Hakoko@WLTOS

SOS from a Japanese sexual assault survivor with PTSD and DID.｜Seeking help to survive, but welfare systems in Japan ignore and even justify it｜ I want to live!

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

For Japan’s socially vulnerable, this is the reality.
SOS. Please hear my words.
https://t.co/XdQD2Q1Lye

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I asked my local welfare office:
“Where in the law does it say you can’t do this?”
They said, “It’s not written in the system.”
But absence is not prohibition.
When survival depends on interpretation, who gets to decide?/1

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

That is how I am able to think about it now.
The perspectives I hold, the questions I raise, and the things I insist on naming were all learned through hardship. They are forms of knowledge that cannot be acquired without being confronted by suffering.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

At the same time, I have come to understand something else.
Those who dismiss what I speak about outright—often because they themselves were never placed in such circumstances—may simply have never had the opportunity to learn these things.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I might never have tried to take action at all.
Suffering is not something to celebrate.
But never having experienced it would have been a real loss in my life.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Perhaps, if I had never been placed in such circumstances, I would not have thought so seriously about my own country. I might never have come to recognize its social problems, or to wish so strongly to change them.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I might even have become someone who criticizes, mocks, dismisses, or excludes those who speak about them.
That possibility terrifies me.
And so, I cannot describe my life of hardship using only hatred or resentment.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

When I imagine having lived a “normal” life instead, that image feels strangely frightening. If I had walked a perfectly ordinary path, I might not be able to understand the problems I speak about now.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

At times—only slightly, and carefully—I find myself wanting to feel gratitude for having lived through hardship. Not because I welcome adversity. I do not.
But because the perspectives and values I gained through it are irreplaceable.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I might never have continued to think about inequality, or about the deception that sometimes hides inside good intentions.
When I think about that, I realize I cannot simply hate my own misfortune.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

It was suffering, through and through.
And yet, if I had been able to live an ordinary, uninterrupted life, I might never have learned to recognize other people’s pain as something deeply personal.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I cannot speak about the hardships of my life using only disgust or hatred. Of course, I never chose this. I never wanted to endure such pain. It was not merely unbearable—it was something no one should have to endure. That is precisely why I would never wish it on anyone else.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I am writing this knowing it may invite criticism.
Even so, the harm and anger I carry as a result of this phenomenon cannot be erased, and I choose to name it.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Please do not overgeneralize a single survivor’s narrative.
Expressing concern about such generalization should not result in suppression or hostility.
Yet that is what I experienced, repeatedly, on a global scale.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

This was not limited to Japan.
I observed the same dynamic in English-speaking spaces as well.
For survivors living in Japan, this resulted in a double bind: oppression within Japanese society, and silencing within international discourse.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Despite also being a survivor, I was not treated as an equal.
There was a clear power imbalance.
When “listening to survivors” becomes conditional—when it depends on whether the survivor’s words align with a preferred narrative—that principle turns into a form of deception.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

When I expressed concerns about overgeneralization or structural contradictions, I was told that I was “attacking a survivor.”
That response shocked me.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

I was deeply hurt by well-intentioned people who seemed to believe that listening to one survivor’s story meant they now understood everything.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

What I experienced was a form of selection:
some survivors were treated as voices worth listening to, while others were not.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Many people say that BlackBoxDiaries represents the importance of “listening to survivors’ voices.”
Yet when another survivor—myself included—critically and logically questioned the social structures depicted in that work, that criticism itself became a target of attack.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Later, however, I became deeply exhausted by the reactions surrounding BlackBoxDiaries, and I stepped away for a time.

There is something I need to say about that experience.

[Hakoko@WLTOS @HakokoWLTOS]

Why I Stepped Back: BlackBoxDiaries and “Listening to Survivors”

When I first created this account, conversations with people in the English-speaking world provided me with genuine support.