Japan’s tame answer to jobseeker sex harassment: name and shame

Final-year students invited to recruiters’ apartments for help with their applications. Coffee dates with alumni who promise to explain how the company works. Inappropriate interview questions about boyfriends, marriage plans and sex lives.

For young women in Japan, looking for a job has long entailed submitting themselves to the skewed power dynamics of the recruitment process.

And before Thursday, no official legal safeguards existed to protect these jobseekers from such harassment.

Campaigners and advocates have welcomed the change, but say it lacks teeth and came years too late, even as societal attitudes may have already moved ahead of it.