Constructing sexual risk: ‘Chikan’,collapsing male authority and the emergence of women-only train carriages in Japan

Women-only train carriages have been introduced in Japan as a response to

widespread groping (chikan) by men. In August 2007, 155 young women

completed a survey at a variety of locations in central Tokyo, mainly at the

popular meeting places, Shinjuku and Shibuya. The survey involved face-to-face

interviews conducted mainly by young female interviewers. The numbers involved

are insufficient for rigorous statistical analysis and in this pilot study we were

principally interested in further refining ideas and hypotheses for further

investigation by considering results in the context of significant contemporary

social trends. This article starts by considering a particular cultural context in

which the issue of groping resulted in the introduction of women-only train

carriages and this official antigroping measure which has been widely accepted.

The article then examines women’s responses to the availability of women-only

train carriages, using surveys carried out in Tokyo. It concludes by considering

the specific and anomalous targeting of primarily middle aged ‘salarymen’, a

focus understood in the context of the collapse of the ideological power of the

patriarchal corporate figure associated with the end of the Japanese economic

miracle. Women’s use and support for women-only train carriages is not solely

dominated by anxiety over the risk of chikan. Our survey indicated that it was a

symbolic rejection of a particular type of masculinity, rather than the physical

separation from a risk of being groped.