Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the development and the potential for social change of the Flower Demo, a series of monthly gatherings happening since April 2019 in various cities across Japan to protest and raise awareness on the issue of sexual violence in contemporary Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the spread and impact of the Flower Demo, a series of monthly gatherings happening in various cities across Japan to protest and raise awareness on the issue of sexual violence in contemporary Japan. The movement started in April 2019 when hundreds of people holding flowers gathered at the same time in Tokyo and Osaka to voice their anger after four consecutive trials for sexual violence cases ended in non-guilty verdicts. After that first meeting, new Flower Demos gradually started to bloom in various towns across Japan and after a year it was happening in all 47 prefectures of Japan. Even if the COVID pandemic for almost two years forced them to move online, the movement did not die down. Instead, they used the hashtag #FlowerDemo to gather people's voices on Twitter and held monthly symposiums on YouTube where they invited various guests to discuss topics such as abortion, sex education, feminism, sexual harassment etc. In this paper, I look at the development and spread of the Flower Demo with a focus on the factors behind its resilience and relative longevity. What has been the impact of the Flower Demo and what is its potential? In a country where it is often said that the MeToo movement did not take root and was not strong, the Flower Demo and the emergence of other organisations asking for better laws and raising awareness on the issue of sexual violence seem to tell a different story. Although still on a limited scale, the longevity of the Flower Demo and its potential to establish a national network of advocates, are worth investigating to understand how the MeToo movement was reshaped in the Japanese context to break the silence on sexual violence and how it complicates the panorama of feminism in contemporary Japan.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation discusses two contemporary novels by Japanese female authors that stress the topic of gang rape, challenging the culturally specific idea of a crime victim’s complicity in the case of rape and finally speak of the devastating consequences (gang) rape has on rape survivors.

Paper long abstract:

In 2003, Waseda University made headlines when it was revealed that members of the University’s social club Sūpā furī would frequently organize parties aiming at gang raping female students. While the seriousness of the crime and the need for punishing the perpetrators were acknowledged, the rape survivor’s complicity in the cases was also publicly debated – the latter reaching its peak in an attempt by Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo to downplay the incidents by stating that some women would simply ask for being raped, as he was quoted in the weekly magazine Shūkan Bunshun.

While the rape survivor’s share of guilt is one of the most frequently discussed topics when talking about rape in general, reasons for the fear of speaking out and the effects of rape on the lives of the survivors are only rarely discussed publicly. This gap of representation and thus failure for building empathy for rape survivor(s) in Japan is filled by Japanese literature written from the survivor’s perspective. Such texts seek to inform their readers about what it means to physically experience rape and how rape can affect the survivor’s physical as well as mental health and social life within Japanese society, but also which obstacles rape survivors face in their search for justice and what options of overcoming their rape trauma are left for them besides suffering in silence.

My presentation discusses the survivors’ experience of being gang raped as told in the fictional novels Sora no kaori o ai suru yō ni (2004, Sakurai Ami) and Kanojo wa atama ga warui kara (2021, Himeno Kaoruko). Besides describing the devastating effects of being gang raped, the two novels challenge the idea of complicity of the victim in a criminal act that is rooted within Japanese patriarchal culture. Both novels ultimately become a testimony of how the idea of complicity can’t be upheld in the case of rape while its perpetuation makes it easy for rapists to get away with rape.