Mainichi Wai Wai has a report from a Japanese weekly magazine about a woman who has been arrrested for attempted murder of her future father-in-law over a misperception of his views on her upcoming marriage to his son.

[The woman] admits to the allegations, saying she attacked the old man during a drunken fit because she thought he was going to speak out against her plans to marry his son.

“Both my fiance’s parents had told me off before about how bad my housework was, so I figured they were opposed to our marriage,” [she] told the police.

Unfortunately for the suspect, though, she’d got it wrong.

“There was never anything like that,” says [the] victim, who sustained serious stab wounds but is expected to make a full recovery.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation, author Misha Glenny discusses his new book, McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (audio).  Around the 15:00 mark he talks about the Yakuza for about 2 minutes.

A few tidbits from the interview: The author says that 80% of the women who entered Japan between 1990-2000 came on entertainment visas and most were prostitutes connected to the Yakuza.  The Yakuza maintain semi-legal status in Japan and submit a list of members and candidate members to Japanese police!  Lastly the aging population and globalization has affected the Yakuza, too; they now find it more difficult to recruit and are outsourcing some of the violence to Chinese gangs!

Two separate pieces ran yesterday which in different ways ask ‘is Japan conservative’? Of course that is a sweeping generalization to make about an entire country, nevertheless, I would think that few would argue that Europe (especially western Europe) is generally more liberal than the United States.  Europe has socialized (er, socialised) medicine, and more government activism (liberals would call it minding social welfare and conservatives would describe it as “nanny state intervention.”).  Back to Japan…

Roger Cohen, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, posits that Asia including Japan lean Republican (conservative) vs. Europe which leans Democrat (liberal).  

The three largest powers — China, India and Japan — have all had reasons to view Bush with favor, and all have nagging fears about a Democratic administration. At a deeper level, they’ve felt comfortable enough with a United States playing power politics, while that strut-your-stuff style has appalled consensus-driven Europeans.

China does not want an America that turns inward.  Nor does Japan, which has reacted to China’s rise by reinforcing its strategic ties with the United States, and has been reassured by the Bush administration’s unequivocal commitment to America’s Asian military alliances. America-in-Asia remains a Japanese priority, ugly incidents at Okinawa notwithstanding. 

The second article which comes from Japan Today describes how 4 inmates were executed by hanging.  On the left-right spectrum, capital punishment is aligned with the right (conservatives).

Four death row inmates were hanged Thursday, Justice Minister Yukio Hatoyama said, bringing the total number of inmates executed under his orders to 10 in three rounds of executions during a four-month period.

The 10 executions under Hatoyama mark the fastest pace of executions since the Justice Ministry resumed executions in 1993 after a pause of three years and four months.

The cumulative total of inmates executed reached 67 after Thursday’s executions, while the number of inmates on death row now stands at 104. 

I have not been here long enough to have an educated opinion of Japanese politics (although I have observed 3 Prime Ministers in about a year!).  I am interested to see readers’ opinions of Japanese politics although I will add the caution to please keep posts respectful of those with differing opinions and please stay on topic.

You can’t make this stuff up…Police in Saitama Prefecture arrested several people for filming a porn flick in McDonald’s!  Maybe they saw something Freudian in the golden arches which beckoned them?

One of the suspects was quoted by police as saying, “We didn’t think it would be a problem as long as nobody noticed what we were doing.”      

Many have used it. Some have got away with it. I remember kids at school busting out the “My grandmother died” excuse to explain absences. It never occurred to me they might be lying until it emerged that one lad experienced the loss of three grandmothers in quick succession.

An Osaka tax inspector has resigned after apparently claiming compassionate leave for deaths in his family on 11 occasions, the Mainichi reports.

Each time, he stayed home in order to cure his backache. “It was too much hassle to get a medical certificate for sick leave,” he was quoted as telling his bosses.

His bosses discovered the scam when he told them in September last year that his grandmother’s funeral was being held at a funeral hall, which was found not to exist.

On investigation, his bosses discovered 10 more false claims between 2004 and 2007, in addition to which, “the man also went home on 11 other occasions in 2006 and 2007 by faking business trips.”

The story of the murder of a Japanese taxi driver has been in the news since the March 19th crime.  This Washington Post article has more information on the murder and its alleged perpetrator who is a U.S. serviceman and intriguingly a Nigerian citizen.  The article also discusses the backstory about the U.S. military presence in Japan.  This whole episode brings up many issues.  A few weeks ago in his podcast (and in a follow-up) Edward discussed the alleged rape of a Japanese teenage schoolgirl by another U.S. Serviceman and the dropping of those charges and (correctly, I think) discussed how few incidents there really are considering how many military people there are here (50,000).  Nevertheless all incidents become high profile, as should be expected given the high level of anxiety the U.S. military seems to cause.  Should the U.S. still be in Japan 60 years after WWII?  Should Japan stop hysterical press coverage of crimes, especially those committed by foreigners (not that the U.S. press is any better)?  Why does the U.S. have a Nigerian (or any foreign nationals) in its ranks?

A 22-year-old university student who admits to loving aircraft was arrested recently for dressing up in an airline pilot’s uniform and stealing stickers from an office at Narita Airrport.

Police said Shiraishi wore the uniform to gain access to the Japan Airlines operation center at Narita Airport’s Terminal Two on Wednesday afternoon where he stole 13 JAL stickers usually handed out to children, worth around 130 yen. An employee thought Shiraishi was suspicious and reported him to the police.

This case reminded me of a guy I knew when I was a student at Sophia University. He wanted very badly to become a policeman, but was too short. He owned a very authentic policeman’s uniform that he word around campus all the time. Someone told me that he started dressing like that from his high school days.

Though we laughed at him a bit, we often enlisted his help to provide “security” for parties and other school events.

A woman who was molested in the street near her Kyoto apartment by a masked man later was able to sniff out the perp because of his distinctive body odor, which she described as that “inside of a boxing glove.”

The attacker was so confident of his disguise that he later approached her and struck up a conversation. One whiff was all it took for the woman to recognize the man as her attacker.

The man was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two years imprisonment, suspended for four years, based on the woman’s olfactory evidence.

According to the judge, the man’s B.O. was “pretty strong and distinctive.”

Thanks to Mr. Pink

The New York Times has a quartet of articles related to Japan.

One article deals with a lawsuit regarding WWII forced suicides. I have not heard much about this issue before and it is quite interesting. The topic of revisionist history is a universal one. In this particular case an author wrote about these suicides and was sued for defamation but the lawsuit was just thrown out.

A Japanese court has rejected a defamation lawsuit against Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, agreeing with his depiction of deep involvement by the Japanese military in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa toward the end of World War II.

The defamation lawsuit, filed in 2005, was seized upon by right-wing scholars and politicians in Japan who want to delete references to the military’s coercion of civilians in the mass suicides from the country’s high school history textbooks. Last April, during the administration of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister at the time, the Ministry of Education announced that references to the military’s role would be deleted from textbooks.

Something to think about the next time you are waiting for a train. . . An 18-year-old boy has been arrested for killing a man he pushed from a train platform into the path of an oncoming train. Apparently it was an act of random violence.

The teen was quoted by police as saying:

“I thought that if I killed someone I could go to prison. I didn’t care who it was.”

From Yomiuri Shimbun:

A uniform manufacturer in Chuo Ward, Osaka, has developed a T-shirt intended to provide protection against knives, following an increasing number of malicious crimes that have victimized children and late-night convenience store clerks.

The Washington Post recently had an excellent recap on the ongoing investigation into the death of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old wrestler who was literally tortured to death by his stablemaster and mates.

His death, which police initially ruled to be the result of “heart disease,” led to the arrest last month of his former sumo stable master, who has since told police he beat Saito because the boy had a “vague attitude” about his career in sumo.

Three wrestlers have also been arrested in connection with the beating. But it took until Thursday — more than eight months after Saito’s death and a month after the wrestlers were indicted — for the powerful Japan Sumo Association to take action against them. The JSA decided that it would ban the three from competing in sumo tournaments and said that, if they were found guilty, it would expel them from the profession.

A few months ago I was at a social event where some well-known gaijin sumo expert was going on and on about how the case needed to be left to the Sumo Association to deal with in their own, centuries-old way.

Thanks much to Brian Engel for letting us know about this story.

Peter wrote earlier today how Japan is a very cash-based society. Underlining that point, a story has been reported which is not unusual in itself except in its sheer magnitude.

Hearing that someone in Japan has a fortune in cash stashed somewhere about their house is relatively common. There are various reasons for this, one of which is the poor return on savings with banks with interest rates close to zero.

But two sisters from Osaka were hiding their wealth from the taxman, it’s reported. They are suspected of “hiding about 5.93 billion yen inherited from their father, who founded a group of eight firms including real estate leasing and loan companies.”

That comes out to about US$57,000,000. In cash. In their house.

After investigators found “more than 5 billion yen in cash [which] was found in cardboard boxes in a garage”, one of the sisters fessed up, the other said she had “forgotten about [the] cash kept in her home.”

They are charged with “evading about 2.86 billion yen [US$28 million] in inheritance tax, the highest figure for a case involving inheritance tax evasion recorded in Japan”.

The mayor of Meiwa in Gunma Prefecture and seven other members of the town’s municipal assembly have filed a lawsuit against a female Meiwa Municipal Assembly member for defamation, because she is pressing indecent assault charges against another assembly member. The group says that the 52-year-old women implied that they also were involved in the assault and thereby defamed them.

“We tried to talk to her about it, but couldn’t come to a conclusion so had no option but to take the matter to the courts,” [the mayor] said.

The woman was baffled by the litigation.

“I don’t understand what they’re trying to do by suing me,” she said. “It’s sad.”

According to the suit, the woman gave a press conference at which she claimed to have sexually harrassed. She told reporters that she screamed, but all of the other municipal assembly member who were present acted as if nothing had happened.

The mayor and assembly memebers are demanding 100,000 yen each plus an apoloy to be printed in the newspaper. The woman in the meantime has filed a criminal complaint against the other 49-year-old assemblyman who she says fondled her breast.

Serena Kozakura, a Japanese model, proves size DOES matter when a court threw out the model’s case based on her breast size.

Serena was found guilty of breaking and entering into a man’s apartment, kicking a hole in a door and crawling through. On her appeal, the defense held up a cutout size of the hole, showing the impossibility of Serena’s 44 inch boobs going through.

Serena rejoiced in the verdict: “I used to hate my body so much, but it was my breasts that won in court”

Weird Asia News

Last Saturday during Episode #100 of the award-winning Japan Talk podcast, I reported on how the charges in the Okinawa rape case were dropped after the 14-year-old victim withdrew here complaint against the U.S Marine were dropped.

I concluded the report with basically the same thought that I wrote here on JAPUNDIT, something to the effect that. . .

With all of the furor generated by the incident, it is logical to assume that prosecutors would have pushed hard to have the Marine put behind bars if there had been any physical evidence at all to indicate that a sexual assault actually had taken place.

I wonder if the people of Okinawa plan to make a formal apology to the Marines.

Well, today I got e-mail from a Japanese woman in the United States who passed on some very interesting information about something called shinkoku zai (an offense subject to prosecution only if the victim presses charges).

You said that DA’s office dropped the charges because there was no evidence to prove that the girl was raped, which means there was no rape. And you wondered if the Okinawa people were planning to apologize to the Marine.

I am not sure if you are aware of this, but under Japanese law, prosecutors do not have the control over whether they make the accusation or not in rape cases, but victims do. It’s called shinkoku zai (an offense subject to prosecution only on complaint from the victim). So, even if there was firm evidence to prove that the crime has happened, it doesn’t matter unless the victim wants to make an accusation. In many cases the victims drop charges because they are afraid of being embarrassed or victimized by the other parties. In this case, according to the news, she was hurt by the harsh comments toward her all over on the internet.

I don’t know if she was raped or not or if there was DNA evidence though I doubt that the DA’s office would release that information. But I know that dropping charges doesn’t mean that the case could not be proven, or there was no crime. It simply means that she didn’t want to get hurt anymore.

From what I could find on the net, shinkoku zai is limited to certain types of offenses (a lot of it to do with crimes committed by one family member against another), and rape. . . Rape?

Is there anyone out there knowledgeable about Japanese law or about shinkoku zai in particular who could provide more information about this?

for the supposed crime of standing on the sidewalk and talking to their friends, three tokyo youths had a gun pulled on them by a police officer

yeah….

After weeks of Japanese indignation, editorials condemning out of control U.S. soldiers, images off U.S. military commanders bowing deeply in contrition before the governor of Okinawa, and even an apology by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old Okinawa schoolgirl by a U.S. Marine. . . the girl has dropped her criminal complaint and the local district prosecutor has dropped all charges.

Japanese authorities are portraying the dropping of charges as being in consideration for the feelings of the young victim.

According to the prosecutors, the girl said to them, “That’s enough, leave me alone.”

“We must give maximum respect to the will of the victim,” Yaichiro Yamashiki, chief prosecutor at the prosecutors office, said at a press conference. “In keeping with legal procedure, we dealt with the case in this way [by not indicting him] because the accusation was retracted.”

“We’ve determined that it isn’t appropriate to indict the suspect by applying charges…out of consideration for the victim’s feelings,” Yamashiki added.

But with all of the furor generated by the incident, it is logical to assume that prosecutors would have pushed hard to have the Marine put behind bars if there had been any physical evidence at all to indicate that a sexual assault actually had taken place.

I wonder if the people of Okinawa plan to make a formal apology to the Marines.

Man arrested after rolling up to renew driver’s license while quaffing beer

A Fukuoka man was arrested yesterday after turning up at the Driver’s Licence Centre there “to renew a permit to drive - albeit not his own,” police said.

Shigeo Tanita, 55, apparently drove past police officers directing traffic at the centre while he was swigging from the can. Officers simply waited for him to park up and then arrested him.

A strange story from Jaipur, India, where a Japanese tourist “had registered a complaint with the police alleging she was raped by the employees of the hotel last night”.

In an intriguing turn of events, a Japanese on Monday complained to the police of her rape in a hotel by its staff but withdrew the charge within hours saying the term ‘rape’ was used for use of force for taking away her mobile phone and not for sexual assault.

The woman explained later “The word rape used by me in the complaint is meant as application of force for taking away my mobile phone.” I need to buy me a new dictionary, as it seems mine is hopelessly out of date.