Horn-toad Japanese "salarymen" fond of groping women on the subway get their come-uppance. Mainichi Daily News reports:

During peak hours Monday to Friday, 35 trains on the East Japan Railway Co.'s Saikyo Line southbound for Shinjuku and Shin-Kiba stations will have a car reserved for women. Previously, the all-female cars were only offered late at night. The JR Saikyo Line, connecting Osaki Station in central Tokyo to Omiya Station in Saitama Prefecture north of the capital, is notorious for salacious male passengers who sidle up to females for a close encounter.

The Japan Times has more.

The move was launched in line with a call from the Land, Infrastructure and Transportation Ministry. The measure started Monday on the Saikyo Line of East Japan Railway Co. and Rinkai Line of the Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit Inc. Other lines in the area, operated by nine private railways, and the Toei Shinjuku Line plan to introduce female-only cars starting May 9....In February, police said the number of reported groping incidents on Tokyo trains almost tripled to 2,201 in 2004 from 778 cases in 1996.

Naturally, some men accused of train groping hire lawyers, who have argued their clients don't get a fair shake. Oh, I suppose, in a few cases, maybe so. But really, isn't it easy enough to sidestep the whole thing, even on crowded trains? Best practice, Hiro: avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Why does any guy need to rub against women on public transit, or fondle or pinch them, or worse things still? Why exactly is this a pressing (sorry) social problem in urban Japan? The mind boggles.

I dunno for sure. But from an authoritative Web site entry titled, "Rational Japanese," comes additional info on the Japanese social psychology underlying "train-groping" incidents, and quiet acceptance of same, by female victims.

When a person behaves in public, his or her behavior is visible, open to the scrutiny of others, or "the people." Such "others" or "people" are usually referred to as "Seken" in Japanese...Seken often implies reference to the lifestyle of ordinary people as well as moral and behavioral standards that are commonly accepted in society.

......A crowd of strangers in large Seken is also seen by the individual as part of his or her own environment, which he should be respectfully indifferent to and stay remote from....In such an environment...the individual should not disturb...anonymous people. Chikan, or train gropers, take advantage of this psychology to touch young women in the jam-packed trains. Many female victims try to move away, or they just bear such molestation silently because they don't want to make a scene.

Which encourages the pigs, who - most reprehensibly - have formed an official brotherhood of train-gropers, with meetings, and sometimes, whores hired to role-play on trains and at sick confabs.

Lawdy Mama. I'm certainly no knee-jerk feminist, or "Womyn's Studies" acolyte. But the misogyny of American rap music, "Pimp and Ho culture", and Iran's Pimp Mullahs are deeply offensive to me, along with the cultural underpinnings of the repressed, warped Japanese "Chickan" train gropers.

"Chickans": what's goin' on at home, anyway? Huh?

We'll be coming back, here, to the multi-faceted and historically rich background of sexual idiocy among Japanese males.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 5, 2005 10:15 PM

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