The BBC spoke up about this in an investigation that they used to track down the owner of three pornographic websites dedicated to this exact issue
The BBC has published an investigation into some pornographic websites selling videos depicting harassment of women on public transport. This is a very popular genre in both Japan and other Asian countries, and the BBC investigation explains some of the mechanics behind these videos and their proliferation. Apparently, the videos are illegal and are considered a serious social issue in Japan and beyond.
The three sites that are the focus of the investigation are called DingBuZhu, Chihan and Jieshe: All three are owned by a Chinese man who calls himself Uncle Qi on the sites and whose nickname for those who work there who know him is Maomi, “kitten “. Chinese. The man’s real name is Tang Zhuoran: the man is not only the owner of the three sites, but also the perpetrator of many of the harassments depicted therein. And according to BBC reconstructions, Chikan, the name of this type of pornographic video, is very popular in the video industry. According to the BBC, the operator of these sites earns tens of thousands of euros every month from videos.
Chikan pornographic videos are usually shot in crowded public places, especially subways and buses in several Asian countries: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. In most of these videos, which are very often shot during rush hour, a man secretly films a woman from behind, follows her to a crowded place, and then gropes or abuses her, taking advantage of the crowd.
According to Saito Akiyoshi, a psychologist and author of a book on the so-called Chikan, molesters of this type, women report the incident only 10 percent of the time. Much more often, probably out of shame because sex is still very often experienced as taboo and because in Japan yelling at or insulting someone is considered particularly brutal, the woman endures it until the moment she has to get off.
Chikan is a long-discussed issue in Japan, leading to the arrests of thousands of people every year, and has recently attracted attention abroad as well. For example, in Canada and the United Kingdom, tourists traveling to Japan are advised to beware of this type of harassment, for which a campaign has been launched locally, including posting pins that say “stop” chikan ‘ are being distributed: The campaign was launched by Takako, a woman interviewed by the BBC who suffered numerous harassment of this kind in her youth.
In a Yokohama neighborhood, also in Japan, there’s even a sex club called “Rush Hour” that recreates the atmosphere of a crowded subway, with private rooms decorated like subway cars, membership cards showing like Public transit passes look like, and sound systems that replicate the sounds of the subway. According to the operators, the place allows men to let their fantasies run free without harming other people.
According to the BBC, Chikan videos are now extremely widespread and are among the most popular in the Japanese porn industry.
The BBC case that followed began precisely with the visibility that user Uncle Qi had on many of Chikan’s pornographic websites. His account was linked to a PayPal account that received Japanese yen, and by viewing the various videos, the research authors identified the Tokyo subway station from which the user appeared to be shooting most of his videos: that of Ikebukuro in the middle of Tokyo.
By entering the email address into Google Contacts, Gmail’s contact management tool, the survey authors selected his profile picture — a young man with a particular hairstyle and heavy makeup — and uploaded it to Google Images, the forwarded it to Noctis Zang, a 30-year-old singer of Chinese descent who lives in Tokyo and is a member of a musical group called The Versus.
Through a little research, the authors of the investigation found that a while ago on the Chinese social network Weibo, a member of the same band had accused the singer of collaborating with another person, Lupus Fu, on a series of pornographic websites: he had done so also shared a video showing the history of Noctis and featuring some of the Chikan sites in question.
By that time, an undercover BBC journalist posing as a musical talent scout named Ian had tracked down Noctis, met him at a Tokyo club and started dating him (the BBC investigation lasted a year). After some time, Ian had told Noctis that his company was also interested in investing in pornographic sites, Noctis had introduced him to Lupus Fu and the two had also told him about another person, Maomi. When the reporter mentioned the DingBuZhu website in a mock-casual way, the two told him that he owned it.
This is how the journalist found out that Maomi not only owned the websites, but also had a group of collaborators with whom he managed them and who promoted the videos on various social networks, including Twitter: in total, he managed a group of 15 people, including 10 in China, who made videos with his own name. He received 30 to 100 videos a month from China. The investigation’s authors said that Maomi, who was described by his staff as an insanely reticent person, refused to meet the undercover journalist for some time, only to later agree to meet him at a Tokyo karaoke club.
During that interview, in which Ian pretended to be interested in the profitability of his business, Maomi, by showing the transactions on his mobile phone, had said that he was making the equivalent of $800 to $1,600 a day from the videos he uploaded and bought online , mostly by Chinese users for a total of around 10,000 subscribers to his channel. Ian had since sued Uncle Qi and Maomi had admitted it was him.
BBC reporters managed to discover his true identity, Tang Zhuoran, in a subsequent meeting where they saw the name on his credit card. Today it seems that Zhuoran has left Japan and Noctis and Lupus are no longer working for him.
– Also read: The Law Restricting the Distribution of Sexual Images in Japan
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