I came upon this article by accident. (I hope you don’t mean that literally. -ed.)
Don’t you realize that although you did your civic duty, you also stopped the practiced skills of an art form. Chikan can indeed be considered an art form. Where else can one find throughout history that an entire culture has tolerated and encouraged the groping of its female population. Video and film industries have sprung from the art of Chikan. Techniques that have been passed down from generations of men to their sons on the groping of females so that the act becomes one of pleasure for both the male and female. Although many women will not admit it, I truly believe that they love the attention of being touched and fondled, not to cause injury but to make women feel loved. For many of these women the anonymous touch of a man’s hand rubbing her buttocks with his hands or erect clothed penis is an act of appreciating her beauty. There are millions of Asian females who know that their breasts are small in size, appreciate that Asian males touch and fondle them in respect of their beauty. When a woman’s undergarments are lowered as in panties or raised as in a bra, the material is never damaged or torn. That is a rarity. Also very rare is for a female to have her clothes cut off with scissors.With this new all female trains thing in Japan and new laws, the beauty and spiritual joy of the art of Chikan will soon disappear forever.
Frotterism is not an art form. It’s a sex crime, like rape. Nampa, otherwise known as “picking up women,” on the the other hand is not illegal and requires some finesse. It also empowers the woman by giving her the choice of shooting you down, but gropers are too cowardly to accept those terms.
Every woman who’s accosted on a crowded train is someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife or mother. It makes me happy to give them a safe zone, knowing that I’m doing it from them and for the people who care about them but aren’t there. I don’t do it because I’m all high and mighty, I do it because I’ve found that it makes me feel good. The same goes for giving up my seat to someone who needs it. I guess I’m just lucky that being kind to others what does it for me.
What a crazy idea of respect that person has. Fondling (groping) a woman shows “respect of their beauty”.
I’d like to see someone try to explain that point of view to the police after getting caught. From my experience, it’s much more likely the groper will try to deny everything. Again, cowardice.
Yup. If another person says “no” to anything sexual than you can than go to the police about it especially if the person keeps harassing you and there’s enough proof of stalking. I would love for this person to be in my criminal justice classes and try to make that argument lol. The only male I want groping me is a boyfriend during makeout time lol. Not some weirdo….
I was just thinking maybe this guy has been watching too much porn? Oh and just to say this is LittlePinky82 from your Youtube account. 🙂 Are you going to be having any new video’s soon? Sorry for the off topic….
Holy cow. I seriously cannot believe that someone actually holds that opinion. Talk about justifying your addiction. A person with these reasoning skills could just as easily try to justify rape or murder. If you want to feel up a woman and think she will enjoy it, ASK HER. I guarantee she will be more likely to slap you in the face in disgust than to say yes.
wooooow…He seriously thinks that groping somebody is an artform?! Also, how can he think that it is seen as respecting a womans beauty? If anything it’s disrespecting them by touching them without their permission….its just being a coward in the end. Even if it was an artform…arranging dead bodies for a photo could be an artform…but does it make it right?
That guy corsses the line, at which I would have publicized his e-mail address, IP address, and any other info I had on him.
On the upside, perhaps you could save the police time and just start beating chikan and their defenders. Surely your anonymous correspondent would appreciate the art in vigilantism. At the very least, we know he’d enjoy having a cock rubbed on him.
This guy is either taking the piss – in an especially tasteless way – or has fallen off the deep end. Why would someone make a legal complaint about something they enjoyed? Why am I starting to pick apart the logic of a guy for whom the highlight of the day is most likely jerking off into a sock over kiddie porn?
At times I think the way to deal with would be to take guys like the above and enroll them in a program “Be Introduced to an Actual Woman Face to Face.” 10 to 1 says 9 out of 10 of these jerks go red, get flustered, and try to escape. At least 1 out of 10 will wet themselves.
I was tempted to spill his personal information, but he hasn’t done me or anyone else (as far as I know) any harm. I’d categorize him as very misinformed but altogether harmless.
Someone else wrote to me saying that thousands of women ride the public railway systems in Japan not wearing any panties because they want to be felt up. I don’t know how anyone could come up with that fact. Survey results? Extensive research involving shoe mirrors?
When it comes to sexuality and sex in Japan, people from other countries are far too willing to believe anything they hear.
On the other hand, judging from the access statistics of my blog, there’s certainly a market for a website that tells all about the goofy, kinky and bizarre sex-related stuff that exists in Japan. People from all over the world find my blog looking for it.
Thats how I got here LOL (not really i found you on ITunes)
Hi Mr Pav I’m curious what are privacy laws like on the internet where it concerns releasing people’s info? Do they have their own version of the fourth amendment? As a criminal justice student I’m interested in that. 🙂
Emily, what’s the argument for using the Fourth Amendment to prohibit releasing a blog commenter’s IP? Have there been any decisions to that effect in the US?
Japan has the Personal Information Protection Act of April 1, 2005 (PIPA), which requires companies dealing with certain private information to take steps to maintain that privacy and prohibits the selling of such information, but, like many laws in Japan, it’s toothless – the consequences of a violation of the law are unspecified. As a result, some institutions, such as universities, are hypersensitive, but most (such as all of Japan’s major banks) pay lip service to the law, but take no actual steps to protect the privacy of personal information.
Rich, I thought a site such as that you described above existed. It’s called just abuot any given blog on Japan. You can also get it by reading the mainstream Western media. (Time, for instance, informed us last month that wind turbines were a major source of power in Japan. The AP reported that Japan was installing age-identifying biometric cameras to every cigarette vending machine, and there’s always the infamous Coke machine disguise reported in the NYT.)
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Are “gaijin girls” a target too ?
These cowards let’s hunt them all.
Venturas last blog post: 6 Billion Others @ thegoodforce.blogspot.com
@Ventura: I’ve never met a chikan I didn’t want to beat to a bloody pulp. I’m not the type to lash out in anger or get upset over annoyances big or small, but every time I’ve come face to face with a groper I’ve had to keep reminding myself, “Don’t do it. One crime doesn’t justify another.” That being said, my wife told me she was grateful that I was one small step away from totally losing my shit when she was groped. And it was a good thing that I didn’t. It could have been me being arrested for assault instead. I’ve never been so close to really hurting someone as I was at that moment.
BTW, there’s another chikan story in my past that I’ve never told to anyone. It ended well, thanks to the other men in the train car who pulled him off me and threw him off the train.
I want to hear THAT ONE!
It’s a pretty short story. Some middle-aged drunk guy was harassing a young women but she was too shy to say anything, so I did. I told him to knock it off. He got angry at me, called me bad names, I could have cared less. Everyone around us pretended nothing was happening, as is the norm. When the train arrived at his stop, he grabbed the scarf that was wrapped around my neck and tried to drag me off the train. As I was trying to free myself, the other men in the train car finally grew some balls, grabbed the guy and threw him off the train. A few of them congratulated me, and the young women sheepishly thanked me. Again, I could have cared less. I just did what needed to be done. It wasn’t about being a hero.
Aw good thing for good guys like you all here. 🙂 It sucks when girls are too shy to say anything. Thankfully for people who aren’t too shy. I’m glad everyone in the end was okay. Just goes to show there are sadly perverts everywhere who can’t keep their hands to themselves. I was curious: is this sort of thing common in Japan as in any other country? If so do they have self-defense classes for people to take or just karate and things like that?
@Emily NPR did a story last week about Boston police cracking down on gropers in the crowded subways. I assume the same problem exists in any major city where the public trains, subways and buses are packed to capacity.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90599227
Ah yes very true. When there’s so many mass people like that it’s easier for a person to do something like that because everyone is paying attention to their own thing and not necessarily the people around them. You’d think it’d be opposite but the more people around actually makes sense because they can hide and when they run away they can hide in the crowd. Everyone shouldn’t be afraid to say “no.” On the Boston police were they putting the police men in the actual transportation places? And if so would Japan do that too? Do they have security in the subways or just in the stations? I noticed in your video of your commute to work they had officers at the stations but not the trains. I guess they figure good citizen’s would stand up and help out. Do they have citizen’s arrest there?
Japan just isn’t a very “do unto others” kind of society. I think if someone had a heart attack on the sidewalk, people would just walk over him and pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening. But having lived here so long, I can’t really compare it to anywhere else. Maybe it’s the same in US big cities too.
Aw so nobody would help the guy having a heart attack? I’d at least use my cell to call 911. Heh heh. But that’s me. Oh I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same in New York, Los Angeles etc. Just because the cities are so big and everything.
@Rich –
That’s a bit of an exaggeration, at least from what I saw when I was in Tokyo. I can think of several instances when I was on the train, when the train was stopped when someone collapsed on the platform, and conductors ran to help the person up and see if they needed medical help. I don’t know what would happen on the street or the sidewalk, but I know that it’s very easy to get ignored in the high density areas in Tokyo. It also may be different in more rural areas, I don’t know. But on a lesser note, people would run after me if I dropped or forgot something to return it.
It’s true that people don’t want to get involved in other people’s business in Japan. But it’s also true that several cities in the United States enacted “Good Samaritan Laws” to encourage Americans to step up and do something to help with less of a fear of repercussion. While the reasons why Americans and Japanese do or do not get involved in any given circumstance, maybe Japan needs a version of this law too.
@Sam Train conductors help people who fall ill because that’s their job, like police, ambulance crews and firemen. What I was referring to is the unwillingness of people in general to make a personal investment in other people UNLESS someone has the balls to go first. I’ve seen people walk over a guy who fell down a flight of concrete stairs into the subway. He was knocked out and bleeding from his head. I was the only one to track down a station employee and alert him of the situation.
People sitting in the reserved seats on trains and buses could care less about who’s left standing, be they parents carrying small children or very elderly people. If someone is causing a scene on a train, people do their utter best to pretend nothing is going on because they don’t want to get involved. I can’t do that. Not only have I confronted gropers, I’ve also broken up a few fights too, by wedging myself between the people arguing or suggesting that one of them move to another train car. In every situation, if others reacted, they only did so ONLY after I had already taken the initiative and shook up the status quo. In the “give up your seat to someone who deserves it more than you” category, my all-time record was eight people who eventually followed my lead. That one I’m proud of.
Running after someone who forgot his umbrella doesn’t require a personal investment. Plus, you get special treatment if people think you’re a tourist from overseas because you’re playing the role of honored guest in their country.
“One crime doesn’t justify another.” I agree totally.
But we can hunt them in other way, by changing their way of thinking.
Do they abuse “gaijin girls” too ?
Venturas last blog post: Who Killed the Electric Car ? @ thegoodforce.blogspot.com
I don’t know any gaijin girls, so I can’t say. My guess is no, because feeling up a foreign woman would probably lead to a proper ass-kicking.
@Rich and Ventura
They do. One of my German friends when I was studying in Tokyo told me about how it had happened to her, but that she had been so shocked by the action, she hadn’t reacted. The guy apparently pulled his hand back when she moved away after a little while (I don’t know how long this lasted).
My friend is not generally a passive person, but assault is a scary thing, and a unfortunate amount of women, Japanese and foreigner don’t immediately have the reaction of fighting back, even if they say they would in that kind of situation.
Yes, women need to be encouraged to fight back. But I think a stronger movement than “women only” cars and the occasional Densha Otoko to prevent it in the first place is much more important in the long run.
An strong internet movement is a good start, and may change some minds.
A suggestion is an “anonymous story telling”, a little like “Alcoholics Anonymous”, and maybe some girls start to react sooner.
I don’t know if this already exists in a website format.
Venturas last blog post: The Story of Stuff @ thegoodforce.blogspot.com
In the link to the NPR story I gave earlier, Boston police are putting female decoys on trains. That’s what I’d like to see police in Tokyo do also, but I get the feeling that’s too progressive of a step for them to take.
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