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.