Tokyo’s rush-hour trains are famous for their efficiency—and infamous for how tightly they pack human bodies together. In that enforced intimacy, groping has thrived for decades, largely discussed as a women’s issue. But new data suggest the reality is messier, more uncomfortable, and more widespread than the familiar stereotype of the male chikan (痴漢, sexual groper) and the silent female victim allows.
For generations, Japan’s conversation about sexual harassment on public transport has focused almost exclusively on women and girls. Posters in stations warn against chikan, police campaigns encourage victims to report, and women-only carriages (josei senyō sharyō, 女性専用車両) have become a routine feature of morning and evening commutes. These measures reflect a very real and persistent problem: surveys by government bodies and advocacy groups consistently show that a large proportion of women, especially students and young office workers, have experienced unwanted touching on trains or platforms.
Yet a recent Tokyo-area survey complicates this familiar picture. According to the findings, around one in six men said they had experienced groping or unwanted physical contact on public transport. The figure surprised many precisely because it clashes with entrenched assumptions about gender, vulnerability, and victimhood. In public discourse, men are rarely imagined as targets of sexual harassment, and even more rarely as victims who might fear speaking up.
Silence, however, is not accidental. It is reinforced by powerful cultural norms. The expectation of gaman (我慢, endurance or putting up with hardship) encourages people to tolerate discomfort without complaint, while meiwaku o kakenai (迷惑をかけない, not causing trouble to others) discourages drawing attention in crowded public spaces. On a packed train, accusing someone risks delaying the commute, disrupting dozens of strangers, and inviting scrutiny. For many victims, staying quiet feels like the least damaging option.
Women describe a particular psychological burden. In conditions where bodies are pressed together and movement is limited, it can be difficult to tell whether contact is accidental or deliberate. Victims often freeze, unsure whether to react, worried they might accuse the wrong person. Some who do speak out recount being questioned, doubted, or subtly blamed for where they stood or what they wore. As a result, many incidents go unreported, reinforcing the perception that harassment is less common than it actually is.
Men who experience groping face a different but equally heavy barrier. Admitting victimhood can conflict with expectations of masculinity and emotional self-control. Some men report being groped by other men, others by women, but in both cases shame and confusion are common. There is also the fear of not being taken seriously, or worse, being ridiculed. Advocacy groups note that male victims are far less likely to approach police or support services, which keeps their experiences largely invisible in official statistics.
The physical reality of Tokyo’s transport system amplifies these dynamics. During peak hours, trains routinely operate at well over capacity, creating an environment where plausible deniability thrives. A hand can linger; a body can press too closely; intent can always be denied. This ambiguity has long protected perpetrators while leaving victims doubting their own perceptions. Technology has offered some tools—smartphone reporting apps, discreet alerts to station staff—but uptake remains limited, and responsibility still falls heavily on those targeted.
Law enforcement responses have improved in visibility if not always in effectiveness. Police patrols at major stations are more common, and undercover officers are occasionally deployed to catch repeat offenders. Arrests make headlines, but critics argue that the system still demands courage, time, and emotional labour from victims who are already shaken and often in a hurry to get to work or school. The legal process can feel daunting, particularly when evidence is limited to fleeting moments in a moving crowd.
Women-only carriages, introduced as a harm-reduction measure, remain controversial. Many commuters welcome them as a refuge, yet they also underscore an uncomfortable reality: instead of eliminating harassment, the burden of avoidance is shifted onto potential victims. The existence of these carriages also highlights an overlooked truth revealed by recent surveys—harassment is not confined to one gender, and segregation cannot protect everyone.
Japan’s broader conversation around consent, power, and sexual violence is slowly evolving. The impact of the #MeToo movement, though quieter than in some countries, has encouraged more survivors to speak publicly. Recent legal reforms have expanded definitions of sexual crimes and acknowledged coercion more clearly, but social attitudes change more slowly. Public education campaigns increasingly stress that harassment is about violation, not desire—and that anyone can be affected.
What the new data ultimately reveal is not a competition over who suffers more, but a deeper, more unsettling picture of everyday life in one of the world’s most orderly cities. Groping on public transport is not an aberration committed by a few deviants; it is a systemic problem shaped by crowding, silence, and rigid ideas about gender. Until speaking up feels safer than enduring in silence—for women, for men, for everyone pressed together in those carriages—the problem will continue to move unnoticed from station to station, carried along by the morning rush.
I have taken Tokyo trains at rush hour often enough to know that the experience is sold internationally as a kind of urban spectacle. Look at us, we say, marvel at our discipline, our efficiency, our ability to compress millions of bodies into steel carriages that still run on time. What rarely makes it into the tourist brochures is what that compression actually feels like when you are inside it—and what it quietly enables.
Let’s be honest: when bodies are pressed together so tightly that breathing becomes a collective activity, “accidental” touch becomes the perfect alibi. I have stood there myself, counting stations, deciding whether that hand was just badly placed or deliberately exploring. That moment of doubt is not a bug in the system; it is the system. Groping thrives on hesitation, on ambiguity, on the social contract that says causing a scene is worse than being violated.
For years, Japan has framed this problem as a women’s issue, and women-only carriages are offered as proof that something is being done. I understand why many women use them. Survival is pragmatic. But let’s not pretend this is a solution. Segregation quietly accepts that harassment is inevitable and asks potential victims to reorganise their lives around it. Meanwhile, the rest of the train rolls on, unchanged.
What really caught my attention in the recent data is not that women are still being groped—that part is depressingly unsurprising—but that so many men finally admitted it happens to them too. One in six is not a rounding error. It is a crack in a very rigid story about who is allowed to be vulnerable. Male victims are expected to laugh it off, endure, or reinterpret violation as flattery. The same culture of gaman that silences women also strangles men, just with a different knot.
And this is where my patience runs out. We cannot keep pretending that sexual harassment is about uncontrollable desire, or “a few bad apples,” or the unavoidable side effect of crowded cities. It is about power, entitlement, and the certainty that most victims will freeze rather than fight. It is about knowing that politeness, shame, and fear of disruption are stronger than any warning poster.
Tokyo likes order. It likes rules. It likes systems that work. So here is an uncomfortable thought: if groping persists at this scale, it is not because Japan lacks discipline, but because the discipline is misdirected. It is imposed on victims, not perpetrators. Until the real social taboo becomes touching without consent—not speaking up—the trains will stay efficient, punctual, and quietly unsafe.
And yes, I still ride them. But I no longer confuse silence with civility.