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响应斑竹号召，这是第十一帖~单看题目就知道是热点话题，宅男们浮想连篇；但是这里讨论的是日本社会婚姻伦理和法律的关系，发达的东亚岛国在两性方面的现状会对邻国的我们有什么影响？值得想想~Japan and sex
Waltzinginto bedrooms and brothels
A new book on loveand the law in JapanJun 2nd2011
Lovesick Japan: Sex, Marriage, Romance, Law. By MarkWest.
ON FEBRUARY 19th 2006 Kimiko and her married lover Tetsuo checked into an Osaka love-hotel, swallowed sedatives and slit their wrists. Whenthey awoke at midnight and realised their suicides had failed,Tetsuo strangled Kimiko at her request, then tried to hang himself and cut his wrists again. Unsuccessful, he called the police. At thetrial, where an American court would consider questions of intent, the Japanesecourt based its ruling on whether Kimiko was in love. If she was, the court reasoned, she may have consented to her murder and Tetsuo would receive a lighter sentence.
Many facets of Japan seem mysterious to outsiders. Courts are sometimes obliged to seek answers to questions about love that may well be unanswerable. Yet in cases where love might indeed have a bearing, such as divorce, judges usually ignore the emotion entirely. Teasing out the mysteries of Japanese society by way of its statutes is the speciality of Mark West, a professor at Michigan Law School.
In “Lovesick Japan”he trolls through 2,700 court opinions to paint a picture of a country that treats marriage more as an economic contract than an emotional bond. As seen by the judiciary, a little adultery should not trump marriage as an institution.“Japanese courts have no problem waltzing into bedrooms and brothels in ways that are not essential to deciding the case at hand,” he writes. “What they find there rarely seems to please them.”
According tosurveys, there seems to be less sex going on in Japan than in any other big country. A Health Ministry study in 2006 reported that as many as one-third of all married couples under the age of 50 had sex, or even kissed or held hands, less than once a month. Indeed, kissing itself was long considered unhygienic. It was encouraged during the American occupation in the belief that such Western ways might promote democracy and erode the patriarchal household system.
Still, the Japaneseare not shy about their fetishes and the law takes a permissive attitude to commercial sex. It is not illegal to pay for sex; a 1997 study showed that more than half of all menover 25 had done just that (and that for many of them it had been theirfirst sexual experience). Though statutes prohibit everything from pimping to providing the venue, prostitution itself carries no penalty. And prostitution is defined exclusively as intercourse: other acts don’tcount. As a result, “soaplands” (bathhouses where menare serviced by women) and “delivery health” (women dispatched to homes orhotels) are legitimate businesses.
Judges may also go far beyond their brief to comment on social mores, In one instance, in 1991, ajudge decided that modern appliances are partly responsible for failed marriages because they “give women time to contemplate”. Inthat particular case the judge rejected a wife’s request for divorce after years of physical abuse, living separately and even a suicide attempt because her husband did not cheat or gamble, and looked so forlorn in court. “Theyshould search together for the bluebird they were unable to find before,” the judge ruled. The reference to a “bluebird” is as jarring in Japanese as it is in English.
Judges use a multi-parttest, that does not include love, to approve a contested divorce. Yet love plays a part in cases where it is perhaps less relevant. For instance, sexualrelations with a minor is sometimes excused if the court rules there is love.Judges set out to decide whether the defendant is “earnest”, which means either in love or contemplating marriage.
In the case of rape,Japanese courts consider factors that American and European ones would not.Being drunk is a valid defence. One 1992 ruling suspended the sentences of two men out of compassion for what they “must have faced when the victim told them no”. A 1994 trial led to an acquittal in part because the victim’s “chastity isquestionable”: she had slept with her boyfriend after a second date.
An Osaka DistrictCourt ruling in 2008 acknowledged a victim’s lack of consent, but felt her resistance was insufficient. The 24-year-old man was simply told by the court to “reflect deeply” on his “inappropriate” act of having sex in a parked car on a public road with a 14-year-old he had met the day before. Japan’s penal code does notapply statutory rape to a person over 13.
A problem with MrWest’s book is that he tends to generalise on contemporary life fromwhat are clearly extreme cases, or from rulings that are 30 or so years old. Hemight, with advantage, have lifted his head from the law books and carried out more of the on-the-ground research that made the book he wrote in 2005, “Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide and Statutes”, so good. In that book he examined Japanese society through the lens of law. Here, hetakes the law and tries to make larger points about Japan. It is not quite assatisfying, nor is it such fun.
“Lovesick Japan”reveals more about the judiciary than it does about society. But that is still a tale worth telling. As for the late Kimiko and Tetsuo? “The court found love,” reports Mr West. Tetsuo was guilty only of aiding suicide and sentenced to a mere six and a half years in prison.
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