Journalist wins landmark 'Weinstein' case in Japan

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While Harvey Weinstein’s accusers are figuring out whether to take a proposed multimillion-dollar settlement, Japan’s version of Harvey Weinstein has been ordered to pay just 3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages in a very public rape case. The decision on December 18 was, however, a landmark ruling for the country, where the idea of “consent” is still flexible under the law.

Freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, alleged she was raped by high-profile journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, in 2015, when she lost consciousness after having dinner and drinks with him. She said she awoke while Yamaguchi was violating her in her Tokyo Sheraton hotel room. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi was then Washington Bureau chief of the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, and a biographer and friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  

“I really believe this was a landmark case for Japanese sex crime,” Ito said at a news conference, CNN reported. “I'm still quite surprised today that we had such a positive result.”

Ito filed criminal charges in 2017 but Yamaguchi was never arrested. Police came very close though, actually obtaining an arrest warrant. Officers went to Japan’s Narita Airport in 2015 to take Yamaguchi into custody, but a high-ranking bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog,” intervened, according to The Daily Beast.

“He’s walking past us,” the investigating detective told Ito’s advocate from the airport. “I can’t do anything. I’ve got orders from way above. I’ve just been told I’m being taken off the case, as well. I’m sorry.”

The criminal case was dropped.

Regardless, in 2017, Ito proceeded with civil charges against Yamaguchi, making her story public for the first time at a press conference. She became the face of Japan’s #MeToo movement—which meant she also became a central target of misogynistic hate. “The response was media indifference and a flood of hate mail,” The Irish Times reported. “Trolls invaded her website, slut-shaming her. Among her sins was unbuttoning the top of her blouse during the press conference.” 

In her 2019 book, Black Box, Ito described how policemen treated her when she tried to report the assault: After she persisted in spite of police telling her to “get on with her life,” she was instructed to “lie on a mattress and re-enact the alleged assault with a life-size doll, while male officers looked on taking notes and photographs—standard procedure in the marshalling of evidence for a rape case,” the newspaper reported. 

The Japan Times said it is “extremely rare” for a woman “to go before TV cameras and openly talk about the experience of being raped.”

A 2017 government survey found that less than 4 percent of rape victims in Japan report their assaults, according to The Japan Times. That same year, the country updated its rape laws for the first time in a century, raising the minimum sentence to five years. Still, prosecutors must prove that violence or intimidation was involved, or that the victim was “incapable of resistance,” Reuters reported.