数日前だけど、旦那さんから誕生日プレゼントにAURORAのアルバム「A different kind of human」をもらって久しぶりにCDで音楽を聴いたら、音の美しさに驚いた。ストリーミングとまるっきり違った。素人のわたしでさえ分かる、音の重なり、立体感、のびやかに広がっていく感じ。それから、ジャケットに唯一添えられた、アルバムタイトルにもなっている曲の歌詞と、このCDを手に取った人に対するメッセージも素敵だった。大袈裟な話だけど、旦那さんとふたり、ステレオの前に座って泣きそうになってた。それくらい衝撃だった。無意識のうちに、こういう体験の価値を見失いそうになっていた自分に愕然とした。
何かに賛同して共に戦おうとしているときは、意外と盲目だ。共感して寄り添おうとしているのだから、相手にとって、自分は良いことをしているに違いない。立ち上がらないやつは卑怯者だ。なんて自分に酔いしれている傍ら、思わぬ人を傷つけていることも十分にあり得るなあと改めて気づかされた。『Boy erased』を観た。ただ、自分が愛する人が同性だっただけで自分を否定される。気持ち悪がられる。マイノリティになる。そんな社会、絶対に嫌だ。LGBTQは、限られた人たちが抱える問題ではなく、社会全体の問題であり、人権の問題だ。・・・と、どうしてもテーマを大きくしがちだけど、どうしたってまずはじめに乗り越えるべきは自分であり、家族である。私がこれまで観た映画のなかでもすごく印象に残っているのが渋谷のシアター・イメージフォーラムで観た『ジンジャーの朝』なんだけど（懐かしいなあ）、世界の終わりなんかよりも、目の前の生活が自分にとっては大きな問題で、世界が終わることなんかよりも、家族が壊れた方が、よっぽど世界の終わりのような絶望的な気持ちになる。けっこう衝撃的だった。わたしはヘテロセクシュアルだけど、私はゲイです、私はトランスジェンダーです、ってわざわざ言わない社会が来ればいいな、と思う一方で、言いたい人は勝手に言える社会にもなればいい。あまりにもゲイとかレズビアンとか、それが個人の人格を形成するものではないのに、そういった分かりやすいもので人が分類されすぎる。問題が大きくなりすぎる。問題は、個人とどう関わっていきていくかで、性的マイノリティーとのかかわり方ではない。『The hate u give』は、意外に面白かった。黒人の人権が問題である。ずっと昔から。改善してきているとはいえ、黒人だから怖いと感じる私がいるし、黒人だから拳銃で撃って殺した白人警官がいる。黒人だから、国に要らないという人がいる。「Black lives matter」というスローガンがある。私は差別に反対するし、LGBTQ同様、人は属性や経済力や嗜好や出自などによって差別されるべきではないと思っている。だから「Black lives matter」にも共感する。「Black k klans man」や「greenbook」を観て涙を流す。だけど、『The hate u give』を観て強烈だったのは、生半可な気持ちで白人至上主義を批判し、黒人の人権を守りたいと思う私の気持ちを試されているような気分になったからだった。映画の中で主人公のスターは、ただのお祭り騒ぎでデモに参加する友人に嫌悪感を示す。そりゃそうだ、だって被差別者からしたら、言葉通り、逃れたくても逃れらない一生背負わなきゃいけない問題なのに、一過性のムーブメントに乗じて「黒人の人権を守ろう」という差別を受けていない人たちはいずれ忘れるし、結果どうなっても自分たちには関係ないから。声を挙げない罪悪感から、自分も被差別者の側に立って戦おうとするポーズはとるけれど、本当に問われているのはその信念だ。生半可な気持ちで、その時の流れで、ムーブメントに便乗するだけの差別反対活動は、自分の自尊心を守るかもしれないけれど、守りたいはずの被差別者たちの心を傷つけているかもしれないという危険性を、いつでも忘れないようにしていたいと思った。
Online comments accused Rika Shiiki of lying and being a publicity hound when she tweeted that she lost business contracts after refusing to have sex with clients. Some said that by agreeing to dine with a man, she led him on.
"The comments I received were disproportionately negative,” the 20-year-old university student and entrepreneur told a TV talk show in December. “We need to create a society where we can speak up. Otherwise sexual harassment and other misconduct will persist forever.”
In a patriarchal society where women have long taken the blame, many victims try to forget attacks and harassment instead of seeking support and justice, said Mari Miura, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
“Japan lacks such a sisterhood,” she said. “It’s an exhausting and intimidating process. … It’s quite natural that victims feel reluctant to speak up.”
One woman, journalist Shiori Ito, went public last year. She held a news conference after prosecutors decided not to press charges against a prominent TV newsman whom she had accused of raping her after he invited her to discuss job opportunities over dinner and drinks in 2015.
Many online comments criticized her for speaking out, looking too seductive and ruining the life of a prominent figure. Some women called her an embarrassment, she told The Associated Press.
The October release of Ito’s book “Blackbox” detailing her ordeal came as the #MeToo phenomenon was making headlines in America. It prompted some discussion in Japan, but only a handful of other women came forward.
“Many people think Shiori’s problem has nothing to do with them … and that’s why #MeToo isn’t growing in Japan,” said lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda, an expert on sex crimes. In Japan, sexually assaulted women are traditionally called “the flawed,” she said.
Nearly three quarters of rape victims said they had never told anyone, and just over 4 percent had gone to police, according to a 2015 government survey. The study found that one in 15 Japanese women had been raped or forced to have sex.
Justice Ministry statistics show only one-third of rape cases go to court, and punishment is not severe. Of the 1,678 people tried for sexual assault in 2017, only 285, or 17 percent, were sentenced to prison for three years or longer. In November, Yokohama prosecutors, without saying why, dropped the case against six students from a leading university who had been arrested for the alleged gang-rape of a teenage female student after getting her drunk. The university expelled three of them.
Popular writer Haruka Ito, who goes by the pen name Ha-Chu, was criticized after revealing in December that she had faced sexual and other harassment by a senior male employee when both worked at Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising agency.
The alleged harasser, whom she identified by name, apologized in a statement and quit as head of his own company, though he denied the harassment was sexual.
Ha-chu said in a statement that she initially tried to endure and forget the ordeal, fearing that exposing it would hurt her image and cause problems for her former colleagues. After news of the journalist Ito’s case and the #MeToo movement, “I decided to speak out,” she said.
Conformist pressure in Japan discourages women from speaking out or saying “no” to many things, including unwanted sex, said Saori Ikeuchi, a former lawmaker and gender diversity activist.
That mindset has silenced virtually all of Japan’s so-called “comfort women,” who were sexually abused as prostitutes for the wartime military, while Japan has shown little sympathy to victims from Korea and elsewhere, she said.
Ito, the journalist, said that after she became dizzy and passed out in a restroom, her alleged attacker, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, took her to his hotel room and raped her while she was incapacitated.
The alleged assault was just the beginning of her ordeal, Ito said. The women’s clinic she visited the next day lacked expertise on rape, and a rape victim support center refused to give her advice on the phone. Police required her to recount the ordeal repeatedly and to demonstrate it with a life-sized doll, she said.
Ito said it took three weeks to get police to accept her criminal complaint and start investigating. She held a news conference in May, announcing that she had requested a court-appointed citizens’ panel to review the decision to drop the case. The inquest in September agreed with the decision not to indict.
Yamaguchi has denied any wrongdoing in published articles and on Facebook. Ito has filed a civil lawsuit against him, demanding 10 million yen ($93,000) in compensation for her suffering from the alleged rape, and seeking any clues as to why he was let go and never arrested.
“I thought about how I could change the situation, and I had no choice but to speak out about my experience,” she said.
「どうすれば状況を変えることができるかと考えたとき、自身の体験を語るしか選択肢がなかった」
伊藤氏はこう語った。
A group of opposition lawmakers has started its own investigation, seeking to find if the charges were dropped because of Yamaguchi’s connections to powerful political officials.
National Police Agency official Junichiro Kan told the lawmakers at a recent hearing that Ito’s case was properly handled. Police say they have tried to be more sensitive to the feelings of victims while guarding against wrongful accusations.
Mika Kobayashi, who heads a support group for sexual assault victims based on her own experience as a victim in 2000, speaks during an interview in Tokyo, Dec. 25, 2017.
She said she was pushed into a car and raped on her way home in 2000. She reported the attack to police, but the attacker hasn’t been found. She has since published books about her recovery from the ordeal, to raise public awareness.
“I used to think of myself as someone hiding a big secret, a sex assault victim and unclean,” she said. “I’m so grateful I could connect with fellow victims. They gave me strength.”
Text 2: The People Don’t Know Their True Power
[テキスト２] 人々は自分たちの本当の力を知らない
The People Don’t Know Their True Power
人々は自分たちの本当の力を知らない
How is power represented in this text?
このテキストが表す『力』とは？
This is a cartoon that depicts politicians and where their source of power comes from - the people. The text on the cartoon is the main message. “The People Don’t Know Their True Power.” And it’s true. The people don’t.
In our world today, politicians gain the support of the people, prime ministers and presidents are elected, dictators govern countries, but where is their power truly coming from? The people. Eloquence and manipulation plays a huge part in obtaining power over the people but if there were no people or if none gave in to support, eventually, the one trying to hold power will crash.
In the cartoon, there is a politician at the very edge of a wide plank. If all the people stepped off that plank, gravity would pull him down and he would be nothing. He is nothing without the people. The one man that steps off the plank is enough to enforce the idea that if they all stepped off, he would fall.
It also gives us the idea that it is the people’s decision whether or not the politician stands or falls but they seem too oblivious to even notice what is beneath them as their heads are towards him.
Supporting has great power as well. Without supporters, there would be no one to hold power over. Dictators would have no one to dictate to and no one following them if there were no supporters. The people believe that they need the leader, where in fact, the leader needs the people.
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