Japanese ‘chikan’ perverts use Apple’s AirDrop to sexually harass women
- Men who grope women in public, a long-standing problem in the country, are now sending explicit photographs on public transport.
- There are around 1,800 arrests for groping every year
Local media reported in early October on a case of what is being dubbed “AirDrop chikan”, in which a photo – usually sexually explicit – is sent via the AirDrop function on Apple mobile phones and received by any phone that has not been set to reject messages from unknown senders.
A woman in her 20s told a local television station that she was on a train in Nagoya when she suddenly received a photo of a man’s genitals on her mobile phone.
“I was frightened, but I was always angry,” she said.
The woman’s experience is not unusual, it appears, and a number of victims have taken to Twitter to share some of the images that they have received.
A user with the name TheNazu said she felt “awful” when she received a picture of two naked men jumping around on the top of a mountain. Another user posted a screenshot of a drawing she received of a woman’s body in underwear but with the head of a Disney cartoon character.
Gropers who prey on female commuters have long been a problem in Japan, and train operators, police and local authorities have struggled to devise ways to stamp the problem out. Many train companies have installed women-only carriages for the busiest times of the day, while others have started installing closed-circuit cameras or deploying plain-clothes officers to catch molesters in the act.