Over the past six months, media organizations at home and abroad have published articles that have examined whether or not Japan has embraced the .

The social media campaign, which encouraged victims of sexual assault and harassment to speak up about their experiences, initially failed to gain much traction in Japan, and it wasn¡¯t until journalist Shiori Ito made certain allegations in public against a former bureau chief for TBS Television that it caught the general public¡¯s attention.

The , however, recently wondered whether Japan could actually have pushed this agenda a little earlier, taking advantage of the fact that the Japanese term for groping ¡ª chikan ¡ª has become something of an internationally recognized term.