From the weird to the very weird and unsettling.
The topic of men groping women has been in the news in Japan again recently, after two Japanese schoolgirls were filmed chasing a man who groped one of them.
These gropers are known as “chikan”, but it’s a Japanese word that isn’t just reserved for gropers on trains. It’s also used to refer to men who act in a sleazy, perverted way towards others, and their wide variety of weird and disturbing behaviours can be directed not only towards women, but to men, children, and elderly people as well.
Here to give us a lesson in some of the different types of chikan that ride on Japanese trains is Twitter user and illustrator @ikng_0. This drawing by the artist shows eight different types of chikan that she and her friends and followers have had the displeasure of dealing with while riding on the rails.
The top row shows chikan who:
- Continually pat down your hair whorl
- Come and sit super close to you despite the train being empty
- Press their nether regions into you
- Lay their chin on your shoulder
- Put their foot in between your feet, with a strange hole in the shoe that looks like it could contain a camera for upskirt filming
On the bottom row there are chikan who:
- Pour liquid or fluid on you
- Put their hand on yours when you’re holding the hand strap
- Come over and eat your hair
And as an extra addition, off the rails, there was that one time someone came across a naked man just standing there in a horse mask.
The artist hopes to turn the hidden camera back on the perverts by shining a spotlight on some of the things they have been known to do. And judging by the responses to the tweet, unfortunately there are many more types of chikan, with @ikng_0 listing some of the other horrible encounters mentioned by people after the tweet was shared.
- He put a used condom in my bag
- He used one of my earphones while I was using them
- He put his tongue into my ear
- He removed the hooks of my bra
- He licked my cheek/neck
- He grabbed onto my hands/fingers/upper arm
- He touched my chest with his elbows
- He put his crotch close to my face
- He undid the button on my shirt
- He cut my skirt
- He touched my chest and buttocks when I got off the train
- He showed me obscene images and videos
These experiences, which are all terribly traumatising and disturbing, show what some women in Japan have to put up with when travelling on the country’s trains. Thankfully though, there are people who are willing to step in and help, with a number of responses revealing that there have been cases where both women and men have yelled “chikan!” at these perverts, prompting them to stop, and even slapping men’s hands away from women’s bodies.
So if you’re travelling on a train in Japan and witness any of these types of perverts, don’t be afraid open your mouth and yell “chikan!” Especially if it’s a man pretending he can’t see so he can fondle women’s breasts.
Image: Twitter/@ikng_0
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[ Read in Japanese ]