YouTube Video Sparks Japanese Netizen Vigilante Fury

Does this video look familiar to you? It might, if you’ve been following YouTube’s most-viewed lists in the last week:

CNET’s Mobile Ojisan, Matsushita Shuji, has reported on the story behind the video:

It happened one night of October 200６. A car was hit by another vehicle. Though there was no injury, the car received extensive material damage. The culprit vehicle sped away and vanished into the night.

The driver of the car immediately reported to Takenotsuka police station, jurisdiction of the accident. Since he clearly saw the number plate of the hit-and-runner, everything looked to be a clear-cut case.

Police found the owner of the hit-and-run vehicle in no time. But the owner claimed that “oh, I had rented my car to one of my friends on that day. I had no idea what had happened”.

So what did the police do in response to such a lame excuse? Here’s what Matsushita wrote:

Since Japanese police were very reluctant to have a free hand (or foot, rope, club, or use of Alsatian) unlike American interrogators in Guantanamo, things were soon bogged down. Anyway, police did not show much enthusiasm in this case. “Nobody got hurt. Just a scratch on a car, so what?” The case went dormant, then dead.

Yeah, god forbid that the police actually follow-up on the man’s response by demanding to know the indentity of the “friend” who was “renting” the vehicle. Is such a common sense move cosidered the equalivalent of torturing prisoners? Anyway, let’s forget about that stupid swipe at American conduct in the “War on Terror” and take a look at things that are actually related to this case:

After 9 months of frustration seeing the police do absolutely nothing about this incident, the victim managed to obtain a video of the offender’s car and upload it to YouTube…

All hell broke loose immediately.

YouTube viewers instantly found out the name, age, address and work place of the hit-and-run car’s owner, and revealed everything on the Net. As you can see, its number plate is visibly loud and clear on the video. So, things were not that difficult.

Next day, his workshop (a vehicle repair and modification joint in Saitama prefecture) was bombarded with protest calls from all over Japan. “Don’t hide him!”, “take the criminal to the police!”, “crucify him!”

Poor workshop bosses. They hadn’t been aware of the hit-and-run incident at all until they were rudely shook up by thousands of phone calls. The mob calls did not finish at the workshop, but also attacked their customers, banks and even suppliers!

The workshop had no choice but to immediately sack the worker who was the owner of the hit-and-run car. And they posted this sacking on their Web site with a profuse apology to the general public. Yes, justice has been served; a kind of dubious one called mob justice.

Of couse, Takenotsuka police station had been flooded with protest calls, though they did not easily bend to public pressure. Simply, they declared on the Web site that the investigation was still going on strong, and claimed to add some more personnels for this case. It was obvious they believed the wind of mob justice would soon loose its steam and calm down.

The incident was indeed a case of mob justice, but what are law-biding citizens to do when those who are supposed to enforce law and order horribly fail to do their jobs?