@felinecritic
I am a Japanese woman from Tokyo who has also lived in USA 10 years and while I agree that the culture in Japan makes it harder to report assaults, I felt an incredibly huge difference in day-to-day safety. In USA, in a small college town, I would constantly and daily get catcalls, approaches by men on the street, men yelling lewd things from cars. Men at parties and clubs were extremely aggressive and many got angry and violent when a woman is saying "no". I ended up cutting my hair short and wearing boy clothes just to decrease some of the unwanted attention. This tangible threat of sexual violence was everywhere, constantly, and again this is in a small college town.
In downtown Tokyo I have walked home at 2 am through drinking districts several times a month for over ten years, and not once had an approach from a random man on the street, touch me on a train, or try to do something unwanted. Similarly never have I been catcalled, made to feel unsafe as a woman anywhere, or sexualized for wearing a skirt or having long hair. The day-to-day risk of violence is staggeringly less than I experienced in the USA and I can live in peace.
I recognize that my country has many problems with women not reporting sexual assault, and this is part of the culture of police not taking it seriously, and also women themselves being socialized to not speak up, but as a woman I feel significantly safer in Japan than in USA. It is just how it is. Not everything is just about reporting and statistics.
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@felinecritic
I am a Japanese woman from Tokyo who has also lived in USA 10 years and while I agree that the culture in Japan makes it harder to report assaults, I felt an incredibly huge difference in day-to-day safety. In USA, in a small college town, I would constantly and daily get catcalls, approaches by men on the street, men yelling lewd things from cars. Men at parties and clubs were extremely aggressive and many got angry and violent when a woman is saying "no". I ended up cutting my hair short and wearing boy clothes just to decrease some of the unwanted attention. This tangible threat of sexual violence was everywhere, constantly, and again this is in a small college town.
In downtown Tokyo I have walked home at 2 am through drinking districts several times a month for over ten years, and not once had an approach from a random man on the street, touch me on a train, or try to do something unwanted. Similarly never have I been catcalled, made to feel unsafe as a woman anywhere, or sexualized for wearing a skirt or having long hair. The day-to-day risk of violence is staggeringly less than I experienced in the USA and I can live in peace.
I recognize that my country has many problems with women not reporting sexual assault, and this is part of the culture of police not taking it seriously, and also women themselves being socialized to not speak up, but as a woman I feel significantly safer in Japan than in USA. It is just how it is. Not everything is just about reporting and statistics.