In December 2017, the #MeToo movement finally reached Japan after three women decided to speak out against their abusers. The experiences of these three women provide insights into the challenges Japanese women face when speaking out about their experiences of sexual assault.
While the #MeToo movement is generally regarded to have started in October 2017, when multiple women spoke out about their experiences of being allegedly sexually assaulted by Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, the movement got its start in Japan in May 2017 when the hashtag #FightTogetherWithShiori started to trend on Japanese Twitter. The hashtag was created in support of a woman, known simply at the time as “Shiori”, who appeared on television to allege she was sexually assaulted by a well-known journalist in 2015.
Shiori Ito, who is best known simply as ‘Shiori’, also frequently appears in numerous interviews both seeking justice and to highlight the problem of sexual assault in Japan.
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