[...] JAPAN - Sexual harassment pub “Spotted and snapped by Japundit reader Alex Kane in the Ikebukuro District of Tokyo, where sexual harassment seems to have become a business opportunity.” [...]

Kinski, my statistics show that your link was completely without basis. My other statistics show that more children are molested by UN workers than by Japanese salarymen. I’ll show you those very statistics right here as soon as you post the statistics that support your last comment about high school girls.

From a 1997 article by Nicholas D. Kristof:

“Several decades ago, sexual fantasies centered on ‘office ladies’ in their 20’s. Then the focus became college women, and a few years ago it shifted to high-school girls.

Now the focus is on junior-high-school girls.

‘The age at which the girls seem interesting is clearly dropping,’ said Hiroyuki Fukuda, a 30-year-old man who edits a magazine called Anatomical Illustrations of Junior High School Girls. ‘But it’s only the maniacs who go for girls below the third grade.’” [my italics]

I don’t want to even think to extrapolate what Mr. Fukuda’s age range is now, ten years later… .

Kristof knows China fairly well, though his conclusions always seem poorly thought out. He knows Japan not at all. Since he a well-known journalist, I’ll point out a couple of things that caught my eye.

“here in Japan the best way for a prostitute to recruit clients is to put on a school uniform and adopt the naive anxiety of a frightened schoolgirl”

He says this without any support whatsoever. Who told him this was the best way to get clients? He doesn’t say - he apparently just made it up and decided to state is as fact.

He then goes on to say that all image clubs are about schoolgirls, when in fact they cover a whole range of fetishes, including dominatrixes. But, that makes his point a bit weaker.

The rest of the article consists of quotes selected to support his thesis.

I get a little tired of this rubbish passing for news. Not to say that there aren’t problems, but they have to be seen in context. Japanese are open about fetishes, unlike other countries, which suppress even the expression of the idea. So, naturally, it’s more public. Whether that translates into more child molestation is something I doubt.

Conversely, Japanese think the US is rife with homosexuality compared to elsewhere. Why? Because it’s public.

I’ve got daughters, and I still believe they are much safer here in Japan than in most Western countries.

More on N. Kristof, in his intro to his book on China, he warns people to be careful what they discuss with Chinese, as many of the people he spoke with suffered for speaking with him. In other words, he got his book published at the expense of others, and then lectures his reader not to do the same. Great.

Sorry for the long comment, but I’m bedridden today, and bored.

Well, an editorial is called that, and quite openly expresses an opinion. This was not an editorial. An “observational column” is a new expression to me. Is that what we call a news report that is not backed up by facts, but is simply the writer’s own superficial observations? If so, that wasn’t made plain either.

Sorry, but the article reads like a news report, but it only presented one sensational angle, and didn’t support it.

“A Western women’s viewpoint” is formed how, exactly? By reading the NY Times and other media reports that are looking for enticing headlines? This is why these reports bother me. They form viewpoints for people who don’t have access to balanced information.

So far as being blatent, that reflects the more open acceptance of sexuality in Japan, which contributes to misconceptions. In Japan, Fukuda can say that openly. In America, he would keep his mouth shut. If he is in fact acting on his urges, then it is despicable.

My opinion, too, is that Japanese are more inclined to younger girls than Westerners, but not by very much. I would say that’s balanced out by the greater number of Westerners willing to act out their fantasies. I was familiar with a well-known and very wealthy person in the States who was caught with a 14 year old prostitute to whom he was providing cocaine. Somehow, the case never made it to trial.

So, please keep in mind that I am suggesting balanced reporting, not more of those “perverted Japanese men” stories. I am not promoting child abuse, but suggesting that Mr. Kristof, if he is so bloody concerned, try to help kids in New York rather than looking over here for a quick-sell story.

If the article is presenting an angle and there’s no core very recent news event that sparks the piece… then it’s not a news report.

And I’m not writing a news report, either. I’m just sayin’ “this is my impression”. It’s tossed out there as an observation that can either help a reader understand how I’m interpreting my view or as a basis of discussion. I don’t have to back up that statement with hard facts and stats, either.

Another observation of mine is that even though there have been items on Japundit that have lotsa near-nekkid womens and sex(pick your suffix - -y, -ualized, -ist) photos, there hasn’t been a lot of rah-rahing over the depictions of school age girls being prime sexual objects . If there were, my impression would be that there would be even fewer womens reading the blog.

And my final observation: I’m not always interpreting these things as ‘what’s wrong with those perverted Jananese men’ stories. Aside from blatently sexualizing school age girls (which crosses the line, for me), I also wonder what is going through the minds of Japanese women who are doing this stuff or who are around mens doing this stuff. What do they think about these issues.

Too bad the well-known wealthy person in the US wasn’t convicted… .

Another observation of mine is that even though there have been items on Japundit that have lotsa near-nekkid womens and sex…

Betty, I’m looking at all the published pages here on Japundit and I don’t see near nekkid woman at all. In fact if anything I see many more pictures of men showing skin then I do of women. I don’t understand where this idea that Japundit shows a lot of sex comes from because that’s just not the case at all…

See above post as to near-nekkid men.

Have to work today, so I’ll keep it short. Your first sentence, about some news reports not being news reports (and, by implication, not required to adhere to any strict standards of truth), really bothers me. Is this what they teach in journalism school?

For me, unless it is clearly an opinion piece, I expect it to to be a honest attempt at the truth. If a paper can’t hold to those standards, then is useless at best, and at worst, misleads the public into mass ignorance and bad decisions.

I am sure Japanese girls are equally appalled and curious about what’s in the minds of gay married couples, young unwed mothers and drug addicts in the US. It would be hard to explain any of it unless they are familiar with the broader cultural context.

Actually, my main question when viewing the thing was “did they have to remove the phone from the booth to qualify as a phonebooth stuffing event?”

Well, dear Betty, it almost seems as if you are also planning to take a shot at record. . .