The all too common Japanese date rape

By Ryann Connell
October 25, 2004

"I can kinda laugh about it now, but the horrible treatment that guy handed out to me really wasn't anything to laugh about," an 18-year-old schoolgirl who asks to go by the name of Aya tells Shukan Josei.

Aya's problems started with a 20-something financial sector salaryman she started dating after meeting at a matchmaking party early this year.

"Normally, I wouldn't get into a relationship with somebody I'd met at a party like that, but he was rich, good looking and I liked the idea of being able to brag to my classmates about dating a salaryman.

"After the party where we met, we went for a drive, a bite to eat and then to a love hotel, where we got straight into the action," Aya tells Shukan Josei. "From then on we met about once every three days. It was sort of like, he'd buy me some clothes and then we'd go to a love hotel and have it off."

Aya was perfectly happy until about three weeks into the relationship and the regular pattern she'd established with her rich lover was disrupted because she had her period. When she informed her boyfriend of the fact, he refused to give way and almost forcibly dragged her to the nearest love hotel.

"I fought back and slapped him in the face, but he replied by punching my nose," the schoolgirl says. "Blood came pouring out everywhere."

Just as Aya's menstrual blood had no effect on quelling her boyfriend from getting what he wanted, nor did the sight of blood from her nose pouring out endlessly go close to holding back his lust-fueled rage and he forced himself on the girl.

"I went to the hospital after it was finished and discovered he'd broken my nose," Aya says. "I was really worried my face wouldn't return to normal."

Aya is the unlucky one in every 20 Tokyo high school girls who reported to the metropolitan government that they had been the victim of a rape at least once. Just as astonishing is that boyfriends have been the perpetrators in 40 percent of those cases.

Saori is, like Aya, another whose schoolgirl crush on an older boy ended in a violent sex attack that robbed her of her innocence and left her mentally scarred for life though she's just 16.

Saori was in her second year of high school and playing on the basketball team when a senior on the boy's team told her of his deep feelings for her.

Saori reciprocated and the romance bloomed, though, as is typical of most teens in Japan, they had never kissed or even held hands despite months of dating.

Just before summer vacation started this year, though, things became more physical, though that did not necessarily mean intimacy also arose.

"We watched TV together for about an hour before he suddenly snatched my shoulder, swung me around and thrust his hand up between my legs. He tried to rip my panties off. I was scared and screamed at him to stop, but he just said, 'If you resist, I'll kill you,'" the terrified schoolgirl recalls for Shukan Josei. "He had this frightening look in his eyes and he started choking me. In the end, I thought it would be better than being killed, so I let him have his way, though I cried all the way through the ordeal. It was so sad ... I'd always believed sex was supposed to be something that everybody cherished."

Saori has since ignored the many calls and e-mail the boy she once adored has sent her. She has also quit her beloved basketball team.

"About two weeks after it happened, these pains started occurring in all these different parts of my body. I was really scared that I might have been pregnant. It really, really hurt," she says.

Gynecologist Tsuneo Akaeda, Japan's leading authority on schoolgirl sexuality, says teens shouldn't have to put up with trauma like that Saori and Aya went through, though he concedes it is becoming a far too frequent occurrence.

"More young women are finding it impossible to refuse when a guy they like demands sex," Akaeda tells Shukan Josei. "But, even if the demand is made between two lovers, if the girl doesn't want it she has got to find the courage to seek help from a hospital or other authorities that can deal with her worries."

Copyright 1999-2004, Mainchi Daily.  All rights reserved.  Ryann Connell is a Staff Writer and Senoir Desk Editor for the Mainchi Daily News. No content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.  Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.