After the many late nights spent in high school cramming to pass an entrance exam, university life can be an exciting turning point in the lives of youth in Japan. With club activities, drinking parties and many opportunities to start dating, this newfound freedom is sometimes overwhelming.
However, these activities, the ones that make all the hard work worthwhile, also tend to be a hot spot for sexual violence — a lesson that some Japanese students may only be encountering for the first time and one that foreign exchange students may not expect in a country with a reputation for being extremely safe.
At the beginning of each semester at orientation, universities hand out anti-harassment pamphlets to freshmen to prevent bullying, but there's not discussion about consent. When students at Sophia University brought this issue up with the distributors of that school's pamphlet, they answered that they were unaware of what was considered "rape." How can universities keep students safe if there is no clear definition or rape and other forms of sexual assault?
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