Paper short abstract:

This paper explores sexual harassment (sekuhara) in corporate Japan, drawing on in-depth interviews to analyse female victims’ experiences, male managers’ responses and both gender’s attempts to distance themselves from sekuhara in the context of changes to male-centric corporate gender relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how women and men negotiate sexual harassment (sekuhara) in corporate culture in Japan. While awareness of sekuhara along with companies’ obligation to take measures to prevent its occurrence and deal with cases are well established, sekuhara remains a continually developing, contested issue across many workplaces. Scholarship (e.g. Dalton 2021; Nemoto 2016; Muta 2008) has thus far focused on women’s experiences, understanding sekuhara as a reproduction of asymmetrical gendered work relations that adversely affect women. Yet, what remains lacking within and outside the Japanese context is an in-depth investigation not only of women’s experiences, but a multi-perspective approach including both genders’ understandings and experiences of sekuhara in corporate organisations.

I seek to address this gap by drawing on fieldwork in the Kantō region, centring in-depth interviews with a diverse range of participants, including women and men at various career stages and hierarchical positions, and in various industries and companies. Therein, I analyse cases of women’s experiences of victimisation, negotiating organisational responses (or not) and the enduring fallout; (male) managers’ experiences in dealing with cases among subordinates as well as their efforts to prevent its occurrence; and men and women’s diverse, often conflicting, understandings of sekuhara. I find that female victims’ experiences vary greatly depending on multiple factors including company policies, gender ratios, industry, and flexibility of personnel transfers. Managers struggle to balance victims’ needs, disciplining perpetrators, HR rules and minimising disruption to team performance. At a more everyday level particularly among men, increasing anxiety of being accused of sekuhara means various efforts to distance oneself from sekuhara, as well as unexpected consequences such as less communication between genders.

An analysis that brings together these varied perspectives is important in making sense of the diverse ways that sekuhara has developed and is addressed, and how these are intertwined with contemporary developments where organisations are grappling with shifts in gender relations in white-collar Japan.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation reports on research findings regarding sexual abuse in Japanese society. With a psychosocial framework that draws on feminist approaches, the presentation connects cultures of silence among survivors with the toxic effects of public conversations by far-right ideologues in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation reports on research findings that have been elaborated in a recent publication in the Routledge Contemporary Japan series. With a psychosocial framework that draws insights from feminism, sociology, international studies, and political psychology, the presentation pinpoints the motivations of the nativist right and reflects on the change of conditions that is necessary to end cultures of impunity for perpetrators of sexual abuse in Japan. Evaluating the value of the #MeToo model of activism, the authors offer insights that will encourage victims to come out of the shadows, pursue justice, and help transform Japan’s sense of identity both at home and abroad. Research was conducted by Ueno, a female Japanese educator and O’Mochain, a non-Japanese male academic. Together, we examined the nature of sexual abuse problems both in educational contexts and in society at large through the use of surveys, interviews, and engagement with an eclectic range of academic literature. We identified the groups within society who offer the least support for women who pursue justice against perpetrators of sexual abuse. We also ask if far-right ideological extremists are fixated with proving that so called “comfort women” are higaisha-buru or “fake victims.” Japan would have much to gain on the international stage were it to fully acknowledge historical crimes of sexual violence, yet it continues to refuse to do so. O’Mochain and Ueno shed light on this puzzling refusal through recourse to the concepts of ‘international status anxiety’ and ‘male hysteria.’The presentation, then, reports on two voices, practice and theory, in a collaboration that emerges from lived experience and structured reflection upon that experience. The study shows how entrenched discursive forces exert immense influence in Japanese society and prompts reflection on how they might be most effectively challenged.