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The story
On a 5ch livestream-commentary thread, posters clashed over whether Japan’s lower sex crime rate compared to other countries is purely a matter of “hidden numbers” (victims who never report to police) with the real rate being no different, or whether differences in legal definitions and legislation are what’s skewing the figures. One post pointed to data showing Sweden’s rape rate is 63 times higher than Japan’s, arguing the gap is too large to be explained by hidden numbers alone — while others countered that the very premises of the comparison, like the number of sex workers and how broadly “sex crime” is defined, differ from country to country. In the end, no one produced data proving just how large Japan’s “hidden numbers” really are, and neither side budged.
What people said
• A large amount of "hidden cases": Japan is said to have more cases than Western countries where victims feel reluctant to go to police or don't want people around them to find out, leading to unreported, suffered-in-silence cases (the "dark number").
• Differences in legal definitions: Japan long used narrow definitions like "forced sexual intercourse" and "forced indecency," though legal reforms have since pushed for tougher penalties and revised definitions.
Sweden's per-capita rape rate is 63x Japan's.
Even if you assume Nordic countries catch 100% of cases while Japan only catches 10%, there's still more than a 6x gap.
That's because countries like Sweden define sex crimes more broadly.
Japan just narrows the definition to forcibly cover up sex crimes and keep the numbers down.
You lose again.
Japan's definition of sex crime is actually pretty broad though.
And what's your source for that? A 63x gap from Japan isn't just "a lot" — it's a difference no amount of statistical spin is going to erase.
And when you actually look into it, there's data showing the Nordic countries have plenty of unreported cases too.
https://www.elle.com/jp/culture/a61969764/storasyster-sweden-support-organization-for-sexual-victims-240830/
If you actually look into it, it's obvious. Anyone gullible enough to be fooled by this thread should quit the internet.
If sex crimes aren't even being counted, then the numbers don't mean anything for Japan anyway 😁
No way the hidden number is even bigger than Japan's, when Japan is already miles ahead in the sex industry lol
Japan actually has relatively few sex workers by global standards though.
It's not that there are few — prostitution has just become the norm here lol
Same with AV (adult video), same with FC2 (a Japanese platform known for amateur/adult video sharing).
It's just become so commonplace nobody even blinks anymore lol
Brothels overseas are a totally different scale than in Japan though.
Something like Germany's FKK (large sauna-club-style brothels) with their park-like layouts would never fly in Japan.
That would've been illegal even back in the old "rape" law days.
Then why did a new law just get made now, huh 😁
• Differences with the West: In the West (Netherlands, Germany, etc.), some countries fully legalize and regulate prostitution and procuring under certain conditions, while most of the US and many other countries lean toward tougher penalties, protecting women, and punishing those who pay for sex. Japan has formed its own unique gray zone: "nominally banned with penalty provisions on the books, but effectively tolerated and left to balloon unchecked as the sex industry."
Geez, looks like Japan's the only one this sloppy lol
The US, for one, actually ranks 6th in the world for number of sex industry workers.
If you actually look at the numbers including hidden cases for both Japan and overseas, it's obvious lol
Stop talking out of your imagination, are you a conspiracy theorist or something?
Comparisons and perspectives from abroad
• Differences with the West: In the West (Netherlands, Germany, etc.), some countries fully legalize and regulate prostitution and procuring under certain conditions, while most of the US and many other countries lean toward tougher penalties, protecting women, and punishing those who pay for sex. Japan has formed its own unique gray zone: "nominally banned with penalty provisions on the books, but effectively tolerated and left to balloon unchecked as the sex industry."
Since Japan's the only one this sloppy, that argument doesn't work lol
Consent has always been required.
It's just how you had to show lack of consent that changed, with the "non-consensual intercourse" offense from over 10 years ago.
So basically it didn't exist, huh 😁
No way — other countries broaden their crime definitions and beef up social support specifically to avoid missing cases like that, making it easier for people to come forward.
You'd think normally that the more cases there are, the more unreported ones there'd be too.
Because it's inconvenient for the preferred conclusion that "Japan alone is the terrible one!"
Japan's legal system is in good order and the police force actually functions.
Do you know nothing about other countries?
Sounds like a "developed" country where a trial can run for years on faked DNA evidence without anyone noticing lol
That's rich coming from a country where "hostage justice" (prolonged pretrial detention used to pressure confessions) is allowed.
Is that so?
Comparisons and perspectives from abroad
• Differences with the West: In the West (Netherlands, Germany, etc.), some countries fully legalize and regulate prostitution and procuring under certain conditions, while most of the US and many other countries lean toward tougher penalties, protecting women, and punishing those who pay for sex. Japan has formed its own unique gray zone: "nominally banned with penalty provisions on the books, but effectively tolerated and left to balloon unchecked as the sex industry."
Going by what's posted above,
it's pretty clear Japan simply has a structure that makes the numbers harder to capture in the first place.
Rather than "hidden numbers," maybe it's just that Japan's legislation on sex crimes is still lax.
You can't fairly compare a country with a loose gray zone to one tightening its countermeasures and penalties — that's just how the process works, nothing to do with feminism.
That's just one aspect of it — doesn't prove there's no hidden number though, does it?
Re: #139 and the like are just spewing wishful thinking like "it must be low because of XYZ!" — but when it comes to "so what's it actually like?" they can't answer.
Background and key points of this discussion
In Japan, the 2023 revision of the Penal Code renamed the offense of “forced sexual intercourse” to “non-consensual sexual intercourse,” reorganizing the requirements around whether consent was given — and the definition and enforcement of sex crimes varies widely from country to country. Because of this, simply comparing the raw number of cases police have accepted across countries is said to have its limits. The “Sweden is 63 times Japan” figure raised in the thread likely reflects differences in how thoroughly unreported cases are captured and how broadly the offense is defined, and can’t be fully explained by either side’s argument alone. What’s easy for readers to misread is jumping to the simplistic conclusion that “more hidden cases = more actual victims than other countries” — and indeed, no one in the thread presented objective data on the actual scale of Japan’s hidden numbers, so it ultimately ended in a stalemate.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Live News General) thread “[Sad News] Turns Out the Reason Japan’s Sex Crime Numbers Are Low Compared to Others Is Just That They’re Not Recognized“.
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