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New anti-chikan cellphone stickers let you mark train gropers with sign of shame

Scott Wilson Apr 20, 2015
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As you probably know, Japan is infamous for chikan – people who grope others in crowded areas, like crowded trains and buses. As you also probably know, Japan has a long history of doing things in bizarre and not-very-effective ways.

So what do we get when the two come together? Ridiculous anti-chikan stickers for cell phones put out by the Saitama Prefecture Police department. And these aren’t just stickers you’re supposed to use to keep potential chikan away, these are stickers you’re meant to use offensively! Ka-pow!

Just in case that doesn’t make any sense at all, here’s a poster that quickly explains how to use these “anti-chikan stickers” (translation below).

Step 1: If someone touches you inappropriately, first show them the sticker and warn them to stop.
Step 2: If they don’t stop, peel off the top layer of the anti-chikan sticker.
Step 3: Press the bottom part of the sticker that’s still on your phone firmly against the chikan’s hand.
Step 4: The sticker will leave an X mark and act as proof of their groping.

So you might have some questions after reading that, like: isn’t that an awful lot of work for pretty much nothing? Or, does that X actually mean anything legally? Or, where did that woman get that bird-police cellphone charm?

Don’t worry! The bird-police are here to explain everything with this poster: (paragraph in red translated below)

“Please keep in mind that this sticker is intended to be used as a deterrent to potential chikan only. While stamping someone with the X mark may be strong proof that they committed a crime, it alone will most likely not be used to charge them as a criminal.”

So wait a minute. First you have to actually put the sticker on your phone, then in the heat of the moment you have to remember to use all the correct steps if you encounter a chikan, and even then, if everything goes according to plan, the X mark still doesn’t actually mean anything?

▼ Bird-police, I think you guys should cool it on the worms for a bit. They’re making you crazy.

The idea behind the anti-chikan stickers, to protect people from unwanted groping, is of course good-intentioned. We can imagine that it might scare some potential chikan away, or make catching them easier perhaps. But still, the implementation seems a little off to say the least.

To make sure, we decided to check out the stickers for ourselves, to see what they’re actually like.

▼ Here’s one of the stickers in the flesh. I guess the lightning bolts coming out of the bird are kind of scary?

▼ We put it on an old phone to test it out. It stuck well enough, and then we peeled off the upper layer, to see the X stamp underneath.

▼ We stamped our hand a couple of times to see what kind of mark it left. The first few presses did barely anything, and we really had to press it down before it left any visible mark. Hopefully no police see us on our way home from work, but even then, can’t we just put our hands in our pockets?

You can watch the whole process here, to see just how hard you have to press to get the mark to really show up. Pretty sure that’s going to be hard to do against someone who would probably retract their hand away immediately.

While the bird-police posters emphasize that the X mark alone cannot be used against somebody, Japanese netizens raised fears that these stickers may cause an increase in the number of false chikan accusations, which though rare have happened before.

“So can you just stamp an X on somebody you don’t like and get them in trouble?”
“This looks easy to abuse.”
“Men! We all need to stamp ourselves to protect our brethren from false charges!”
“Would this even really stop a chikan?”
“(In response to above) Yeah, they’d probably be proud like ‘I got three Xs today!'”
“Isn’t having women-only trains enough?”
“We need men-only trains to feel safe at this point.”
“Or just completely segregate the sexes and be done with it.”

What do you think? Would having a sticker like this on your cellphone make you feel safer riding the train? Or is it just a silly gimmick? Let us know in the comments!