With a series of shootings apparently related to an underworld gang battle taking place in various parts of the Kanto area and a constantly rising volume of illegal stimulant drugs to deal with, Japan's police forces would seem to have a busy enough summer ahead of them. That may be why some observers are reacting quizzically to the news that the police are poised to become involved in what has traditionally been considered the normal battle of the sexes. Domestic violence in Japan is no laughing matter, however.

The National Police Agency's instructions to police officers throughout the country to intervene in such cases -- when requested to do so -- represent a decided and overdue shift in official policy. In Japan's male-dominated society, the police have long considered physical abuse, by men against their wives or domestic partners to be a private matter in all but the most serious cases, such as those involving murder or injury resulting in death. This has continued to be true despite mounting evidence of the need for steps to protect women -- and children -- who are subject to repeated domestic physical violence.

If the extent to which children are abused in their own homes here is one of the nation's best-kept secrets, the prevailing attitude that men are somehow entitled to inflict violence on their spouses is another. Is that a partial explanation for the cautious new police policy of intervening in domestic violence cases only when requested to do so? Unlike many other industrialized countries, Japan still lacks laws to adequately punish those who inflict the abuse and to fully protect the women and children who are its victims. There are, for example, no legal means of stopping a husband from visiting a physically abused wife even when she is supposedly under the protection of a support facility.