Photo/Illutration The National Police Agency (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A record 88,619 domestic violence complaints were received by police in 2023, including about 30 percent in which men said they were the victims, National Police Agency statistics showed on March 28.

The overall figure was up by 4.9 percent from 2022 and marked the 20th straight year of increases in domestic violence consultations.

Police decided that 8,685 cases were serious enough to be treated as crimes. Ninety percent of those cases involved assaults and inflicting injuries, while 49 cases were violations of restraining orders.

Over the past 15 years, the ratio of male victims has risen from 1.8 percent to 29.5 percent.

Police officials said the increase was likely due to changes in the social environment that made it easier for men to say they were victims of domestic violence.

Last year also saw a record number of so-called revenge porn cases, in which sexually explicit images or videos of a person are shared, mainly on the internet, without that person’s permission.

The 1,812 complaints received by police about revenge porn was an increase of 4.9 percent over the previous year.

The largest number, at 769, involved a partner or former acquaintance shooting or possessing such sexually explicit videos. In 676 cases, the victim was threatened with a wider release of the images.

In about half of the cases, the perpetrator was an acquaintance of the victim. In 20 percent of the cases, the victim came to know the perpetrator through the internet, reflecting a wider use of social media, an NPA official said.

Females were the victims in 1,527, or 84 percent, of the cases.

The number of cases in which males said they were revenge porn victims increased by 21.8 percent to 285. Over the past five years, there has been a 2.9-fold increase in the number of male victims.

A record 315 revenge porn cases were handled by police as being especially egregious.

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