![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwrites
People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up is an account of the 2000 murder of 21-year-old British national Lucie Blackman, who had been working as a hostess in the Roppongi area of Tokyo when she disappeared. I got this one on audiobook, on a two-for-one sale I believe, and figured a true-crime book would be a respite from my mega-depressing listen at the time, Douglas A. Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name. Not by much, as it turned out.So what happened to Lucie Blackman? A wealthy businessman named Joji Obara approached her as a client under a pseudonym, made an appointment with her on her off-hours, and drove her to his seaside apartment. There, almost certainly, he drugged and raped her and probably filmed himself doing so, judging from his usual M.O. and the hours of tapes found in a raid of his properties.
You see, in addition to being a rich man with a taste for foreign hostesses, Obara was also a prolific serial rapist. What's worse, his other victims had gone to the police before--where they were ignored, dismissed, and victim-blamed into silence as happens with so many rape cases throughout the world.
Obara's crimes didn't stop at rape, however. It turns out that treating people as playthings for one's pleasure can put their health and well-being at grave risk, imagine that. One of Obara's victims, Australian model Carita Ridgway, died of liver failure from the chloroform he had administered to keep her unconscious. A similar fate seems to have befallen Lucie Blackman, though her dismembered body was found in such a deteriorated state that the exact cause of death was impossible to determine. Joji Obara was tried and sentenced to life in prison for the rapes and murders.
After learning the terrible truth, Blackman's father Tim said she would not have died the way she did if the police had taken the earlier charges against Obara seriously--if this serial rapist had long since been put behind bars where he belonged. Institutionalized rape culture was the evil that contributed to Blackman's death, in other words.
It seems to me that rape culture also fueled Obara's crimes and justified them in his own mind. In his journals he called his victims prostitutes, as though what he did would be okay if they were. (They weren't, but how is that relevant?) He also insisted on calling the rapes "conquest play," completely dismissing the idea that the women he raped had any agency or right to their bodies.
The foremost argument used to dismiss the idea of rape culture in a case like Obara's are that men like him are an anomaly, evil beyond human comprehension. Culture has no pull and no explanatory power on such a creature, the thinking goes. He is a being unto himself, not a product of his society.
It is true that Obara is not a normal person in his choices and behavior. It would be both inaccurate and despicable to suggest that all men are like Joji Obara. However, is Obara such an anomaly when it comes to his assumptions? In thinking that a prostitute can't be raped? In treating women as objects whose consent doesn't matter, and whose objection to sex is just a hurdle to overcome? He is far from normal in where he took these ideas, but the ideas themselves are chillingly familiar.
By the way, that judge who made the call that the rape of a prostitute was not rape but a "theft of services?" That judge was a woman. I can't think of a better example to show that rape culture is not exclusive to men: It is a social phenomenon, and we are all part of that society.
The serial rapist is clearly not a normal member of society, but he is a member of society. Only a small percentage of the population ever take misogynistic ideas to the extent that Obara did, but he used preexisting social conceptions to justify his actions in his own mind. In institutionalized form, these ideas also protected him when police refused to listen to his victims and allowed him to continue his crimes. Rape culture is just one of many ways in which good people provide a hospitable environment for evil.
Despite the disturbing subject matter, People Who Eat Darkness is a well-written and enjoyable book. Parry brings his subjects out in wonderful detail without sensationalizing or stereotyping. He depicts Lucie Blackman as a full human being who had a life outside of the way it ended, with family and friends who are also complex people in their own right. The author also does a good job with the social nuances including the complexities of the hostess' trade and the proceedings of Japanese law enforcement.
The book was also refreshingly free of victim-blaming and moralizing--it was easy to see why Lucie Blackman's family gave Parry the kind of access that made much of the book possible. I admire the exhaustive research, balanced morality, and skilled writing that went into Darkness, and I am glad to have read it. It certainly gave me a lot to think about.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-28 06:16 pm (UTC)For obvious reasons, I take a personal interest in how people justify doing horrible things to other people. As I've heard it said, the ideas in rape culture aren't there to protect people from misunderstandings--it's to show rapists who will defend them.
--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 05:46 am (UTC)It seems to me that rape culture, in addition to defending rapists, actually creates confusion (such as "no" meaning "maybe" or even "yes") and increases the danger for everyone. I can't imagine a situation where such ideas would help clarify things and keep people safe.