TOKYO (Kyodo)–Economist Kazuhide Uekusa, once a well-known TV commentator who was convicted of public indecency by trying to look up a 17-year-old girl’s skirt at a Tokyo railway station in 2004, has been arrested on suspicion of molesting a 17-year-old female high school student on a train in Tokyo, police said Thursday.
…
On the train, the girl, a second-year high school student from Kanagawa Prefecture, raised her voice and said, ”Stop it,” and she and two other passengers seized Uekusa and handed him over to policemen who were alerted and waiting at Keikyu Kamata station.
In April 2004, Uekusa was arrested and indicted for trying to look up a girl’s skirt on an escalator of the Japan Railways Shinagawa Station in Tokyo by using a small mirror. He was a professor at Waseda University at the time.
He pleaded not guilty but did not appeal after the court convicted him and fined him 500,000 yen. His mirror was confiscated as part of the punishment.
The Thai press (at least the English-language kind) is abuzz over the arrest of Jon Benet Ramsey’s alleged killer. He lived pretty close to one of my friends, apparently. But as for my take (not that anyone asked), The Onion sums things up rather nicely:
“An accused murdering sex-offender goes into hiding, and no one thinks to check out Thailand?”
In other news, the man apparently tried to get a sex change while in Thailand. They’re cheap here at around US$1600, so maybe he just had some extra cash lying around and wanted to see what would happen.
I haven’t been following this issue too closely, but here’s a quick rundown:
On August 2, star Japanese boxer Koki Kameda fought Juan Landaeta of Venezuela for the World Boxing Association’s light flyweight championship. The match, which I naturally missed since I live outside Japan (but you can see some clips on Youtube here), was said to obviously have gone to Landaeta in terms of both points and the match’s momentum. However, at the end of the day Kameda was awarded the championship 2-1. The Japanese blogosphere (which scored its first political touchdown amid last year’s earthquake safety scandal) cried foul, the rumor being that the match had been rigged as a “present” for mob boss Goro HideHanabusa‘s birthday. Pictures of the two together (see above) soon surfaced, putting Kameda’s career in jeopardy not just for participating in a rigged match but for acquiring a dirty image in what is supposed to be a family sport.
Marxy, who has been following this story, has noted that the story has broken much faster on the Internet than in weekly magazines, Japan’s usual outlet for yakuza-related scandals. While diffusion of the Internet into daily lives in Japan has lagged behind the US (your aunt Ikuko still can’t book discount flights online, for instance), the more popular uses of the net (anonymous message boards, then blogs, and now Youtube) have proven effective tools in getting around the notorious disinformation found in traditonal news media (case in point). Japanese wiki, for instance, contains frank passages on taboo subjects such as the real identities of TV stars, exposure of staged events on TV, and now the role of organized crime in fixing boxing matches.
That is, it did until a few hours ago. Marxy just clued me in that Hide Hanabusa’s wikipedia entry was recently deleted due to “copyright issues”. Wikipedia will apparently instantly delete any entry that a rightsholder alleges contains a violation of his/her copyright. I have no idea whether that is the case in this instance, but it’s interesting to see that the yaks may have realized they’re being humiliated online and decided to take action.
Will the Japanese yakuza expand its Internet savvy beyond cheap cons in order to protect its image? Well, as far as this blogger is concerned, I figure I’ll be safe as long I keep writing in English.
Andrew Sullivan says that the most interesting thing about the recently foiled terror plot is that the terrorists were planning on using “liquids” of some kind in the attack. Since the authorities are still being tight-lipped about the actual details of the attack we have no idea what exactly that liquid was, but there are a number of possibilities. Andrew’s pet theory seems to be that they were using a device that combines liquids from two different chambers to create hydrogen-cyanide gas. According to this BBC article, it was in fact liquid explosives, with electronic detonators hidden inside portable devices, which presumably would be dis and reassembled within the plane.
Whatever the exact nature of the liquid being used in this particular attack was, there is one major past terrorist attack perpetrated through the release of liquids inside a vehicle. I am of course talking about the Aum Shinrikyo Tokyo subway sarin gas attack of March 20, 1995.
Earlier this year I had a large translation project in which I translated a couple of hundred pages of Aum Shinrikyo related material, including a large portion of Aum and I by Ikuo Hayashi, a medical doctor and member of the cult, who participated in the sarin release. Below are some excerpts describing the preparation for, and actual release of the sarin inside the subway. Continue reading Liquid terrorism
A low-level MIC employee was suspended for six months for — wait for it — fondling a woman on the Keio Line on his way to work! But before you get all huffy and self-righteous on me, consider this: would US government agencies announce such an event on the front pages of their websites? I kind of doubt it!
Japan’s economic gap not growing as fast as the Gini coefficient would have us believe? According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a recently released economic white paper details some key developments that could be skewing the data. From the Nikkei:
To prove the point [that the data are flawed], the white paper cited a nationwide consumption survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs showing that most of the growth in the income gap since 1989 stemmed from the fact that households composed of the elderly increased as a percentage of all households. The white paper cited a decline in the average number of members in Japanese households as another reason for the apparent widening of the income gap.
The big problem that could have “adverse effects” on the Japanese economy, the report says, is the now 3.6 million youngsters shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on living a free-wheeling lifestyle in a system that punishes them both socially and financially for it. In other words, if your average Japanese person doesn’t lock in a permanent position in that critical age window of 22 until around 30 (when the typical age discrimination kicks in), he or she has little chance of making as much lifetime income as someone who followed the rules. Of course, there’s nothing controversial about people making less money because they don’t have full-time jobs. The problem is that “full time” jobs (seiki koyo) in Japan are permanent (no firing/quitting as a general rule), so when times get rough, companies have filled up vacant posts with “part time” or contract positions that pay fewer benefits, lower wages, and don’t have the same amount of security in exchange for working the same hours and often performing the same job as full time employees. In terms of effects, the report estimates that once this “Freeter” generation (named after a Janglish word for part-timer) hits middle age in 2015, this phenomenon will result in a 4.9 trillion yen (or 0.9%) loss in GDP.
While part-time work might work for women (who face social pressure against pursuing a career and who may want to work fewer hours while raising children) and old people, young workers who enter companies as part time employees find themselves trapped because while regulations were changed in the 1990s to allow for non-seiki employees, there was no concurrent reform of the seiki system – age discrimination included. If the youngsters continue working part time until they hit the age ceiling, then they are screwed.
Adamu’s Politically Untenable Solution? remove restrictions on firing full time workers (or simply introduce an “at will” employment system), eliminate age discrimination, and otherwise create a truly flexible labor market. GOJ/Shinzo Abe‘s politically sexy solution? Treat part time workers the same as full time workers, raise the maximum hiring age, and encourage more mid-career hiring.
Yukan Fuji learned on July 6 that a judge at the Sendai High Court ordered a man (66) of Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture, to stop following 6 young girls and their parents and pay damages in a lawsuit against him brought by the parents of girl victims alleging that the man followed 3 girls the next day after receiving a guilty verdict for touching the same girls.
According to the July 4 appeal decision, the man was arrested in April 2005 for forced indecency for touching the bodies of 3 elementary school-aged girls, and in June the Sendai Regional Court sentenced the man to 2 years 6 months suspended for 5 years.
The man was released after promising in court that he would “no talk to them or anything anymore”, but he talked to 2 of the 3 girls the next day after the verdict and repeatedly followed the girls for 2.5 months.
The parents sued the man, demanding he cease following the girls and pay 6.6 million yen on allegations that “mental scars remain in our daughters that will last a lifetime.” In March 2006 the Sendai regional court fully accepted the accusations, ordering the man not to take any action that would cause grief to the girls or their parents, and the Sendai high court followed suit, ordering him to pay 5.1 million yen.
The man appealed, denying that he followed the girls.
The diaries of the Columbine killers are at last online for the world to see. Here‘s a link to the PDF, and here’s the Smoking Gun site. While I of course condemn what Eric and Dylan did, as someone who also harbored misplaced resentment of the “popular kids” as a high school student I can’t help but feel a certain empathy toward them. Had I not found some positive encouragement and an outlet for my energy (studying Japanese of course) I could have ended up doing something similarly stupid. I think Matt Stone in Bowling for Columbine put it best when he said that if only someone could have told them that all the bullshit from high school ends almost from the day of graduation they might not have gone through with it.
My favorite part so far is the “Hell Dog” on page 79. He has two extra arms in addition to his four legs: one’s a chaingun, the other a rocket launcher. Sweet! Maybe we’ll see that monster in Doom 4.
In the West, few social problems are thought of as more typically Japanese than the random molester, known aschikan . He may lurk in a parking garage or dark alley, as if some sort of fungus, but his most common natural habitat is the train. During rush hour, when commuters of all ages, professions, genders are packed together like sardines-to the point that certain stations in Tokyo famously (used to?) have platform workers help people squeeze inside before the doors shut-and the hapless victim has no escape from the perverts embrace. Whether he merely breaths too close and too damply to her neck, rubs his pelvis up against her side, slides his hands over her breasts, crotch or buttocks, slips them into her clothes, or actually opens his own clothing to perform that most inappropriate of public acts, the response is always the same-nothing. The woman may be disgusted or terrified, fellow passengers may see, feel, or hear what is going on, but regardless nobody stops it, nobody calls the police, and of course nobody is ever punished.
Of course, this is all a product of Japan’s unique culture, superficially sexually repressed and yet if you scratch the surface ever so perverted. In other, normal, nations perhaps these chikan would be well-adjusted men, allowed to slake their sexual appetites with their wives or girlfriends, instead of being forced to work like robots for a family that doesn’t love them, virtually castrated by society. With no accepted outlet, he turns to increasingly depraved pornography, which gradually programs his pyche to associate his libidinous urges not just with the image of a pretty girl but outlandish scenarios until merely watching is no longer enough, and without any good Protestant values to reign him in, he feels compelled to take to the streets and do something about his fantasies, heedless of the victim’s rights or the consequences.
At least that is how the common stereotype goes. But really it’s all absolute rubbish.
This week, as the Police Department announced the arrest of 13 men charged with groping and flashing women in the subways, women around the city nodded. Yes, they said, this had happened to them. Yesterday. Last month. Last fall. Twenty years ago.
“Every girl I know has at least one story,” said Barbara Vencebi, 23, a studio photographer standing outside the No. 6 train station at 116th Street in East Harlem yesterday.
It is a crime abetted by the peculiar landscape of the underworld that is the subway system, by the anonymity of a crowded car where everybody is avoiding eye contact. And by the opportunity for a quick escape at the next stop, to disappear behind a pillar, into a tunnel, up an escalator.
An impromptu survey of riders during the morning rush yesterday found that, for many women who have experienced it, the worst part of the crime is the sense of helplessness. What is the right way to react to a humiliating, but not life-threatening, situation? Should you announce to an entire car of strangers that you have just been violated?
Most of the time, the women said, they seethe inwardly but say nothing.
Certainly Japan has its share of sex crimes, does it really have MORE than its share? I heard so many times over the years about the prevalence of chikan and other sexual assault in Japan, but is it really any more common than other countries, or is the belief in its exceptional commonality just another turn in the decades old racial and cultural stereotypes seen in American media since before World Was II?
As an aside, for an interesting take on chikan, check out the novella J (cover image above) by the nobel prize winning Oe Kenzaburo, in which the Jay Gatsby-ish title character apprentices himself to an elderly subway chikan
If JAL’s shoddy maintenance doesn’t kill you, this guy might:
A 55-year old driver of the “Airport Limousine,” operating between the Haneda Airport terminal and aircraft parked on the apron, was found to have continued driving for nine days in May and June of last year despite having had his license suspended for drunk driving.
Tokyo Airport Transit, the bus operating company, ordered the driver dismissed.
According to the company, they had not been informed about his license suspension for drunk driving. As the buses operate on the taxiways, a “Restricted Area Driving Permit” is required in addition to a regular driver’s license. However, because on-field inspections only check to see whether the permit is being carried, it was not discovered that the driver had no regular driver’s license. The company checks its drivers’ personal violation records once per year, and only noticed the man’s violation in November.
