April 9, 2025
Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Tatsumi Kotaro at a Diet committee meeting on April 8 demanded that the government create a law aimed at banning all forms of harassment.
At the meeting of the House of Representatives Internal Affairs and Communications Committee, Tatsumi took up a case in which a female JCP local assemblymember who proposed “free sanitary pads in public toilets” on a social media site received a large number of death threat e-mails. Stating that behind this case lies misogyny, he called for the government efforts to eradicate misogyny-based verbal and physical violence against women.
Tatsumi pointed out that sexual harassment is a form of misogyny, and said that among OECD members, only Japan and Chili have no laws that impose criminal punishment for sexual harassment and provide no legal recourse to victims. He demanded that the government establish a law to prohibit sexual and other forms of harassment as called for by the ILO Convention on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work, which was adopted in 2019.
At the meeting of the House of Representatives Internal Affairs and Communications Committee, Tatsumi took up a case in which a female JCP local assemblymember who proposed “free sanitary pads in public toilets” on a social media site received a large number of death threat e-mails. Stating that behind this case lies misogyny, he called for the government efforts to eradicate misogyny-based verbal and physical violence against women.
Tatsumi pointed out that sexual harassment is a form of misogyny, and said that among OECD members, only Japan and Chili have no laws that impose criminal punishment for sexual harassment and provide no legal recourse to victims. He demanded that the government establish a law to prohibit sexual and other forms of harassment as called for by the ILO Convention on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work, which was adopted in 2019.
