In Tokyo’s complex maze of trains, buses and subway stations, a long-obscured form of gender-based harassment, called butsukari otoko or ‘bumping man’, is on the rise. This type of violence occurs when men deliberately hit on women at crowded railway stations during rush hour and use the anonymity of everyone around them to hide their blatant acts of physical violence from other people in the area. Many viewers see these actions as examples of the many problems caused by the increasing density of Japanese cities, but research shows that this behavior is actually motivated by frustration and power. Most of these men choose to target those they deem weak or unlikely to retaliate; Therefore, they are taking advantage of the social norms rules that exist in Japanese culture to engage in hit-and-run style harassment against women, causing victims to suffer long-lasting psychological damage and feelings of increased vulnerability.
Butsukari Otoko: A Gendered Power Dynamic
Behind this phenomenon are the rather asymmetric power dynamics of congested city streets. Sociologists at Japan Women’s University have found that these criminals are typically middle-aged men who deliberately target individuals they believe are more likely to be their victims, specifically, the elderly, female, or those distracted by their cell phones. By choosing victims whom they feel are unlikely to fight back or carry out an incident, they use the station as an outlet for their personal frustrations and to demonstrate a sense of power and dominance that has been stripped from them by rigid corporate hierarchies or social isolation. This behavior should not be classified as an unfortunate series of events, but as a targeted act of gender-based aggression.
Erosion of women’s agency in public spaces
Victims suffer long-lasting effects beyond the obvious injuries sustained on their bodies as a result of this form of violence, which has been described as chronic ‘vigilante fatigue’. Analysis by scholars in the International Journal of Japanese Sociology suggests that these calculated acts of non-verbal intimidation are part of a continuum of micro-aggressions that take the form of urban encounters between men and women on public transportation systems.The need for women to keep an eye on crowds at all times and be aware of their surroundings increases their anxiety levels, limiting their ability to use public spaces. The constant presence of strangers invading a woman’s personal space sends the implicit, yet explicit, message that her psychological safety is secondary to the perpetrator’s claim of spatial dominance.
Role of surveillance in prosecution
For Butsukari Otoko, the legal system is difficult to navigate due to the complexity and requirements of the Japanese Penal Code regarding intent. According to the National Police Agency’s documentation, these acts are treated as assault or public disturbance or nuisance, but for a successful prosecution, it is necessary to prove beyond a doubt that the collision between the perpetrator’s body and the victim’s body was caused by intention rather than by the large number of people being in Tokyo at the same time (crowd levels often exceed 150 percent capacity). The actual perpetrator can usually claim plausible deniability to the authorities because they were among many other people at a busy time of the day (example: during rush hours), and thus, unless you have high quality CCTV (cameras) that show solid evidence that there was a conscious change in the path of the perpetrator’s body towards the victim’s body, these incidents are usually not reported or prosecuted.