A 64-year-old elementary school janitor in Hamada, Shimane, took a woman in her 20s out to dinner on June 9. Afterward he drove her to a roadside station, sat her in his car, and kissed her without consent. She later felt sick enough to tell the school. When the board of education asked him about it, his explanation was: “I thought she was cute. I regret doing it.”
They gave him a one-month suspension for conduct that was “completely inappropriate and undermined public trust.” He quit the same day. No criminal charge.
The facts are not in dispute. What jumped out was how different papers told the same story.
The legal language for this is pretty clear. A non-consensual kiss like that is わいせつな行為 — an obscene/indecent act — and the crime on the books is 不同意わいせつ, non-consensual obscenity. One local paper actually put that in the headline: non-consensual kiss, obscene act, disciplinary action.
Most of the others did not. They went with “sudden kiss,” “sudden peck,” “extremely inappropriate,” and then made sure you saw his line about thinking she was cute. Same dinner, same car, same lack of consent. Different temperature.
That is the habit. Soft verbs, the perpetrator’s excuse up top, the victim’s aftermath somewhere in paragraph four if it appears at all. “Inappropriate” is a workplace-HR word. “Sudden kiss” sounds like a rom-com beat that went a little too far. Neither one says what happened: he put his mouth on someone who did not agree to it.
Japan’s sexual-offense laws have been rewritten in recent years, including a clearer consent standard. The press language has not always caught up. When the headline leads with how cute he thought she was, the story is already half-laundered before you finish the first sentence.
He is gone from the school. She had to report it herself. And a lot of readers were invited to treat it as an awkward date that got out of hand.