JR: “Naked Festival” Posters = Sexual Harassment
A 1,000-year-old “naked festival” in which men gather in loincloths to pray for good luck is under fire today because an advertisement poster created by the Iwate Prefecture town that hosts the event has been banned by Japan Railways for “sexual harassment.”
Mainichi has the story:
The Oshu Municipal Government had sought permission from the Morioka branch of JR East to display the posters advertising Kokuseki Temple’s Somin Festival at stations, but JR East said the posters could not be displayed unless the images were changed.
“As sexual harassment becomes more of a problem, the standards for displaying posters in public spaces are becoming stricter,” a representative of the Morioka branch of JR East explained. “It wasn’t just that it was out of line because there was nakedness; the pictures showed things that were particularly unpleasant for women, such as chest hair, and it was decided that showing them things they didn’t want to see was sexual harassment.”
Fuji TV asked some random women about the poster, and most of them did not consider the poster to be sexual harassment:
Asahi TV’s news segment selectively aired clips of younger women grossed out by the poster:
Most of those opposed to the poster focused their objections on the beard and body hair of the model. This indeed appears to be the biggest issue with the poster when you compare it to the 2006 poster for the same event, which had plenty of loincloths but didn’t get any complaints when JR East approved its placement in many stations:
The message seems pretty clear: beard + body hair = too manly. Unfortunately, the Oshu Municipal Government was not aware that their poster was overflowing with offensively hairy manliness, and they will now be unable to promote their festival as they had originally planned.
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Is it just me, or do I see man-boobs in that picture?
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I see them too!!
It’s unpleasant, yes (I don’t like chest hair myself), but not offensive and not sexual harrassment.
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Wait, so just because of the beard and the hairy chest it became sexual harassment and unacceptable compared to last years one?
My hige is not allowed on trains T_T
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Err, perhaps JR ought to look inside their average train where they’ll see no end of bikini girls and saucy language in adverts for the weekly rags and manga that I would think would be more offensive to the average woman.
I hope no JR guards asks me to button up my shirt top button come the summer least my hairiness offend…
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Gotta agree with Ken Y-N here. If you can read sexually explicit material on the train, a bit of man boobie is not hurting anyone.
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This is just stupid. There’s no harm in that poster, even if it is something I’d rather not look at. While it may be in poor taste for teenage girls(what teenage girl do you know in any country who would say “Oh yeah, that’s awesome!” to that poster?) the women around the age of the men in the poster didn’t seem to care at all. Not to mention, it’s been around for 1000 yrs, so they should at least be expecting it by now.
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If displaying that poster is sexual harassment, then weren’t Fuji TV and Asahi sexually harassing those women by flashing the poster at them? I think we need news coverage on this flagrant new bout of sexual, hairy-man-boob-fueled harassment as perpetrated by the Japanese news media!
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I’m amused that a poster, showing absolutely no nudity, can be considered “sexual harassment”. Too often are people taught that they’re being “victimized” by frivolous subjects such as this.
What happened to the days where if you saw something that you didn’t like, you simply moved on and didn’t give a second thought about it?
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How is this sexual harrasment? It’s a POSTER…
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That’s hilarious, must suck for the guy who’s on the poster.
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Like many other commenters, I don’t see it as sexual harassment either. I think the JR staff are overreacting. The chest hair’s a bit キモイ, but it still isn’t harassment…
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pfff, ridiculous from JR staff, some of the advertising now is bordering on nude!
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I can’t say it’s sexually harassing anyone at all, but I can’t imagine what sort of person would want to attend the event based on that poster. 気持ち悪い！
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Fuji TV should have had an actor in a loincloth board the train to test the reactions ^^;
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I thought it is a poster of a Kaijyu movie.
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I like the poster because the expression of that guy made me lol.
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They are just simply crazy. They would say I’m harassing them only because I have bear and mustache; common.
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that picture was taken in konomiya not iwate. it was actually taken in 2003. i know, coz thats me in the pic. didnt realise i was having a bad beard day.
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So that was you in Iwate being interviewed on the news at the time about the fuss?
Because that is who the TV stations talked to, the bearded guy in the front, which you say is you, which must mean we all saw you on the TV news!
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