Sex and Silence: Ochiai Keiko's The Rape in a historical context

Abstract

This thesis examines Ochiai Keiko's The Rape within the context of the development of feminism and activism for women's issues in Japan. Since Japan began modernizing in 1868CE, women have struggled with their social and political positions as either reproductive mothers or sexual laborers, narrowly defined roles that served as the basis for the construction of femininity and contributed to the division between classes. Rape was listed as a crime in Japan's 1907 Penal Code, but the history of modernization, imperialism, and militarism, followed by the U.S. Occupation, overshadowed the seriousness of rape as a woman's issue. As lawmakers and law enforcers, men exploited legalized prostitution and social conventions to gain access to women's bodies. They were therefore able to disguise rape as a paid service in the case of comfort women, a category of prostitute designed during the interwar period 1931-1945, or as a right of the husband in the case of spousal rape. During the Occupation, comfort women in Japan experienced rape at the hands of U.S. troops similar to the experiences of those who served Japanese troops abroad. After the Occupation, rape was not often talked about publicly and was relegated to being a sexual fetish in pornography, two conditions that contributed to the spread of false, gender-biased rape myths that shifted blame away from men and onto women, which further discouraged women from speaking out on the subject. Ochiai's novel challenges the common attitudes regarding rape, rapists, and rape victims during the 1980s, exposes how these attitudes influenced court proceedings, and illustrates how these factors contributed to the trauma rape victims experienced from the initial incident up until a verdict was reached.