Japan’s military build-up strained by sexual harassment issues

TOKYO: As Japan embarks on a major military build-up, it’s struggling to fill its ranks with the women that its forces need and its policymakers have pledged to recruit. Following a wave of sexual harassment cases, the number of women applying to join the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) decreased by 12 percent in the year ending March 2023, after several years of steady growth. Some victims have said an entrenched culture of harassment could deter women from signing up.
But nine months after the defense ministry pledged to take drastic measures, it has no plans to take action on a key recommendation issued by an independent panel of experts — implementing a national system for reviewing anti-harassment training standards — according to two ministry officials responsible for training.
The government-appointed panel had identified in a report published in August that the military’s superficial harassment education — which made only limited mention of sexual harassment — and a lack of centralized oversight of such training were contributing factors to cultural problems within the institution.
The head of the panel, Makoto Tadaki, said some training sessions — one of which Reuters attended — were at odds with the gravity of the situation.
A servicewoman who is suing the government over an alleged sexual harassment incident also said in an interview that the education she received over the past 10 years was ineffective.
Calls to root out harassment and increase the number of servicewomen come as aging Japan faces rising threats from China, North Korea and Russia and navigates the burdensome legacy of its wartime past.
Women make up just 9 percent of military personnel in Japan, compared to 17 percent in the United States, Tokyo’s key security ally.
The SDF referred Reuters’ questions to the defense ministry, which said in an emailed response that harassment “must never be allowed, as it destroys mutual trust between service members and undermines their strength.”
The ministry said it had hosted harassment prevention lectures by external experts since 2023, made sessions more discussion-based and planned to invite specialists to review its training this year.
It did not respond to questions on whether it would implement the panel’s recommendation to centralize oversight of training. After ex-soldier Rina Gonoi went public with allegations of sexual assault in 2022, the defense ministry conducted a survey that year that uncovered more than 170 alleged sexual harassment incidents in the SDF. Another alleged victim was an Okinawa-based servicewoman who accused a senior of making lewd remarks toward her in 2013. She was then publicly named in harassment training materials distributed to her colleagues in 2014, she told Reuters. The alleged perpetrator was not identified in the materials.
Reuters does not name alleged victims of sexual harassment. Her allegations were corroborated with documents in the lawsuit she filed last year, after she said she exhausted an internal complaints process.