【山口敬之/準強姦揉み消し問題】She Broke Japan’s Silence on Rape
TOKYO ? It was a spring Friday night when one of Japan’s best-known television journalists invited Shiori Ito out for a drink. Her internship at a news service in Tokyo was ending, and she had inquired about another internship with his network.
They met at a bar in central Tokyo for grilled chicken and beer, then went to dinner. The last thing she remembers, she later told the police, was feeling dizzy and excusing herself to go to the restroom, where she passed out.
By the end of the night, she alleged, he had taken her back to his hotel room and raped her while she was unconscious.
The journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the Washington bureau chief of the Tokyo Broadcasting System at the time and a biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, denied the charge and, after a two-month investigation, prosecutors dropped the case.
Then Ms. Ito decided to do something women in Japan almost never do: She spoke out.
