Keio Electric Railway Co installed cameras on some of its trains in this past week in an attempt to curb groping.
Train groping is a huge problem in Japan. In 2008, police handled 1600 groping incidents in Tokyo alone. And that number is a small fraction of actual groping incidents. According to a 2010 survey, 89.1 percent of groping victims don’t report the incident to the police.
Police and train lines have made various attempts over the years to combat the problem. One solution has been to introduce women-only carriages during rush hours. The problem with this is that women outside of these designated carriages may be seen as fair game–the attitude being that if they choose not to ride in the women-only carriage, they must want to be groped.
Another measure has been to have plainclothes officers trained to spot groping patrol the trains. I think this is the most creative solution, and could potentially be the most efficacious method to curb groping. The problem is the police and the media announce when the police will be patrolling trains and train stations–sometimes even going so far as announcing the exact times, train lines and stations they will be patrolling, which almost completely negates the police presence. Gropers know exactly which trains to avoid, and where they can operate safely.
Last week Keio introduced cameras in some of its cars, as did East Japan Railway Co late last year, in accordance to demands from the police. While introducing cameras could be effective, once again the railways and the media announce which cars on which lines will have these cameras, again effectively letting gropers know where the blind spots are.
However, I think the main problem with these antigroping measures is that they are fighting the symptoms of a problem, rather than the cause. Japan is still a largely male-dominated society that is decades behind the U.S. as far as women’s rights are concerned. In schools, groping and kanchō (ramming your forefingers into an unsuspecting peer’s anus) are largely tolerated as harmless pranks. Sending mixed messages that groping and kanchō are OK as children, but not as adults, is sure to undermine the seriousness of the crime. The larger issues of women’s rights and the dangers of sex crimes need to be more fully addressed before a real impact on train groping can occur.
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