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Paper short abstract:

Japanese kenka-ryoseibai means in a quarrel, both parties are to blame; unlike victim blaming, the victim is not clearly defined, nor the assailant. Both parties sharing the blame diminishes “collective sin”, making reconciliation harder in international wartime sexual crime cases.

Paper long abstract:

Kenka-ryoseibai (喧嘩両成敗; in a quarrel, both parties are to blame), assault cases in which both parties are considered to share the blame, began in the fourteenth century in Japan and has been a common conflict resolution method since then. In Japanese culture, there is “tacit knowledge” of kenka-ryoseibai, but its logic can be an obstacle for international reconciliation, especially in the case of war-time sexual collective assault.

　　The paper first analyzes two famous sexual assault cases in Japan: the first sexual harassment court case (Fukuoka 1989), and the first academic serial rape incident (Kyoto 1993). Assaulters claimed their damaged feelings in public as a strategy of kenka-ryoseibai to show that both feelings were hurt, and even that both parties were assailants.

　　Based on the above analysis, this paper then examines Japanese public speech in the 2015 Japan-Korea agreement on war-time sexual violence. In Japanese public speech, many verbs are used in their passive form or omitted form, so agents of verbs are not obvious in every situation; this often means it is possible not to indicate an assailant. At the same time, “damage to the assailant” has been emphasized in public to fit with this kenka-ryoseibai approach: both parties share the blame and both are suffering, and even that both are assailants. Unlike victim blaming, this logic means that no party is clearly defined as the victim(s) nor as the assailant(s), reducing or eliminating the recognition of “collective sin” in war-time organized rape, making the acknowledgement of crime difficult. The result is that “collective sin” is diminished and even reduced, becoming simply a “sin of omission”.

This paper concludes that kenka-ryoseibai approach is an inappropriate for war-time sexual assault reconciliation, and that “collective sin” should not be diminished. Kenka-ryoseibai approach is a culturally acceptale in Japan as it is tacit knowledge but it is not universal, especially in cases involving human rights’ issues.