In a significant revision of the nation's century-old sex crime laws, Japan's parliament enacted new legislation on Friday that redefines nonconsensual sex as rape and raises the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16.
According to Kyodo News, the new regulations include eight behaviors that indicate a victim's lack of sexual consent, including being raped while under the influence of drugs or alcohol or being frightened by the attacker.
The article states that the reforms will extend the 10-year statute of limitations for reporting rape to 15 years and make it unlawful to record and distribute exploitative photos of persons without their agreement.
The age of sexual consent will increase from 13 to 16 under the new legislation, but there will be an exemption for teenagers who want to have consensual relationships with persons who are five years their senior.
Since the lowest legal age was established in 1907, the country's age of sexual consent has undergone just one revision.
However, the regulations only broadly define rape as "forcible sexual intercourse." Japan initially changed its penal code in 2017 to incorporate stiffer punishments for sex offences.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), just approximately 6% of men and women in Japan had reported an attack to the police in 2021, suggesting that victims of rape were afraid to come forward for fear of embarrassment.
“Survivors have also described how police humiliated and revictimized them while taking their testimony and even tried to convince survivors to drop cases,” said Susanne Bergsten, senior coordinator for HRW Women’s Rights Division.
“As many media outlets have reported, the legal threshold of assault and intimidation also excludes a large portion of cases that have led to acquittals,” Bergsten said in a statement on June 14.
According to a 2017 survey by the government's gender equality department, about 60% of rape victims chose to remain silent.
In June 2019, protests against court acquittals of suspected rapists and calls for change of the country's anti-rape statute took place in nine places in Japan. Participants carried flowers and banners with the hashtags #MeToo and #WithYou.
The demonstration followed the Nagoya court's acquittal of a man accused of raping his 19-year-old daughter in March 2019. The judges came to the conclusion that there was no evidence to support her inability to resist. A high court eventually reversed the decision in 2020 and gave the guy a 10-year jail term.
