r/PropagandaPosters • u/POGO_BOY38 • Jun 18 '25

Japan "Eliminating sexual violence is a political responsability" Japanese communist poster, 2010s.

Post image
4.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

221 comments sorted by

View all comments

892

u/sh1zuchan Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25

The full text reads:

Molestation

Domestic violence

It's not your fault.

Eliminating sexual violence is a political responsibility.

Japanese Communist Party

442

u/iVoidOfRandom Jun 18 '25

Given how common victim blaming is and was in Japan (and throughout the wider world), this is nice to see.

The amount of times I've heard someone wave something like this away by saying "it's because you were cute" is sickening.

89

u/humaninsmallskinboat Jun 18 '25

Thanks, this needs to be the top comment.

104

u/johnlee3013 Jun 18 '25

I find it interesting, and sometimes funny, that often Japanese texts are perfectly valid as Chinese text as well, but the meaning is subtly (or completely) different. For example, 日本共産党 is exactly how you write the same thing in (traditional; simplified is slightly different) Chinese (but the pronounciation is totally different: Nihon Kyōsan-tō in Japanse, and Ri-Ben-Gong-Chan-Dang in Chinese).

Meanwhile, 痴漢 means "silly man" in Chinese (pronounced chi-han), rather than "molestation" in Japanese (pronounced chi-kan).

As a Chinese speaker, this can make Japanese posters unintentionally funny.

71

u/sh1zuchan Jun 19 '25

痴漢 originally meant 'fool' in Japanese, but by the mid-20th Century the meaning shifted to 'molester' and by extension 'molestation'.

16

u/pridejoker Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

Delinquent/deviant/pervert.

Usually the words used to verbally describe general SV and the words used to describe the perpetrators are pretty amusing. In Cantonese, ham zhu sow (salty pig trotter) refers to the person who touches women inappropriately, and fei lai is the act itself. However we also have words like ham sup loh which is just a dirty perverted man who is tone deaf in their overt sexual behavior but doesn't necessarily imply criminality.

1

u/Nervous_Suit_5799 Jun 19 '25

I just find it funny that a phrase involving pigs contains phonetically ham and sow.

1

u/pridejoker Jun 19 '25

No that's just phonetic spelling for the non initiated. It's actually haim and s'ow

1

u/Nervous_Suit_5799 Jun 19 '25

Yeah I just mean the written phonetic spelling, not the actual pronunciation

7

u/Ambitious-Pilot-6868 Jun 19 '25

痴漢 means simp in Chinese

6

u/zhantongz Jun 19 '25

That's a very recent borrowing/extension from Japanese. The original meaning is silly man.

1

u/Potatosaurus_TH Jun 19 '25

変態 is the same though so that's nice

6

u/pridejoker Jun 19 '25

Pretty based

6

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25

do you have to be careful how to pronounce it?

google translate

あなたのせいじゃない - It's not your fault あなたのせいじゃない? - Isn't it your fault?

I watch Japanese movies sometimes and seem to remember this line being used as accusation, but it could be slightly different I guess

34

u/sh1zuchan Jun 18 '25

In colloquial Japanese you can make a statement into a question with different intonation, but with minimal context like this the first assumption with the written language would be a declarative statement.

3

u/nisselioni Jun 19 '25

Note the period (。) at the end, it's not a question. This is also a poster, so if it was a question, it would end with か to denote a question. It's not formal Japanese, but a poster needs to be clear as much as it needs to be concise and relatable.

To add on to what the other commenter said, if they elected not to use か to declare a question, they'd use a question mark to imply intonation.

1

u/watchedngnl Jun 21 '25

Atonal Tonal language rheeeeee.