Japan: when exams arrive, sex offenders return to the subway

A subway train in Tokyo on April 18, 2022 (photo illustration).

AFP - CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

In Japan, law enforcement is on high alert.

Because the period of examinations and entrance examinations to universities and for the most famous high schools has just begun.

Millions of young people – young girls in particular – therefore use public transport to take these tests.

However, in crowded trains and subways, sexual predators are, more than ever, on the lookout.

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With our correspondent in Tokyo,

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 This recent tweet comes from a "chikan", the Japanese term for sexual aggressors.

On social networks and the “dark web”, for the past few days, these men have been organizing their routes of predation.

In order to be in the trains or the subways that the young girls will take to get to their exam.

The "wandering hands" of these predators will therefore be spoiled for choice... This frightens, frightens and outrages these high school girls.

I will go by train to my competition.

If a “chikan” attacks me on the train, I cannot report him to the police, it would make me arrive late at the examination center.

So I will have to wait a year before presenting it.

It would be a disaster.

It's just unbearable.

These unscrupulous perverts are ready both to traumatize us for life and to put our school career on the floor.

If that happened to me, I would remain speechless and without reaction so I would be petrified with terror and shame.

So I downloaded an application that can alert the police in real time.

When the day comes, I will only have to press a button on my smartphone.

According to surveys carried out by victims' associations, two thirds of Japanese women have already been sexually assaulted on public transport.

This is also the case for three quarters of young women in their twenties.

►To re-read: Japan: an application to avoid sexual aggressors in transport (2020)

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