What's wrong with Japanese society?

Women's rights are a big issue in many third world countries. This is something we often forget in the west. Most industrialized countries have legal and societal protections in place to ensure the basic safety of women during routine activities like, say... riding on a crowded train.
Knowing the Japanese male pension for strange sexual fetishes and rape fantasy videos, many may be surprised that I am surprised at the news of a rape in Japan.
This rape is more disturbing than most and carries larger issues. It warrants condemnation of Japanese society in general.
Why?
A man assaulted a woman, forced her into the bathroom and raped her. Now, this is already a sad story. What makes it deplorable is the fact that it happened on a crowded train in front of an estimated 40 witnesses. Now, that's even more horrible. What's worse, not one person tried to stop the man or call the conductor or police to intervene. Not one. It's as if rape is OK as long as people agree to look the other way. This is another blot on the already well known sickness that developed in modern Japanese culture. Sorry to levy such a heavy criticism on a society rather than just an individual. But, in this case, it needs to be done. They need to know people pay attention to this type of thing and hold them accountable as a society for looking the other way. This is tantamount to condoning this type of behavior.
I remember studying about medieval Japanese culture in college. While there was a cultural agreement to not notice certain things and just pretend they never happened, I don't remember rape being one of them. Am I wrong here? What is the group psychology that allows this type of thing to happen? Any thoughts??
ADG
Sources:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070423a7.html
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/404618
http://w109.news.tpc.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/070423/4/dbuf.html (mandarin)
http://news.chinatimes.com/2007Cti/2007Cti-News/2007Cti-News-Content/0,4521,110501+112007042400024,00.html (mandarin)