The women fighting Japan’s sexual violence stigma

Rina Gonoi had two dreams. To be a soldier, and to compete in the Olympics as a judo player.

She started judo when she was four years old, trained by her brother, and was 11 when she first saw soldiers in action.

The armed forces, known in Japan as the Self-Defence Forces (SDF), had helped Ms Gonoi and her family in an evacuation centre after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. The 23-year-old is from Higashi-Matsushima in Miyagi Prefecture – the area worst hit by that catastrophe.

Female soldiers were part of the aid effort. “They gave us food and ran a soup kitchen,” Ms Gonoi says.

“They were back and forth bringing hot water for us so we could have a bath. I looked at them and thought ‘What a wonderful job.’ I thought I would like to work for society – for the people.”

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault

Both her dreams were within reach when she joined Japan’s army, the Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF).

Both were shattered by sexual harassment which she experienced “on a daily basis” when she joined her unit after training.

“My breasts were rubbed. I was kissed on the cheek, groped, or grabbed from behind in the hallway – colleagues or superiors would rub themselves against me with people watching,” she said.

“Often, I was told things like, ‘Give me a blow job’.”

Colleagues made remarks about her body, she says: about her breasts being big or small or that her body was large.

August 2021 was a dark turning point.

During a training exercise in the mountains, three of Ms Gonio’s male colleagues called her into a tent, where they’d been drinking.

“They were talking about a martial arts technique which involved choking someone and putting them to the ground. They said, ‘Gonoi try it’ – they pinned me to the bed and choked me.”

Ms Gonoi said the three men forcibly spread her legs open and alternately and repeatedly pressed their crotches against her.

Around a dozen colleagues were around she said, adding that no-one stopped the three men: “Many were laughing.”

“I was filled with despair. I thought, ‘How could I live after my body and soul have been tainted?'”

She reported the incident to her superiors but was unable to obtain any witness testimony, and her complaint was dismissed.

Later, the three men were referred to prosecutors on suspicion of indecent assault by the GSDF police unit, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence.

In the end Ms Gonoi felt she had no choice but to quit and go back home.

“I was exhausted mentally and physically and isolated myself in my house,” she said.

When she decided to go public with her story, Ms Gonoi’s family and those around her were against it.

In Japan’s male-dominated society most sexual violence victims are shamed into silence. And those who speak out face a fierce backlash.

A recent survey showed that more than 70% of sexual assaults in Japan go unreported.

When Ms Gonoi decided to speak out, she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. She was taking on a Japanese military institution.

She shared what happened to her on YouTube. Her story was a rare case that captured the nation’s and the media’s attention.

Ms Gonoi says that other women and men shared their stories of sexual violence with her, both in the military and elsewhere. She also collected more than 100,000 signatures for a petition calling on the defence ministry to investigate her case.

But she also faced a backlash.

“Some would say ‘You are ugly’ – others would comment on my cauliflower ears, because I’d been doing Judo. Some would say ‘Are you actually a man?'” she said.

“When I was collecting signatures for the petition, I got a threatening email saying, ‘I’ll kill you if you go any further.'”

The last case that garnered this much attention was in 2019, when Japanese journalist Shiori Ito filed and won her civil lawsuit seeking damages from a prominent reporter who she said had raped her.

It was also the same year that the Flower Demo movement started. On the 11th day of every month since April 2019, groups of sexual violence victims and their supporters have gathered throughout Japan in public spaces to protest unjust acquittals of sexual crimes, and call for changes to the country’s sexual violence law.

Problems with the existing law were highlighted by not guilty verdicts in four cases in 2019. In one of the trials, a father accused of raping his 19-year-old daughter was acquitted even though the court acknowledged that he had had sex with her against her will. The prosecution’s case, that the man took advantage of the daughter’s inability to resist the sexual attack, was rejected.

“I started the Flower Demo because I was angry,” Minori Kitahara told the BBC after one of the gatherings in Tokyo. “I also felt many other women’s anger. But there’s no place to speak out.”

The gathering in central Tokyo was small, but significant, and quite moving. Some people were carrying placards: one said “Sexual abuse is unforgivable” in Japanese, while another written in English said, “Consent is everything”.

The Flower Demos have become a symbol of defiance against silence.

A woman held a microphone and, through her scarf and mask, you could still see how emotional she was as she told the crowd how her father had sexually abused her as a teenager. Men and women were in tears, including Ms Kitahara.

In February, the Japanese government approved a bill to raise the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16, as part of reforms to the country’s sexual violence penal code.

Under the current law, a victim bears the onus of proving not only that there was no consent, but also that there was “assault or intimidation” or other factors that made it impossible for them to put up resistance.

“I think the law is very discriminatory… Compared to other countries, it still disadvantages female victims. When I think about all those victims who could not speak out, I cannot help but think the law itself was a crime against victims,” Ms Kitahara said.

“I know [the age of consent] is about to change to 16 but… the fact it stayed at 13 for this long is a big problem.”

Ms Kitahara thinks that because the Japanese government is made up mostly of “old men” it makes it very difficult for them to understand what women go through.

The public attention that Rina Gonoi’s case garnered pushed the military to conduct an internal probe. Last December, five servicemen were fired, and the unit commander was suspended for six months. The rare investigation across the defence ministry found more than 100 other complaints of harassment, according to officials.

The ministry also issued an apology to Ms Gonoi.

She said that she wants to prevent this from happening again to anyone and that the government was also responsible “for neglecting the case.”

“I want each [SDF] member to be protected,” she said.

Earlier this year, Ms Gonoi filed a civil lawsuit against the five perpetrators and the Japanese government, seeking 5.5 million yen ($40,000; £32,000) in damages from the men for causing her mental distress, and an additional 2 million yen from the state for its failure to prevent abuse.

I asked her why, having experienced so many attacks since she went public, she was pursuing this lawsuit.

She hesitates. You can tell none of this is easy.

“I love the SDF so much,” she said. “They helped us during the [2011] disaster. This was the last thing I wanted to do.

“I just think this is not right. I still get flashbacks of what happened. It’s cost me so much.”

In March, Fukushima prosecutors indicted three former members of Japan’s GSDF on suspicion of indecent assault in relation to Ms Gonoi’s case.

Tweeting after the indictment, Ms Gonoi said she felt her “work had not been in vain” and that she hopes the three “reflect in full and atone for their crimes”.

“I’ve spent a long time feeling totally unable to accept why none of them were being prosecuted. Every day has been a struggle,” she wrote.

Ms Gonoi says she wants to travel and move on with her life.

“I’m a fun-loving person. I like to make people laugh and I like to smile. I want to show people that I can still live positively and enjoy my life. I want to live as I am – I want to be myself.”