In 2024, a prosecutor in the Osaka District Public Prosecutor’s Office came out and formally accused her boss of rape. She said that he took her to his house and assaulted her after a 2018 work dinner where she had been drinking. He admitted it. Then he changed his story.
The case started to unravel — but not because of any evidence his team put forward. It seemed that the legal system and the prosecution was increasingly working in his favor, despite being the defendant. First the trial was changed to a closed-door hearing. Then the re-trial was postponed, and to this day there is no real indication that it will ever be held. The victim, going by the pseudonym Hikari, and her team filed a formal complaint that Kitagawa and his legal team were obstructing the investigation, but the complaint fell on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, Hikari was subjected to severe workplace harassment. Despite multiple attempts to report the perpetrators and solve the issue internally, the situation eventually became unbearable. So in March of this year, Hikari gave the Attorney General an ultimatum: either a third party properly investigates the harassment she had been suffering at work, or else she would resign.
Two weeks ago, she filed her letter of resignation.
At the time of the assault, Kitagawa Kentaro had just become the Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office in Osaka, and his arrest shocked the organization. At his first hearing in October 2024, six years after the incident, he admitted to all of the charges. Only a month later he claimed he was innocent, and that she had consented. Kitagawa’s defense attorney stated at a press conference that the accusations were false and that “the victim was not unable to resist.” In a blog post recalling those remarks, Hikari asked “Does being able to resist sex with Kitagawa mean I consented to having sex with Kitagawa?”
In the first years after the assault, Hikari threw herself into work in an attempt to cope. She confronted Kitagawa only when her health declined due to the PTSD she developed. In return, Kitagawa told her to keep the matter private, saying he would have no choice but to kill himself if it went public.
Today, Kitagawa is 66 years old and retired from the Prosecutor’s Office.
Kitagawa Kentaro
Going public brought an onslaught of slander directed at Hikari in the public sphere — as sexual assault victims experience far too often in this country — and also in her professional life. An assistant prosecutor, who is also Kitagawa’s lover according to the victim, allegedly spread vicious rumors about Hikari among colleagues. Hikari’s identity and personal information was exposed, her credibility was called into question, and the usual, tired refrain that “she wanted it” went through the Osaka Public Prosecutor’s Office and spread as far as the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Justice.
“Secondary victimization” (二次加害, niji kagai) is a term used for the retaliatory and abusive actions that individuals and groups can inflict upon victims of sexual assault. It can come in many forms. It can be hate comments and threats from the public. It can be intimidation and harassment from the opposition. It’s common in high-profile sexual assault cases around the world.
Take the case of Ito Shiori, whose rapist also had friends in high places. Yamaguchi Noriyuki was a prominent journalist and lackey of late former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and, like Kitagawa, was protected by his friends in high places at every turn. At the same time, Ito was subjected to a smear campaign and had every element of her story, career, and personal life scrutinized harshly by strangers and law enforcement and colleagues alike. In her Academy-award nominated documentary Black Box Diaries, she is surveilled by an unmarked van. At press conferences she has been subject to verbal abuse and accusations that the journalism she took on to report on her own sexual assault was unethical, calling into question whether rapists are held to half the standard that their victims seem to be expected to uphold and can never meet.
Shiori Ito’s former lawyers provide more questions than answers
In a blog post from May 11 of this year, Hikari wrote that she had been sexually assaulted in her youth. When she reported one incident, the subsequent inaction from the legal system motivated her to become a prosecutor so she could protect victims the way she herself had deserved. But in the end, it was a fellow prosecutor who became her assailant, and it was fellow prosecutors and the legal system they served who failed to protect her yet again.
In an earlier post from April 23, she wrote (translated into English):
In this case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not a “representative of the public interest,” but rather a “party” that must be held accountable for the Kitagawa incident. Kitagawa held important positions in the Public Prosecutor’s Office and, if he had not retired, was expected to eventually become the Chief Prosecutor of the Osaka High Public Prosecutors Office, the fourth highest post from the Attorney General. He also wielded considerable influence in his former role and even after retirement. Furthermore, the vast majority of current senior staff and retirees, from the Attorney General down, are former subordinates of Kitagawa. Some people may have been able to rise through the ranks thanks to Kitagawa’s power, so there are many who feel indebted to Kitagawa.
This case is a rape committed by the “Chief Prosecutor,” the highest-ranking official at the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, who is the guardian of the judiciary, adheres to the law more than anyone else, has higher ethical standards than anyone else, and is responsible for punishing criminals and protecting victims, as well as ensuring the safety of its staff.
Just as she did after her sexual assault, Hikari took formal action against the secondary abuse. Hikari reported the assistant prosecutor for defamation and harassment, just to result in a mere reprimand for the offending party. In February 2026 she filed a civil suit against the government, Kitagawa, and his team for damages from the sexual assault, the illegal non-disclosure of evidence and information during legal proceedings, and the continued victimization after. There has been minimal cooperation and information provided from the defense since, but no other major progress in the suit.
Finally, in March, she made a formal request for a third-party organization to investigate and verify the harassment she received at the Prosecutor’s Office. It was clear that nothing was going to be done as long as Kitagawa still had influence over the institution that was supposed to be on the side of the victim. The workplace had become such an unsafe and damaging environment that it was impossible for Hikari to continue working as a prosecutor.
Yet, the request for an outside investigation was denied on the claim that Hikari did not suffer from PTSD, flying in the face of her clinical diagnosis. To add insult to injury, in April her closest ally and advisor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office was transferred to a different branch office despite both of their desperate pleas against the decision. In the face of these reprisals, she had no real option to go back to work.
“I never thought I’d quit my job as a prosecutor…There are victims waiting for me. I definitely wanted to go back to the prosecutor’s office. Kitagawa was arrested and charged, and I thought I could finally return. I believed the workplace was safe, but it wasn’t. I wanted to be freed from living hell and knew there was nowhere to go, so I was forced to resign,” she said during an April 30 press conference.
Kitagawa was arrested, confessed to the assault, apologized and then suddenly walked back his story. Why would a prosecutor with so much experience in the field make a false confession? What is striking about this story is how the central assault at the core has not been the subject of debate; in fact, it seems to be an implicitly accepted fact in the reporting of the case. Instead, the secondary abuse from her peers and the legal institutions themselves has come to the forefront.
It is the perfect example of how even the act of naming their rapist has the potential to destroy a victim’s life and why many victims choose to not immediately come forward if at all. Survivors like Hikari have calculated between the pain of suffering in silence and the pain that going public can cause to themselves and their loved ones. Abusers like Kitagawa know this and they take advantage of that impossible decision.
And as her resignation from the job she once loved shows, Hikari has profoundly suffered at every turn. But her efforts continue. She noted, rightfully, that “if the Chief Prosecutor cannot strictly punish rape, the world will be free to rape as much as it wants, and tragedies will repeat themselves.” So she is continuing with her legal action and is doubling down on the corruption within the Prosecutor’s Office, bringing attention to the endemic sexual assault within the institution.
Despite the tumult of the months prior, Hikari attended a Flower Demo in Osaka that took place on Mother’s Day, 11 days after her resignation.
Flower Demo is a demonstration that started in Tokyo to protest “not guilty” verdicts in sexual assault cases and has since taken place in 33 prefectures across the country. #MeToo did not catch on in Japan to the degree it did in parts of the rest of the world, but cases like Ito Shiori’s helped bring sexual assault cases to light across the country. The ruling in her favor in her civil case against Yamaguchi helped bolster the movement, showing that justice, in some forms, are still possible in Japan even in the face of formidable opponents.
Hikari wrote that she took the carnations her husband and child gave to her and brought them to the demonstration.
Later, she wrote:
There is no such thing as a victim type.
They are all just people who have lived and worked hard and laughed with their loved ones and friends.
I want the prosecution to protect us properly.
I want the light to be lit.
I want you to prove that you can live safely from now on, that you’ll be fine.
A photo from Hikari’s blog post from Mother’s Day https://note.com/unmetempathy0111/n/n8e6cb5704271
(Japanese excerpts have been machine translated with edits.)
AloJapan.com