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.