Guilty until Proven Innocent

In Japan, as in other countries, you are Innocent until Proven Guilty. It means, if you are suspected of a crime but there are no evidences, you are free to go.

But in Japan there is an exception ...

Male Japanese, apparently, are very keen to touch women on crowded subways or trains. It is something that happens daily. The above picture is of an article appeared in the magazine "Hiragana Times" talking about this topic.

Although i don't doubt that this happen, things might be a little more complicated. Last year, a woman accused a man of molesting her. The police took him in custody.

In such case, the legal system gets reversed. The police assumes that the guy is guilty and he has to prove his innocence. I have no idea how you can prove you didn't touch someone, since nobody saw anything. The procedure, as stated by the police officer interviewed, is that the guy will be detained until he confesses the crime. It doesn't matter if he is guilty or not. He will not be release nor allowed to contact anyone until a confession for the crime has been made. Once confessed, he is free to go.

In any case, if he admits, he is released, nobody will know and the case is closed with a minor proceeding. The problem is that if the family or the employer finds out, he would be immediately fired and the family might have troubles.

The problem is not with people guilty for the crime, but innocent people. Last year, a woman accused a man of molesting her, to get some money from him. Fortunately, for him, she confessed that the whole thing was a set-up and the matter endend happily.

In the interview, the policeman was asked why men's statements are ignored in such case. The policemen replied that if they allowed man to defend themself taking their statements, they might get away easily and the number of molestors could increase 100 times.

One of the solution proposed was to have mandatory separate train cars for man and women... the problem was how to explain this to families and tourist coming to japan that is not a racial thing but to avoid women being molested...

I witnessed a similar case last year in may. I was travelling on a train at night from Kobe to Kyoto and i was using one of the 4 seats available in the train. The seat next to me was free as well as the one in front of me. in front of me on the left side, was sitting a young woman and she was asleep.

After some time, a strange man came and sat next to me. I was reading a book, so i didn't pay much attention. After some time, i saw that he was slowing moving his hand to touch the woman's knee. At that point i said "What are you doing??". This was enough for him to take of and disappear. What surprised me is that other people in the train saw, but didn't say anything. Only the girl, thanked me and changed seat moving in front of me. We told the train attendant, but i don't think they got him.

So, apparently, maybe out of 100 cases, only few are reported to the police... in which case, the problem might just be much bigger than what they think...