Beyond Panchira

The Mainichi Daily News recently reported on a loathsome trend in Japan that makes "upskirting" ("panchira" in Japanese) look tame. In the underground DVD market in Japan, the new attraction is footage - distributed via the Net and DVDs - that shows men running up to unsuspecting women, pulling up their dresses, and pulling down their underwear. One writer told the Daily News reporter, "They're all underground movies, so the faces and other parts you see are all real. And it's the horrified reaction of these women that's apparently the biggest turn-on for the perverts who are into this kind of thing. They're really popular." The writer also estimated that with five DVDs of this type on the market, each containing about 30 filmings, at least 150 woman have been subjected to these assaults. Some filmmakers are reportedly expanding into footage that shows women wearing tube tops having their tops ripped off.

In the United States, there is supposedly active debate in some quarters on whether upskirting should receive First Amendment protection, at least in some situations when the upskirting is shot in a public place. [See Wikipedia.] This new wave of behavior in Japan isn't even close to upskirting -- it's sexual assault, plain and simple, and should be treated as such. It's also, like upskirting, a paramount example of the need for laws that vindicate, as Justice Brandeis elegantly put it more than a century ago, "the right to be let alone." If upskirting can be made a misdemeanor, as the State of Maryland just did, this new practice, if it's not already covered by current sexual-assault statutes, should be made a felony before it catches on anywhere else in the world.