Lovesick Japan: Sex * Marriage * Romance * Law

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. He was charged with violations of the Penal Code (art. 176): “a person who by violence or threat commits an indecent act with a male or female person...shall be punished.” 2. See Atsushi Koyano, Sei to Ai no Nihongo Kōza [A Course in the Japanese of Sex and Love] 173 (2003); Hikaru Saitō, Hentai—H, in Shōichi Inoue, ed., Sei no Yōgoshū [Sex Vocabulary ] 45, 53 (2004). 3. Nara District Court, 1257 Hanrei Times 336 (Sept. 26, 2006) (“occhan, ecchi”); Niigata District Court, 1299 Hanrei Jihō 152 (Aug. 26, 1988) (“ano ojisan ecchi na ojisan”). 4. See Amy Adler, The Perverse Law of Child Pornography, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 209 (2001) (on the “pedophilic gaze”). 5. Shizuoka District Court, 1041 Hanrei Times 293 (Dec. 1, 1999). 6. Although the note is anonymous, it reveals things that only the judge would know, such as reasons for the denial of bail. The tone also matches that of the opinion. 7. 1041 Hanrei Times 293 (Dec. 1, 1999). The shut-in problem is hikikomori, a term applied to people, mostly young men, who sequester themselves in their rooms and have no social life. Population estimates vary widely, from eighty thousand to one million. See, e.g., Amy Borovoy, Japan’s Hidden Youths: Mainstreaming the Emotionally Distressed in Japan, 32 Cult. Med. Psychiatry 552 (2008); Tamaki Saitō, Hikikomori Kyūshutsu Manyuaru [Rescue Manual for Hikikomori] 28–29 (2002); Michael Zielenziger, Shutting out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Lost Generation (2007). 8. A partial list would include Anne Allison, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994); Nicholas Bornoff, Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and 222 Notes to Pages 9–16 Sex in Contemporary Japan (1991); Catherine Burns, Sexual Violence and the Law in Japan (2005) (analyzing twenty rape cases); Sabine Frühstück, Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (2003); Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (1997); Matthews Masayuki Hamabata, Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese Business Family (1990); Sumie Kawakami, Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman (2007); David Leheny, Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan (2006); James E. Roberson and Nobue Suzuki, eds., Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa (2003); Sonia Ryang, Love in Modern Japan: Its Estrangement From Self, Sex and Society 2 (2006); Christine R. Yano, Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song (2002); Tamie L. Bryant, Marital Dissolution in Japan: Legal Obstacles and Their Impact, 17 Law in Japan 73 (1984). 9. A partial list would include Amy Borovoy, The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan (2005); Harald Fuess, Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender, and the State 1600–2000 (2004); Yuko Kawanishi, Mental Health Challenges Facing Contemporary Japanese Society: The Lonely People (2009); Karen Kelsky, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (2001); Tiana Norgren, Abortion before Birth Control (2001); Tarō Ōhata and Sumie Kawakami, Tsuma no Koi: Tatoe Furin to Yobaretemo [The Love of Wives: Even If It’s Called Adultery] (2004); Frances Rosenbluth, ed., The Politics of Japan’s Low Fertility (2007); Leonard J. Schoppa, Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (2006); Patrick Smith, Japan: A Reinterpretation 135–36, 155–56 (1997) (discussing a “pervasive lovelessness” and an “absence of intimacy” in “every fiber of society”); Merry Isaacs White, Perfectly Japanese: Marking Families in an Era of Upheaval (2002); Zielenziger, Shutting out the Sun; Borovoy, Japan’s Hidden Youths. 10. Mark D. West, Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes (2005). 11. See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). Only one Japanese case centrally concerns same-sex sex acts, a 1999 case in which a “new half” (nyuha -fu), or transgender, plaintiff fell down a flight of stairs while manually stimulating the defendant ’s penis. The court found a duty of care of sexual partners to “avoid using force that might cause harm to the other person’s body.” It awarded the plaintiff damages but offered no commentary about the act itself. Kōno v. Otsukawa, Tokyo District Court, 1018 Hanrei Times 288 (Apr. 28, 1999). 12. Japan Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement v. Tokyo, Tokyo District Court, 1509 Hanrei Jihō 80 (Mar. 30, 1994); aff ’d, Tokyo High...