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Murder of the Soul - Shiori and Rape in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Extract

When Shiori was 10, her mother took her to Tokyo Summerland, an indoor pool. Wearing a new swimsuit, she splashed happily in the water until she was sexually assaulted. “A man came from behind and touched me on every part of my body,” she recalls, crying at the memory. Shaking and terrified, she told the grownups but their response was bewildering. “My friend's mother said it was because I was wearing a bikini.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2017

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References

Notes

1 In May, Shiori applied to host a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, which declined (full disclosure: I am one of 12 journalists who sit on the FCCJ's Professional Activities Committee, which votes on press events). Letters and emails flooded into the inboxes of FCCJ members, falsely accusing them of buckling to political pressure from the Abe government. Katsumi Takahiro, a former aide to a DPJ senator with the Democratic Party, sent an open letter demanding to know why Shiori's request had been turned down.