Article ID: CBB401969316

Sexual Assault and the Evidential Body: Forensic Medicine and Law in Modern Japan (2021)

unapi

This article explores the formation of what Christopher Hamlin has called a “forensic culture” in late nineteenth-century Japan, and its impact on the prosecution of crimes of sexual violence. Before the 1870s, acts of rape often went unpunished or were resolved through private monetary settlements between the victim and her family and the rapist. However, after the formation of the modern Japanese state in 1868, legal reform, an important aspect of the state-building process, created a new opportunity for victims to seek legal redress. Over the course of a decade, an unprecedented number of rapes were prosecuted, with most resulting in convictions and long prison terms for the perpetrators. That situation, however, changed as forensic medicine came to be institutionalized as a specific medical discipline and as part of the criminal justice system. Viewed by the police and jurists as modern, scientific, and rational, forensic medicine created a new standard for what counted as evidence, with the result that the testimony of the victim and others was devalued in favor of traces of blood, semen, and bodily injury—evidence that, as some contemporaries noted, ignored the reality of rape.

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Authors & Contributors
Claire Cage
Asen, Daniel
Bates, Victoria
Becker, Elisa M.
Bertomeu Sánchez, José Ramón
Christen, Arden G.
Journals
Asclepio: Archivo Iberoamericano de Historia de la Medicina
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
French Historical Studies
History of Psychiatry
Journal of the History of Dentistry
Medical History
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Brill
Central European University Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Publicacions de la Universitat de València
Rutgers University Press
Concepts
Forensic medicine
Medicine and law
Medicine
Criminal law
Trials (law)
Sexual behavior
People
Ingrassia, Giovanni Filippo
Orfila, Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure
Windham, William Frederick
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
France
Spain
England
Great Britain
China
Institutions
Harvard University
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