Teenage girls molested by Japan’s ‘chikan’ train perverts offered exam resits

It follows widespread reports of train gropers targeting students who were heading to university entrance exams over the weekend

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Students at the University of Tokyo at the start of the two-day unified university entrance examinations on Saturday. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 8:00am, 23 Jan 2025

Young women who were groped en route to last weekend’s university entrance exams in Japan will be allowed to sit an alternative test this weekend, authorities have announced – an unprecedented move that highlights what experts call a growing and organised menace posed by chikan, a Japanese term for perverts or gropers.

The decision comes after widespread reports of chikan targeting teenage candidates on crowded trains as they travelled to the high-stakes exams on Saturday and Sunday. Victims who reported incidents to police or railway staff will be permitted to retake the tests, officials said.

For many, the timing of the assaults is no coincidence. Police told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that they routinely observe a spike in social media posts by men exchanging tips on how to exploit the crush of passengers during exam season.

Officers say perpetrators calculate that young women, fearing delays to their crucial exams, are less likely to confront their assailants or report the assault to authorities.

Young Japanese women wearing kimono stand in a train in Yokohama earlier this month. Police have stepped up efforts to combat “chikan” train gropers. Photo: EPA-EFE

“Gropers find joy in secretly touching and troubling women,” said Sumie Kawakami, a lecturer at Yamanashi Gakuin University and author of a book on gender issues. “They do not want to attack them, but they get pleasure and a thrill from secretly subjugating these women, of putting themselves into a place of superiority and power over them.”