Cover -- Sexual Violence and the Law in Japan -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of tables -- Series editor's foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Prelude: rape v. murder - or (excessive) self defence? -- S&M narratives constructed in the media -- The prosecutor's narratives -- The defence narratives -- Judicial narratives -- Leading questions -- 1 Legal storytelling and sexual violence -- Emerging stories of sexual violence in Japan -- Japanese approaches to judicial decision-making -- Legal storytelling and tales of rape -- Locating legal cases -- Overview and organisation of the book -- 2 Hegemonic masculinity and guilty feminine bodies -- Disrupting the discourse of 'natural' sexuality -- Normalising sukebei masculinity and prostitution -- Imperial constructions of sexual subjects and sites -- Sacrificed women -- Sukebei's women and the body marked as feminine -- Inscribing the feminine body with responsibility -- Victim as witness: the construction of appropriate victim personae -- Framing the judicial imagination: a summary -- 3 Confronting the Japanese criminal justice system -- Under-reporting -- Challenging boundaries: public and private -- Diversionary tactics: prosecutorial discretion -- The construction of a homogeneous judiciary -- 4 Credibility in the court: scripting rape -- Tsūjō rape cases -- Content analysis of Cases 1-9 -- 5 'In truth she was probably very drunk': women subject to scrutiny -- Fushizen rape cases -- Authorised violence and the license to rape: yūkeiryoku -- Suspicious stories of threats, intimidation and injury -- Unheard screams and pleas to stop -- Resistance -- Hegemonic tales of heterosexuality -- 6 Markers of truth: silencing women in the court -- Purity and innocence -- Evidence of significant shock -- Promptness of reporting the incident -- Comprehensive, consistent and clear accounts.

Going to the site of the offence -- Consuming alcohol -- Sexual experience -- Provocation -- Allocation of blame -- 7 Subversive stories and feminist strategies -- The sanitisation strategy -- Challenging patriarchy: constructions of heterosexuality and rapists -- De-centring force and resistance: reconceptualising consent -- Expert witness evidence -- Law reform: reconfiguring rape as assault -- Manipulating the rhetoric of rights -- Mobilising strength: support groups as resistance -- Re-educating judges -- Domestic and international pressure -- 8 Conclusion -- Appendix 1: legal definitions -- Appendix 2: the cases -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book provides a detailed examination of judicial decision-making in Japanese cases involving sexual violence. It describes the culture of 'eroticised violence' in Japan, which sees the feminine body as culpable and the legal system which encourages homogeneity and conformity in decision-making and shows how the legal constraints confronting women claiming sexual assaults are enormous. It includes analysis of specific case studies and a discussion of recent moves to address the problem.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.