An encounter with the Foreigner Crime File in Fukuoka
Civil rights activist Arudou Debito has informed me of this report he recently received regarding the “Gaijin Hanzai Ura File,” which disappeared from several stores’ shelves back in February. The report comes from a Canadian living in Fukuoka:
To my surprise I recently found that magazine “GAIJIN HANZAI URA FILES” Being sold at a book store in Fukuoka (tenjin) call junkudo. I picked up about 15 copies of them and dumped them at the customer service counter and ask to speak to someone in charge, I politely explained the situation at hand and asked him to stop selling them and send them back to the distributor, he obliged and said he will do so right away and that he was sorry.
That’s quite a few copies of the magazine. Perhaps they’ve been sitting around on the shelves since February and few customers had bought one?
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A good example of how to deal with vendors selling the Foreigner Crime File magazine Circle K Sunkus has apologized for their sale of the Foreigner Crime File magazine |
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What are w/ these people? These people act as though they have rights in Japan. Who told them that they mattered? Sure, go back to Canada and if you see something there, do something about it….if you see it in Japan, Korea, etc….well, ignore it. Man up and quit being a lil girl.
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外人犯罪裏ファイル returns!!
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I don’t understand why the guy would take it to the front desk. That’s about as bad as the book in the first place. Just tell the guy at the desk that you won’t be shopping there anymore.
Racism is stupid, but it shouldn’t be illegal unless it’s inciting violence.
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I’d like to note that I’jm not on Amerasian in Daegu’s side in this. People have rights, regardless of nationality. But the right to not be insulted by a bunch of unintelligent hicks isn’t one of them.
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Just as shopkeepers are allowed to sell items, there is no reason why people cannot complain about the items they sell above and beyond merely not shopping there. This shopper wasn’t exercising any “rights” as such: he was asking the shop if they would remove the problematic book, just like any other customer could – this is not a legally-defined right as such, merely the workings of the market economy in response to complaints. Just look at tales of what gets taken off the shelves or never stocked at Walmart to see how well that can work.
He certainly doesn’t have the right not be insulted. But he can always ask nicely, rather than go off on into legal threats. Junkudo is a major chain, and perhaps does not wish to be associated with low-class books. Or they may have other reasons. In the end it is of course the shop’s decision, but they thought about it and agreed.
I’m not on Amerasian’s side either: legal residents should have certain rights, since after the government has let us in and therefore to an extent “wants us” here. So when here, they should look after us to an extent (and they do, generally).
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Amerasian’s comments are, unfortunately, pervasive even among my fellow foreigners.
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I agree, overthinker, it just seems that either the person who passed on the story over-stressed what actually happened, “I picked up about 15 copies of them and dumped them at the customer service counter and ask to speak to someone in charge,”
Then he said that he politely explained the situation. None of “picked up about 15 copies and dumped” sounds very polite to me. Sounds pretty imperious to me. Could have just said, “See that magazine? It’s really insulting to me and I won’t be shopping here any more because of it.”
That gives everyone the ability to make their own decisions, and isn’t badgering some poor manager into making promises he probably doesn’t have the seniority to make.
Maybe I just don’t care enough about idiots, but this magazine doesn’t bother me. There are plenty just like it back home, and you can buy them in many stores. You just have to ask the right guy.
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As per the original boycott it was the fact it was at kobini that made it bad, I surely want the right to pick up offencive, anti-mainstream and politically incorrect literature at any major bookseller. So Junkudo should be allowed to sell it.
If I found a magizine called, let’s say, ‘Hiter Youth TODAY!’ at my local Circle K in Tucson, AZ I would boycott that store–most likely because no place selling that would also stock decent beer, and not because of the magizine. However, if I found the same magizine at the larger bookstore or newsstand… I’d probably get a chuckle out of it, buy it and read it with my gay pals. For me the point of the boycott was to raise awareness that publications such as the Hanzai File exist, and to make Japanese who would have never seen this magizine otherwise quesiton wether or not it was true. Hopefully some Japanese changed their minds about their prejudices. The magizine was bad, but it’s over. Let’s get back to doing some real gaijin hanzai… jaywalking.
‘Bob’ would like it that way.
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Jamie – I did note the “dumped” bit, which seems a bit harsh, but decided that it was countered by the “polite” request rather than a demand, so didn’t feel the need to really get into how rough the dumping was. The request at least was polite, which seems the main thing. No idea how much authority the manager has, but a follow-up visit might show this.
David: Junkudo are allowed to sell it. If they are not then they are making a business decision, not a legal one about rights. Not every purveyor of a given sort of good stocks or wants to stock every sort of item about it. This is of course why competition is good: so Junkod don’t have the book, you can go to Kinokuniya or whoever might. But then Kinokuniya doesn’t have another book that Junkudo does.
My basic point in all this is that this isn’t really a “gaijin in Japan” thing: it’s a customer issue. People complain about what shops sell all the time. They badger people into making promises, or worse. This is why I am reluctant to call this an issue of “rights”, just one man complaining and getting taken seriously. Aside from the specific content of the mook in question, there should not be any difference between this event and doing something similar in your own hometown – or a Japanese doing the same thing, even with the same volume, in Junkudo or wherever.
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I agree with Overthinker on this one. There’s a difference between a convenience store and a book store. I don’t see any problem with this kind of material being made available in a book store.
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My fist comment was indeed pervasive and I am sure I could have come out a better comment if I had taken my time and thought it out. I apologize about that.
The reason I feel so strongly is that a lot of people from the western part of the world (mostly the US and Canada) come here and critize everything. I am not saying everyone because there are a lot of good people coming here and taking this world for what it is and try to live w/ in the social norms of how things work in Asain countries. I just don’t appreciate the ones that come here and want things to work and act the same as it did back home. If they want that, then why come here, japan, etc??
To flip out about what your host nation does and nothing to do w/ us. If they want to sell unethical, racist material (as long as its not inciting violence : jamie) then let them and keep our western ideals/ethics out of their face.
Again, sorry for my “pervasive” comment before. Seeing this happen time and time again for the last 20 years kind of makes me go a little nuts.
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I can certainly sympathise with that. Luckily I meet very few of those who do, but I know they exist. Most Westerners who arrive here have never been resident aliens before and are horrified at being so for the first time. I know that hearing tales of people going the other way that my country, which I always though was very open and easy to get into, is in fact far from it, so Japan is far from an outlier.
However Amerasian does raise another interesting point, about ethics. While I agree that it is certainly wrong to try and be missionaries (especially if you are a missionary), does that mean that anything that happens in the host nation is allowed? Surely not: Japan is not totally different to “the West” in terms of ethics, and despite the fact the Constitution was shoved on them by SCAP, there are a lot of them who take its provisions for rights very seriously. In other words, just because a group of Japanese does something does not mean that it is ethical even by current Japanese norms, and so the default position of “foreign visitor should shut up and respect local ethics” doesn’t always apply. Whether this applies to the mook in question of course is another issue, and I am not a Constitutional lawyer or any sort of expert.
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I don’t see ANYTHING wrong in what the guy did. Sure, they do have the right to spew outrageous crap, and so does the store to distribute it – but asking to stop is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Sue the guy? Take legal action? Yeah, that’s no good. But to simply ask politely? Why not. This sort of publication is garbage. It shouldn’t be outlawed, but let there be devotion to a more understanding culture in all of us.
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To add – Social life is about propagating to one another our own ideas. Not to force it upon others, but to simply exchange information.
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