Raw Japan
Slices of Japanese business, politics and life
Police, media get their suspect
Japan’s police can finally tear down the wanted posters for Tetsuya Ichihashi, after two-and-a-half years spent chasing down the 30-year-old suspected in the death of Briton Lindsay Hawker, whose body was found buried in a bath filled with sand.
Ichihashi is in custody, but Japan’s media are far from finished with the case, which has dominated news reports and daytime chat shows since police discovered recently he had changed his appearance with plastic surgery.
Video footage showed shouting police struggling through crowds of photographers to put Ichihashi on a train to Tokyo from Osaka, where he had been spotted waiting for a ferry to the southern island of Okinawa.
Media had already been hunting down details of Ichihashi’s life on the run, during which he concealed himself so effectively that many had speculated he must be dead. A TV Asahi news programme showed the tiny dormitory room where he had lived for 14 months while working as a building labourer, interviewing a colleague who noted that he focused on saving money and spent all his free time holed up in his room, we may well find out soon.
TV reporters chased down Ichihashi’s parents, who denied that they had provided any form of support for their son since Hawker, an English teacher, was found dead in the bathtub on his balcony.
It remains unclear how Ichihashi funded the remainder of his time on the run, including the extensive plastic surgery that rendered him unrecognisable for a while. But with the Japanese media’s reputation for tracking down clues, sometimes before the police, we will likely find out soon.
Japan struggles with puzzle of random killing
One year after a 25-year-old factory worker killed seven people in a stabbing spree in a crowded Tokyo shopping district, Japan is struggling again with the sinister puzzle of random killings following the arrest of a man on suspicion of causing the deaths of four people by setting fire to a “pachinko” pinball parlour.
“I was out of work, had no money and hated my life, and then I got the idea of killing anyone, like a random killer, and started a fire at a place where there were a lot of people,” the 41-year-old man was quoted by media as telling police after turning himself in on Monday evening.
Acquaintances and neighbours told Japanese media the man was a loner who lost his job last year. Reports said he had around $20,000 worth of debts. Among those killed in the fire was a 20-year-old female staffer who was going to night-school and had hoped to become a wedding planner.
Three days later, the story is still getting wide media play, jostling for attention with reports of ethnic violence in China and Prime Minister Taro Aso’s attendance at a G8 summit in Italy.
Japan’s crime rate is lower than that of many advanced countries, and strict gun laws mean shooting sprees are unheard of. But violent crimes grab media attention, especially as the economy struggles with recession and rising ranks of jobless.
Concerns about a breakdown in traditional community values and widening social and economic gaps also simmer, reflected in politicians’ calls to restore “fraternity” and repair frayed social bonds.
Suspect shocks as much as the crime
It wasn’t just the arrest of a high-ranking bureaucrat suspected of falsifying paperwork in a multi-billion yen fraud that astounded the Japanese media this week. It was the fact that she was a woman.
Atsuko Muraki, a senior official at the Health and Welfare Ministry, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of issuing a fake certificate to allow a group involved in direct mail marketing to claim a disability discount on postal costs. “Female ace arrested,” ran the headline in the Sankei newspaper, next to a picture of the long-haired Muraki, and other media offered a similar angle.
The media reaction is perhaps not surprising. Less than 2 percent of managerial level staff in Japan’s national bureaucracy are women, government statistics show, and media said only four have ever reached Muraki’s rank in her ministry. Bureaucrats often complain that their long working hours affect their home lives.
“Japan is still a very male-dominated society, so it is very unusual for a woman to reach the top level of the bureaucracy,” said Professor Fukuko Kobayashi, who heads a gender research bureau at Tokyo’s Waseda University. “She must have been very talented and worked extremely hard to reach that position. Because it’s tough for a woman to get that far, people expected a lot of her.”
Women in general are expected to keep up higher moral standards than men in Japan, Kobayashi added. “Women are excluded from the power system in Japan, which has tended to make them more idealistic,” she said. “Stereotypically, they are expected to be more sensitive to this kind of thing, to want to behave honestly.”
Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe expressed his regret over Muraki’s arrest.
Whose hand was that anyway?
Unless being crushed in carriage full of strangers is your idea of fun, Tokyo’s train lines are best avoided at rush hour. But what is a stressful and unpleasant experience for all commuters can be positively frightening for young women, who face the threat of being targeted by gropers.
After many years of keeping quiet about the loutish or sometimes downright vindictive behaviour of some male passengers, Japanese women have finally begun to conquer their shame and speak out. Rail operators are also taking the issue seriously — in some cases providing the welcome haven of women-only carriages during the most crowded hours, while police are now less inclined to laugh off alleged molestation.
But the new tendency to presume that the accuser is always right in groping incidents has led to false accusations and cases of mistaken identity, with sometimes tragic results. One such case inspired a 2006 Japanese film, “I Just Didn’t Do It,” in which the young protagonist battles a baffling court system.
On Tuesday, Japan’s Supreme Court overturned a guilty verdict against a college professor accused of groping a teenage girl on a Tokyo train. The judges pointed out the need for extra care in reaching verdicts concerning molestation on crowded trains, where the accuser may be the only source of evidence, media said.
Fear of false accusation has made many men just as nervous as women about crowded trains. A number of websites advise people on how to avoid misunderstandings, for example by gripping an overhead strap with both hands, or warning other passengers before moving bags and other belongings.
But the stress has even led to calls for men-only train carriages, where men can escape the threat of false accusations entirely.
I lived in Japan 12 years ago, for 5 years. took the subway every morning, packed in like inhuman cattle. Tokyo is a sick place. Get out whiloe you can, oh ye who gathter there. as for the chikan, they are real.
