CATDOLL: The lowly person is the photographer? Why are Japanese Cosplayers frequently sexually harassed?

In recent years, as scandals in the COSPLAY circle continue to be exposed, ordinary netizens have a feeling that the COSPLAY circle is "really messy". In fact, not only in China, but even in Japan, the birthplace of COSPLAY, COSPLAYERs often encounter sexual harassment. Some Japanese media have specially reported on this issue.

At the end of March this year, an article titled "14-year-old girl cosplays, forced to strike "extreme" poses, engages in indecent behavior - a despicable trap set by "photography club" enthusiasts on SNS" was published in the "Core of the Shock Incident" series of the electronic version of Japan's "Sankei Shimbun", which caused an uproar in the cosplay community.

The report detailed the entire incident in which an unemployed man (51 years old) lured a 14-year-old girl in the second grade of junior high school into a grove under the pretext of a "photography meeting" and molested her, and was arrested in January this year. After reading the report, netizens angrily expressed various opinions such as "scum, unforgivable" and "there is something wrong with girls who have no sense of crisis", but there were also many voices such as "I had a similar dangerous experience" and "my friend was forcibly taken to a hotel."

Although COSPLAYER is now considered one of Japan's main "Cool Japan" contents, there are also hidden dangers for the young girls.

"Two-person solo photography" - the man's attitude suddenly changed

In this case, the arrested man met the victim’s classmate through the COSPLAY SNS and held several photo sessions with the classmate. He gained the classmate’s trust because he never did anything suspicious. Therefore, the classmate invited the victim, who had always been interested in COSPLAY, and contacted the man in the name of holding a photo exhibition.

On that day, the man filmed the girls who were cosplaying as Kagamine Rin in the wild, and after a while he asked for "separate filming for two people", so the classmate was left in the car. As soon as the girl entered the woods, the man's attitude suddenly changed. The man asked for radical poses such as "open your legs a little more" and even performed indecent acts such as touching the girl's lower body. The girl was too frightened to resist, and the incident was not exposed until she went home and asked her mother for help.

Similar incidents have occurred in many places across Japan. In April last year, a Kyoto man claimed to be shooting cosplay models, but he was secretly selling nude videos of junior high school girls and making huge profits from it. He was later arrested for violating the Child Welfare Law and the Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Prohibition Law.

Regarding this situation, a woman who conducts cosplay activities in Tokyo said, "There are indeed some bad users who use cosplay SNS to date. Young girls are less vigilant and are easily deceived. Even though most cosplayers are very vigilant and the operators have screened bad users, the number of girls who are victimized has not decreased. In addition, there are many cases where indoor cosplay photography uses love hotels for shooting, and there are also cases of victims being victimized by double photography after entering the hotel."

Of course, most photographers are serious about their work, but even if there are only a few bad photographers, it will leave an unhealed wound in the hearts of women who have been sexually assaulted.

"Low-level photographer" goes berserk during COSPLAY event

There are not only bad photographers at photo sessions, but also otaku events such as doujinshi exhibitions gather a large number of cosplayers. You can often see scenes shot by amateur photographers.

In such activities, there is a problem of a large number of "low-level photographers". "Low-level photographers" are photographers who aim at the underwear of cosplayers wearing skirts and shoot with low-angle tilted cameras.

For example, at a comic exhibition held in Osaka last year, a female cosplayer was surrounded by a large number of low-level photographers, and this incident was publicly reported. Most of the low-level photographers took photos without permission, and some of them posted the videos and photos they took on adult websites for sale.

In addition, there were some low-level photographers at Comiket held at the end of last year. A woman said on Twitter that she stopped them from taking pictures of her underwear from behind, but was scolded instead.

If you are surrounded by a large number of low-level photographers, it is difficult to stop them from taking pictures. If you muster up the courage to remind them, you will be criticized back, which is really hateful. At present, everyone is calling on the industry to implement shooting regulations such as "no low-angle shooting and abnormal close-up without permission". However, bad low-level photographers can always cleverly take pictures secretly.

Cosplayers who wear overly revealing clothes “for fame”

The bad photographers' behavior is ridiculous, but on the other hand, some people point out that another reason for this problem is that "COSPLAYER's overly exposed clothing is also inducing crime." In fact, in some COSPLAYER activities, you can indeed see scenes where the clothing is overly exposed due to excessive emphasis on the cleavage or wearing miniskirts.

The cosplayer who broke the news also said: "For the purpose of photo promotion and to become famous, cosplayers attract attention for excessive exposure. These women will deliberately dress up so that their underwear is exposed. On the other hand, cosplayers will boldly expose themselves in order to perfectly reproduce the characters they cosplay, but the photographer does not know whether the cosplayer is intentional or unintentional. Although some cosplayers do not deliberately expose their underwear, they will also be targeted by low-level photographers."

In some monthly magazines, cosplay social networks were described as "websites that fool women will be hooked immediately," and a method of fooling women with simple steps was introduced. Negative publicity like this will also increase the rate of sexual crimes in photo sessions.

Of course, most cosplayers will ignore suspicious invitations, but there are indeed young women who are easily deceived. Although the perpetrators are bad guys, in order to prevent victims from appearing again, the self-defense awareness of female cosplayers also needs to be improved.