A couple of stories that appeared in the news in Japan recently indicate that women here are using the courts to stake out limits on what men should be allowed to say to them.

In the first case, a prefectural assemblyman in Yamanashi, Japan was sentenced to 29 days in jail for calling a woman “fatso,” even though he denied the allegation.

“There’s no way that I called a woman–who is a complete stranger to me–such a word,” Omata told the court.

Omata lodged an appeal against the ruling, reportedly claiming it was “a typical false charge.”

The judge, however, said: “It is hard to play down his responsibility in insulting a woman whom he had met for the first time by picking on a physical characteristic. One can hardly imagine how she felt when she was called ‘fatso’ all of sudden as she was having a pleasant chat with her friends.”

Jail time for name calling?

The other case is a report about a Tokushima University professor who was reprimanded for sending cell phone text messages that included heart emoticons to a female university employee.

The university set up a committee to investigate the case after the staffer complained about the messages.

“She never told me straight that she didn’t want to receive such messages, so I continued to send them to her. But I knew she didn’t want to receive them from her reaction,” he was quoted as saying during the questioning by the committee.