end that nothing is going to chance for a long time about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.
Here, as in any other country in the world historically, there has been domestic violence in all types of societies, not in the least of course in societies and cultures that have taken a sexist ('paternalistic') view that women were not as equal as men and could be beaten and suffer abuse at the hands of their husbands.
Now, thanks to the work of volunteer women's groups and activist lawyers in Japan who have worked hard against this problem of violence against women and children in their homes, the Japanese government enacted the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims in 2001. This was the first official recognition by Japanese politicians and law makers in Japanese history that domestic violence is in fact a crime. As a first step it was an important recognition of the widespread problem of spousal violence against women in Japanese homes throughout Japan. However there was considerable criticism that the low financial fines on Japanese husbands who attack their wives and the limit of only 1 month long restraining orders on men who abused their wives and children did not go far enough to provide Japanese women with a credible degree of legal protection and safety from further violent attacks. The law was revised to some extent in 2004 but still met with criticism as not going far enough to protect the victims of domestic and also for not focusing on the men who are being violent toward their wives and children:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20041204f2.html
Amendments to the Domestic Violence Prevention Act were passed and became law in July 2007 but did not receive so much attention in the media as would have been desirable:
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4785391/
However more and more Japanese women are taking action in Japan and, like the women featured in the video above, are no longer to suffer without protest former generations have had to do without any effective legal protection. The following links are to articles on domestic violence and National Police Agency reports that have appeared in the media this year that show that modern Japanese women in 21st century Japan are standing up against violent husbands and using the existing laws to protect themselves and their children:
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4723531/
http://tokyocounseling.blog.com/4857497/
These brave women need and deserve stronger and even more effective legal protection for themselves and the children they are trying to protect from their own fathers hands. There needs also to be considerable public and national political will focused on providing Japanese wives and partners with safe emergency residences and legally protected abuse shelters. I think it is also of vital importance that serious decisions to provide and implement official funding to ensure that refuge and protection to all women who are suffering domestic violence of all forms.
Andrew Grimes
Tokyo Counseling Services
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
http://counselingjapan.com/
Domestic Violence against women is a major social problem in Japan. There is an article from the Japan Times, 7th November 2009, on the subject that is worth taking a look called “Speaking out about Domestic Violence”:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091107f1.html
A Cabinet Office survey released this year found that a quarter of all married women in Japan have experienced physical violence, and one in three has suffered verbal and psychological abuse.
Police handled 25,210 cases of domestic violence last year, up by 20 percent from 2007 and the largest number since surveys began in 2002. Activists say those statistics, and the 77 domestic homicides reported in 2008, are an underestimate.
“The issue is hidden because many women are too frightened or ashamed to speak out,” explained Fumi Suzuki, a lawyer and director of the Chiba-based Allies Law Office, which gives legal advice to battered wives. “Partly because of that, spousal abuse has a very low profile in Japan.”
this is plot for hentai.
until some random guy
says
” kill it with fire “
… yeah, I have to agree.
Knowing Japan’s conservative nature of “minding their own business” and “keeping to themselves”, there is indeed a high chance that more serious cases of DV goes unreported regardless of whether the husband or wife is at fault (in the case of the latter, an example case is when the wife has backup from friends as seen in the LovePlus example when they did searches on the ones they suspect. It would not be surprising if threats were made this way too).
Heck, even for locals, something as trivial as asking for directions is troublesome; I found myself ignored several times just asking for the nearest train station in Tokyo (the general public in Oosaka and Kyoto is much, much nicer, thankfully).
…it claims 10.8% of married women are victims of “domestic violence,” but the results are based solely on a survey of women, with traditional and highly reprehensible “physical violence” lumped in together with the exceedingly ambiguous “psychological attacks” and “sexual demands.”
Abused women would be many times more likely to do the survey then unabused women. That, including the vague naming for these other supposedly related ‘types of domestic violence’, and I’m actually surprised that the figure was only 10.8%
If anything, this tells me DV must be quite low indeed.
The illustration is to illustrate the problem…
I mean really, if you had to come home to that expression every night, you’d try and slap it off her face too.
she’s got that face coz she’s not in the kitchen!