I just posted this on my blog, but sticking it here too, for greater exposure and more ideas!
It takes alot to piss me off. But this guy has done it with flying colours. It appears there is a certain professor at a certain univeristy in Kyoto who is nothing short of a lecherous pervert. Actually, there's probably more than one, but this guy is something special. He is a senior professor in charge of certain papers. And during the course of his paper, the girls in his first-year class can not pass unless they do something special.
This man has friends in the Japanese Army. So, he coerces the girls in his class (whether it's all of them, or just the ones to his liking, I don't know) to go along on "group dates" with members of the army. I outlined the deal with "group dating" in a previous entry, so won't go into it here. When I heard this, I was absolutely livid. I got this story out of my girlfriend tonight over dinner. She had to go along to one of these things.
The girls must go along and be charming for the army men, pour their drinks, and as if that weren't enough, exchange their phone numbers to ensure future contact.
Is there any academic reason at all behind this? What's the reason for it? Well, it turns out that the official reason given by the professor is that army guys are apparently too busy to find girlfriends themselves, so he helps hook them up. By pimping out his pretty young students. It's like doing a national service or something.
This perversity forced my girlfriend to actually withdraw from her paper. Now, on her record sheet which I saw tonight, the long string of about thirty marks of high-80s or 90s, is marred by a single "did not complete". She actually had the misfortune of enrolling in two papers taken by the same professor, and so was forced to go along with this prostitution twice - hence her dropping the paper.
The man himself is mid-to-high 70s, apparently. And despite being able-bodied, rolls around campus in a wheelchair so he can get his young first-year students to help him with certain tasks. All the students second-year or above know about him, apparently, and so do some of the teachers. But he has ties to important people and politicians, and so nobody does anything about him, and just keeps quiet. The only reason I found out about this was because I asked her about that "did not complete" on my girlfriend's record sheet. She said she didn't want to do anything about it, as "he'll die soon anyway".
Luckily, she had the sense and courage to drop her paper (a big deal in Academic Japan). But several of her ex-classmates are now girlfriends of members of the army - as the bureaucratic pressure combined with the natural subservience of the Japanese woman doesn't leave alot of options.
I know this guy's name and the papers he takes, but I'm refraining from writing them on here in case of any unexpected legal defamation problems that may arrive. At any rate, I really want to do something about this. Any ideas? Nobody would get away with this in New Zealand, or any other first world country, I'd expect. It's just the Japanese unwillingness to rock the boat that's letting this continue, and I'm not having it.
Anybody got any (legal) ideas for what to do?
