The High Cost of Silence: Why Japan Shuts Up Victims of Sexual Abuse

Every Japanese person understands the wisdom of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">three wise monkeys</a>: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; if you can avoid seeing, listening, or speaking negative things, you can live in peace. Children are taken on school field trips to the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō to see the pictorial maxim of the purposefully blind, silent, and voiceless monkeys to learn the adage that’s critical to fit into this collectivistic country. A plethora of maxims underlines this mindset of silence: silence is golden; better left unsaid, out of the mouth comes evil. The spell of silence is astonishingly powerful in Japan. <h1>Victims of Sexual Misconduct Choose to Be Silent</h1> This mindset explains why 90% of groping victims don’t report their abuse to train station staff or police officers¹, and why 60% of sexual harassment victims don’t file a claim with their employers². Instead of exercising their rights as victims, they try to let go of the malicious incident alone. The root causes vary, but many victims even don’t tell their experiences to their family or friends. It is tremendously challenging for them to speak up. <a href="https://medium.com/japonica-publication/the-high-cost-of-silence-why-japan-shuts-up-victims-of-sexual-abuse-c65efee9afed">Read More</a>