I am deeply disturbed, although not surprised, by the news that Japanese weeklies are harassing the young woman who claims to have been publicly raped in late June in Okinawa. Even Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka evidently blames her for having been out so late, drinking, in a bar frequented by American servicemen.
Until quite recently such attitudes were also common in the United States when women asserted they had been raped. They were rudely questioned (and often physically demeaned) by the police, and their past sexual experiences were recounted when they were asked to testify in court. Under such circumstances, no wonder many women do not report rape, knowing that the perpetrator will never be convicted or that the humiliation they suffer will not equal the punishment given the man.
In the Okinawan rape case, I wrote a piece published in the Los Angeles Times on July 8 and subsequently reprinted in many other American newspapers that also provoked an extraordinary number of abusive letters from American servicemen addressed to me personally as a woman. Some letters claimed that I was naive and old-fashioned because I did not know some Japanese women actually enjoyed having sex in public on the hood of a car. Others excoriated me because I wrote that it might be a good thing if more Okinawan women realized they had it within their power to send their American dates to jail if they misbehaved. Still others took me to task because Okinawan and Japanese men also commit rape, as if this somehow exonerates the Americans.