SNA (Toronto) — With a constant barrage of berating comments like “you are lowering Japan’s image,” “feminists are garbage,” and “women aren’t fit to be working,” the fight for female rights and dignity within Japanese online spaces seems to be a neverending battle.

TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform, allows its users to record up to three minutes of video. Through the use of hashtags and scarily accurate algorithms, users can experience a cocktail of content specially tailored to their interests.

Some people, however, seem to be most interested in consuming content they disagree with purely so that they can then harass the poster. This is especially evident in the comment sections of the women who post about feminist issues in Japan.

While any survey of this sort must at this point necessarily be anecdotal–as no statistics are available–the character of some of these exchanges can be eye-opening.

One user, kinokino1226 (Naomi), found that the volume of hate comments increased after she began posting videos in Japanese. Under one of her videos, which criticized the Japanese government’s handling of the Korean Comfort Women issue, one user responded, “Wow, Koreans are uncontrollably saying stuff at this point. No wonder why Japanese people back in the day were so sick of you people!”

Naomi responded with a video presenting the results of her ethnicity test, showing that she is 100% Japanese–and it was not like her ethnicity was any secret before this video, as she had spoken about it many times before.

This comment revealed just how quick some Japanese nationalists are to call someone Korean in a derogatory manner just because they criticize some aspect of Japanese government policy.

Under another one of Naomi’s videos talking about sexual assault on Japanese trains, another user commented, “Women-Only Cars on trains are sexist towards men. It’s just like how racist a Black People-Only car would be.”

Naomi expressed her frustration about the character of some of these comments, declaring, “As soon as a woman raises her voice just a little bit, there will be these people who say ‘the way you speak is so harsh.’ It’s disgusting!”

In another of her videos, Naomi advanced her belief that Japan was governed mostly by men who have dominated positions of power and spread a culture of discrimination.

Her analysis ties into that of another user, mishadesu (Misha), who replied to a comment saying, “So male politicians can’t protect your rights?”

In her response video, Misha stated that male politicians aren’t protecting the rights of minorities, which is why there is a problem. She used the example of the time the government decided to send a care package to victims affected by an earthquake. What was not included, however, were menstrual products.

A response to Misha’s video asserted that “feminists always say ‘men don’t understand or support feminism.’ Yeah, why should we support something that doesn’t benefit us?”

Not only did this response dismiss the struggles that minorities face in their daily lives, but also demonstrated ignorance about the feminism movement as a whole.

In Misha’s response, she brought up the issue of karoshi (death from overwork) and noted how the majority of the victims are men, due to the widespread notion that it is their responsibility to work and be the breadwinners of the family.

The pressure to conform to a strict definition of masculinity can be so powerful that some men fail to perceive how the patriarchy affects them negatively as well.

For Misha, these comments were more tame examples that opened up enlightening discussions. Unfortunately, more common are negative comments that are blatantly hateful.

“You’re trying to raise women’s status, but all you’re doing is ruining women’s image, so you should stop talking!”

“Yeah, she’s never gonna be able to get married!”

“This is what Todai students are like? I thought you guys were smart, but I guess not. Feminists are garbage!”

These are only a select few comments from the accounts of two Japanese women who have tried to introduce feminist topics on TikTok. There are many more women like Naomi and Misha, and an even larger number of faceless, nameless commenters itching to berate them.

While the issue of online misogyny is certainly not unique to Japan, the scope and nature of some of these comments is atrocious. In a society that often demands conformity, Japanese can seem especially vicious in those online spaces in which they can hide their identities. Regardless, users like Naomi and Misha continue to carry on the fight to improve an often discriminatory culture.

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