Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • For more than 120 years, Waseda University has been a place of higher learning, a finishing

  • school for Japan's elite.It's produced six prime ministers, hundreds of company presidents,

  • but now Waseda has also produced a scandal that has shocked Japan and terrified the university's

  • female students. Dozens of Waseda students, some seen here,

  • formed a social club called 'Super Free', an organisation that revolved around meticulously

  • planning and regularly executing gang rape.

  • I wasn't surprised. I think these things occur very often. It's

  • just that many people are not aware of it because the victim don't report.

  • Super Free would organise massive parties. Glossy brochures encouraged young

  • women to come along. The flyers targeted students from smaller out-of-town universities, urging

  • them to meet men from an elite one.

  • Ryuichi Daigo has been investigating the rape club story since it broke, and what he's discovered

  • is shocking.

  • Because those girls longed for the city life, they were willing to believe anything. They

  • thought skolling drinks was the Tokyo style. It's come out in court that some of the women

  • actually consented to be gang raped. They voluntarily submitted their bodies. Some later

  • became girlfriends of Super Free members.

  • The ABC has obtained extraordinary video footage that shows what happened after the parties

  • began.

  • The women outnumber the men 20 to 1. Proceedings are carefully orchestrated. Some of the techniques

  • are similar to those used by cults. The charismatic Super Free members certainly behave like gods,

  • whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

  • It's often said that Japanese people cannot do anything alone but, instead, have a

  • group mentality. This is an extreme example of that. The parties are like some kind of

  • cult or new religion.

  • The rape club made huge profits, which were distributed to the members. It had a pyramid

  • structure and this was the man at the top - Shinichiro Wada, the alleged mastermind.

  • Super Free's dream campus is hot and terrific - it's true!

  • After the party had been going for a few hours, selected women would be invited to a separate

  • VIP function at a nearby restaurant. The aim here was to get the potential victims as drunk

  • as possible.

  • They would play drinking games that were rigged to ensure the girl had to skull. The drinks

  • would be spiked with a type of vodka that's 96 per cent alcohol, but tasteless and odourless.

  • Wada once said that whoever invented the drink would be given a Nobel Prize.

  • As the women got drunk, one would be chosen and taken to a toilet. Members of Super Free

  • would stand in line to rape her.

  • Often, one club member would take a photo to embarrass the student into staying silent,

  • while another would be given the task of stopping her from going to the police.

  • The member who was particularly good at calming down women was Mr Kishimoto, the number two

  • man in the club. He was called 'Kisi The Bomb De-fuser'. Altogether, about 100 women were

  • raped. Around 50 men were involved. Some of the men prosecuted have said they only raped

  • once or twice. One said he did it 15 times.

  • 14 men have been put on trial. The Tokyo District Court found one of the club members guilty

  • of helping arrange the gang rape of a 20-year-old.

  • Toshiyuki Numazaki was sentenced to two years and 10 months in jail.

  • Kyoko Ogura is a lawyer who has represented scores of rape victims.Our law says

  • protection of personal property is more important than protection of women's sexual freedom.

  • I think it's absurd.

  • A growing number of people want the law changed. These men and women are all students of Waseda,

  • members of a very different organisation to Super Free -- the Gender Studies Club. As

  • far as they're concerned, the rape scandal is not just about a few men behaving very

  • badly, but reflects the way women are treated and depicted.

  • Since the old days, Japanese men have had a traditional role. If he dominates women,

  • he's regarded as a real man. The Super Free case is the tip of the iceberg.

  • Indecent Manga comics and adult videos are influencing sex crimes. There is very little

  • sex education in Japanese schools, so people get a lot of information from popular culture.

  • It dulls their awareness of what constitutes a crime.

  • Around 1.5 billion Manga comics are sold each year. Many are sexually explicit. Quite a

  • few feature heroes who have forced sex with women. This movie, 'Rapeman', is based on

  • a comic created in the '90s that's still popular today.Keisuke Uasake is a schoolteacher by

  • day, Japanese superhero by night. He rapes women who have wronged, broken up with boyfriends,

  • or swindled someone out of money. Often the woman ends up falling in love with the Rapeman.

  • She's certainly not presented as a victim.

  • I'm not giving you any sympathy. You can't go on as a woman if you get discouraged by

  • this sort of thing.

  • Ever since we were defeated in World War II, Japanese men have not been able to recover.

  • They have got weaker, while women have become stronger. Men have developed an inferiority

  • complex. That's why they like to read 'Rapeman'.

  • Other members of Super Free are yet to receive a verdict, including the alleged ringleader.

  • Their cases will only further the debate about Japan's treatment of women, rape and sexuality.

For more than 120 years, Waseda University has been a place of higher learning, a finishing

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it