http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGFY2EXvYoQ&NR=1

The 7-11 store where it happened in front of is located at 東京都世田谷区代田3-41-8
The road where it happened is 環状七号線 and the intersection where the accident occurred is 宮前橋交差点
Either the Setagaya or the Kitazawa police station have jurisdiction over that location.

I used to document this and I complained directly to the station koban of Gotanda, but they didn’t even know this was going on in their own station 10 meters away from the box! Or at least he pretended..

Thing is, I have been from end to end in Japan as a tourist for seven years, and never had a problem until the last three years and only in a JR station of Tokyo. Every stranger from Hakata to Sendai bend backwards to welcome me, except for everyone in central Tokyo (it’s very New York-like). These police are always in plainclothes, and I’ve seen them work in groups of one to five.

Ironically, the moment I told them I was an American, they had this expression like “Oops!” (I’m asian american) and lost interest in me, except that I demanded to know what the problem was. They kept saying nothing was wrong.

This only happens when I’m appearing to walk alone (once I was separated for my friend for 5 seconds at Ueno), and I know it has to do with my non-Japanese appearance, whether it’s face, clothing, or hair. This has never happened when I was carrying a camera outside as an obvious tourist, or next to a friend. I saw them coming before they said a word, and I know they were looking at me suspiciously based on my appearance.

My Japanese wife says its legal and normal for a *uniformed* policeman to request ID without probable cause during a routine check, every Japanese gets that..and I *don’t* have a problem with that! But she was shocked that these were plainclothes men merely “claiming” to be policemen and that they would approach me five times over the years. Three of them were over a two day period, and a pair of these incidents happened in a 10 minute period! (there were three officers, and didn’t communicate to each other that the other had already stopped me).

Every single time, the officer(s) were different, so that’s more than 10 officers I know of doing this. Even though I’m obviously upset, some of them were polite or even apologetic other than the fact that they stopped me based on halfassed profiling. I do resent the three that were plain imbeciles like it was their first day on the job, shockingly rude. I don’t have any problem with them trying to catch illegals, as long as it doesn’t keep harassing so many non-illegals who are in Japan for very mundane reasons like tourism. Obviously the vast majority of tourists don’t travel alone, they’re right about that stereotype, but unfortunately I buck that stereotype. I used to write a thorough blog of my travels in Japan, know lots of friends there, and am married to a Japanese. So I don’t need the buddy system to keep me from getting lost in Japan. Also, the vast majority of Japanse use the trains during rush hour, and in the “right direction”, so it is a little weird for me to walk one way as a river of literally hundreds of people squeeze aruond me the other way. It’s clear this would be impossible for them to do if I were following the flow. The fact that I’m using any JR station at 11am implies a fair chance that I don’t have a job..of course, that’s not true, I do have a job..in the US! I’m here on vacation!

The other problem I had with the non-uniformed officers in Japan is that the first time I honestly thought they were criminals looking to shake me down (rob me somehow). I brushed them off and said “I’m not interested” and they frikking grabbed me by the arm! I have a problem with often making eye contact with these guys (which leads to them approaching me), simply because they looked so shady. I think that’s intentional, because ironically in Japan people tend to look away from shady people (ex: homeless), not at them, but that has the opposite effect with me.

The last incident was in Ueno and I had a breakthrough. I didn’t speak a word of Japanese and spoke in *English* and asked politely “How may I help you?” My mistake was always speaking in 5th grade Japanese, which proves I’m an illegal! (No tourst knows more than 5 words in their mind) He asked kindly if I was a tourist, and I said yes and did my routine of showing passport while tsk tsking them for stopping me so often. He was sincerely apologetic and it was over in 30 seconds, a record. Next time, I’ll remind them that in the US, only uniformed policemen will stop Japanese tourists. US police also excercize more common sense, despite relying on racial profiling (see below).

Knowing Japanese beurocracy, there’s no Japanese authority you could report this to that would make any difference..they ignore bigger issues than this. In my case, the only authority in Japan that would matter, if they cared, would be the US embassy (I’m a US citizen), and the most I could expect is for them to make an embarrasing phone call and get a generic Japanese apology for my inconvenience. That does sometimes work in my experience, but in this situation I choose to simply share on the internet. Japan won’t change, so the least I can do is inform people.

I’ve made my peace with this since..Japan has some deep flaws and this is one of them, but honestly this is really a case of ignorance/incompetance than malice. At least some of these officers understand exactly my situation, but they’re just following orders. And more to the point, this actually happens in the US all the time, but with *uniformed* police officers *near the Mexico border*. Don’t believe me? Drive along the 8 freeway in California..you’ll never cross the border, but if you are a car full of asians there’s a chance they’ll stop you and ask everyone for ID to check your immigration status. Happened to my Japanese friends twice. Although I may be annoyed, I’m not angry because at least these were *uniformed* officers manning a “checkpoint”, though that doesn’t change the fact that they are blatantly racial profiling (among other criteria of course).

Let’s not make comparisons about “which country is more racist”, because that’s irrelevant. I hear “US is racist too so you just have to accept racism in Japan”. What?? And I hear the other extreme “You’re not Japanese, the police were tipped off to you to arrest your sorry ass”. Excuse me, but I was stopped by police five times, and I’m a *tourist*. This is not about nationality, these police are stopping people based on *appearance alone*. As I said, I don’t have any problem with that as long as they are uniformed and I can see their badge, so that I know they *really are* a policeman. Then I know this is not a scam to get me into an alleyway and *rob me*, the way it happens *all the time* in some corrupt countries as the US Embassy repeatedly warns.

Sorry for this long rant, but I hope it saved someone the time of having to go through this repeatedly before they make their peace with it.

You don’t look like Japanese, you don’t speak Japanese, and probably you don’t act like Japanese. Cops got information about you and your brother….they came to identify you.

Did they beat you up? Did they wack your head upside down? Did they do anything illegal?

You are bitching about this because you want to be Japanese but felt being rejected?????

Taugh luck….

Live with it or go somewhere else. Can you change something over there?

NO!!!!!

They hate ‘gaiatsu’.

Oh….Quote from Steve
“And it’s not just the police. Just yesterday a man sat down next to me in the last seat left on the train. This surprised me because 90% of the time Japanese choose not to sit next to me. Then he put on his glasses, looked to the left, saw my revered white skin, and promptly and blatantly decided to ride the rest of the journey standing.”

Take a shower daily and watch out on your own scent. Japanese and Western folks have different preference on scent…do you use some smelly stuff on your hair or body?……maybe the reason people refuse to sit next you….you are annoying Japanese follks with your smell??

“1. Mainstream Japanese culture is racist. Their foreign policy is highly protectionist, their TV programing is causally xenophobic, and their culture is based on elitism.”
Do you still live in the US? Because things are kind of better but there still alot of stereotypes on TV. Most Asian males are brainy types and Asian females only go out with white guys(unless the couple comes from Asia) in commercials for example.

“2. YOU ARE NOT JAPANESE. Sorry brother, learn to live with it; your passport doesn’t mean shit, and Japan is not your “homeland.” You were raise abroad, you don’t speak any native dialect, so you are Nikkeijin like all the rest of us. Isn’t this a wild concept? But it’s a sad truth about Japanese culture.”
I don’t know about you but I got pretty tired of everybody asking me to say something in Japanese as a kid and people asking out of the blue where are you from or born or your parents from. My wife also gets tired of it (she’s a Sansei oddly enough) especially working as a librarian in Torrance. She also hated all the creepy white guys with “yellow fever” that would approach and try to go out with her at UCLA.

Yes these are minor things but I remember my father telling me about how he had to make sure he had some one black or white with him when he had to use the restroom in the South because he was neither. This was when he was in the Army basic training before going to Vietnam. Another story was how he was not allowed to ride the school bus and the city bus growing up in Long Beach because he didn’t like being called a “#$$%^ Jap” and in the end he used to get rides home from the cops because he also helped instruct them in Judo. Did you know there was a smaller Yellow power movement in 60′s because of all the discrimination against asians. BTW about the driving while black or brown I think it really has to do with when and where you grew up to experience it. One of the causes they say of the LA riots was the heavy handed way the cops treated blacks. Now look at the US is it in better shape compared to Japan or worse given the past ten years? Look at the issues England, France, and Germany are going though right now with immigrants.
btw I agree with ponta on Rep. Honda the man is a bit of an ass.

Some years ago a “real-ID” failed.

So start with foreigners, get other countries to reciprocate, then claim that since all Japanese are fingerprinted overseas anyway, we can finally do so in Japan.

First, the “Japanese race” is a damn sight more coherent than the “American” – if you want to claim it’s a broad melting pot, then at least compare it with somewhere like the UK and the Celts and Anglo-Saxons and Hugenots.

“Their foreign policy is highly protectionist, their TV programing is causally xenophobic, and their culture is based on elitism”

This is almost hilarious coming from an American. Seriously.

If the Japanese look on nikkei as race traitors, then why, I wonder, are so many granted easy entry based on nothing but their racial ancestry?

Incidentally, what sort of bicycle were you riding? I’ve heard a theory (and my personal evidence bears it out to an extent) that the cops only stop people on mama-chari shopping bikes, and not on proper mountain bikes etc.

People who were born and lived all their life in Europe get stopped by the police and asked if they’re illegals…
Because they’re not white.
There was a black French journalist who was arrested and detained by the Spanish custom people in a Spanish airport, they thought he was an illegal from Africa who bring a forged passeport… They arrested only black people from the airplane so it was a very clear case of racial profiling. They also beat him up.

And what about the Brazilian young man who was killed by the London police because they thought he was a terrorist?? They thought he was middle eastern (as if all middle easterners are terorists..)

So you see, Western countries are not always better than Japan.

“1. Mainstream Japanese culture is racist. Their foreign policy is highly protectionist, their TV programing is causally xenophobic, and their culture is based on elitism.”
Pause, and critically examine it on yourself. Try another theory and check it with your experiences. Find
a deeper perspective that make your life easy and comfortable.

“YOU ARE NOT JAPANESE. Sorry brother, learn to live with it”
Right, forget about being “Japanese ethnic”. Make a lot of friends, find someone you love. That’s how Japanese are living. When you face troubles–discrimination or whatever— they are the ones who will help you and that is the way Japanese solve their problem.

“You were raise abroad, you don’t speak any native dialect, so you are Nikkeijin like all the rest of us”

Yes, I think the language is crucial in mingling with Japanese people and understanding the culture. It might not be absolutely necessary to understand another culture without fluency in the language, but most of the time, it is. Don’t feel rejected just because you can not speak Japanese. It is miserable to think, say, the mainstream Filipino’s society is racist just because you can not speak enough Filipino to get along with the people.

“As a nisei full-Japanese Swiss national once commented to me, “[the Japanese] look at us as traitors.”
He had some guilt-feelings as a traitor?
Most of Japanese do not have any idea about Nisei. When he/she can speak Japanese and English, it is most likely that people consider him/her cool.
Only Nikkei I do not like is Rep. Honda;still, I don’t think he is a traitor. He is an American.

“Unfortunately for us, AND for the Japanese, their culture isn’t going to change their norms on race-relations anytime soon.”

If you think being born to Japanese is a privilege, that’s wrong. And I don’t claim you will never face prejudice, ;probably and unfortunately you will. It is the challenge you need to face. But you may be the one who will change the perception. And I believe many Japanese are ready to accept people with different background. I know a Mongolian sumo wrestler who speaks the perfect Aomori dialect and Tokyo dialect. He is doing all right.

I meant to say: “…foreign language-instruction shows”

And right there you’ve proven just how very, very little you know about America.

As a nisei full-Japanese Swiss national once commented to me, “[the Japanese] look at us as traitors.”

There must be something more to this guy for him to have formed this sort of opinion. Traitors? The word and attitude it reflects sounds so 1940s.

For an old world country with no historical need for immigration (and yes I realize that this is changing as the population ages), Japan – while hardly perfect – can be a great place to live for a foreigner. (I was surprised to find out that NHK broadcasts foreign language shows. You don’t really see this done elsewhere.) I think the key is to avoid getting hung up on identity issues. Lose the bitterness in other words.

I also get a sense that a lot of the problems that people encounter with the police in Japan are linked to Tokyo. I have a gut sense that the police elsewhere in the country are more relaxed about foreigners.

You should know, I am half-Japanese-American. Sansei father, white mother (Irish-German, if you must know). I was born in Calif, and I have been to Japan 7-8 times since the age of 10. I cannot speak Japanese, and at this point, don’t really care too, because it just means the cops can ask me more questions. So yeah, I have been hassled by the cops while on fucking vacation.

Ok, lets start:

First of all, using the catch-all term, the Japanese “race,” is pretty much like saying the American “race.” We could talk all day about how the Japanese race is just a mixture of Chinese and Korean aristocrats, and the native tribes-people, but that is a holy war for another time.

Basically, you need to accept two things.

1. Mainstream Japanese culture is racist. Their foreign policy is highly protectionist, their TV programing is causally xenophobic, and their culture is based on elitism. Pause, swallow, think about it,ok, now accept.

2. YOU ARE NOT JAPANESE. Sorry brother, learn to live with it; your passport doesn’t mean shit, and Japan is not your “homeland.” You were raise abroad, you don’t speak any native dialect, so you are Nikkeijin like all the rest of us. Isn’t this a wild concept? But it’s a sad truth about Japanese culture. As a nisei full-Japanese Swiss national once commented to me, “[the Japanese] look at us as traitors.” Furthermore, Japanese-Filipino…, lets me honest man, you know the history, and it ain’t pretty (unless you are a super model).

Now you can do two things. You could raise a big stink about civil rights, which will further infuriate the Japanese right, and the next thing you know, you’ll be the biggest, most bitter hater in Japan. Or you could do the Japanese thing, suck it up and take it like the helpless common-folk citizen that you are.

Unfortunately for us, AND for the Japanese, their culture isn’t going to change their norms on race-relations anytime soon. This is not the modern industrialized world we’re talking about here, it’s JAPAN.

A guy who does a vlog on Youtube (tokyocooney) recently did a post about getting stopped and asked for his “Gaijin card” a lot, so it sounds like whites are not immune to this.

Anyway, going on about how minorities have it in the US and insinuations that this is a good thing for whites. I am of Hispanic ethnicity, and have lived in the US all my life. I lived in Texas for a while, and even then was hardly ever bothered by the police (unless I was doing something I shouldn’t be, like speeding). Many people here now are so racially hyper-sensitive and so ready to make a federal case over even perceived racism, they’ve ended a lot of blatantly racial behavior, especially by people like police officers who could lose their livelihood as a result. I don’t think things like “DWB” or “DWH” happen as often as some believe. At least not that me, any of my Hispanic, nor any of my black friends have experienced.

Now if something like what happened to the author of the story had happened to me here in the US, would it fundamentally change my view of my home country and apparently psychologically scar me? No, not at all. Then again, maybe I’m just thick skinned.

And that makes you, quite frankly, a bad person.

Two wrongs never make a “right”.

To delight in the suffering of others, even those you presume suffer less than you do, is sick, and wrong in any moral context.

What’s more, that attitude exacerbates an environment of prejudice, making life worse for everyone on all sides of the issue.

So, congratulations on being part of the problem.

However, I’m in the Kansai; I think Tokyo is very, very different! I’d love to hear from someone with experience living in both areas.

They also had a Korean Zainichi talking about housing discrimination, an African about work discrimination, and an Australian about, err, no-one sitting beside her on the train…

*Eight* undercover police? Either the police in that area have a lot of time and unspent manpower on their hands or they acted on some horrifyingly inaccurate intelligence.

Maybe we should all sew on our terrorist markings…..

“Shape was chosen by analogy with the common triangular road hazard signs in Germany that denote warnings to motorists. … Red triangle: a political prisoner. … In addition to color-coding, some groups had to put letter insignia on their triangles…” (from Wikipedia)

Lets see – Triangle of Red background, with T for terrorist…

Maybe we should all offer up our left forearms for tattoos…..

“The site of the tattoo was the outer side of the left forearm. Tattooing was generally performed during registration when each prisoner was assigned a camp serial number. Since prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were never issued numbers, they were never tattooed.” (from Wikipedia)

So if you refuse to be fingerprinted and photographed, you can miss out on the tattoo……..

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for the Foreigners,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Foreigner.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The key difference between Japan and Australia is that Japan is not a nation built on immigration, so there has not been any “Yellow Japan” immigration policy in the same way there was a “White Australian” one. That is, the racial ideas of what makes “Japanese” are based on the fact that virtually all Japanese were the same race and very few were immigrants. That is, defining a nation’s race identity based on who you let in is a lot different that defining it based on who is there to begin with. One is active discrimination, the other passive.

And there really isn’t an obvious amount of diversity in every town and city in Japan either. You have to look for it, and know where to look. Unless you count kimchi in the supermarkets.

Now that you’ve tasted the Japanese xenophobia for yourself and understand how ridiculous the anti-foreigner position has become, you should consider it your responsibility to enlighten your countrymen to the maximum extent possible.

in the case of australia, there have always been ethnicities, but it was not seen. up until the 1950s, australians percieved their country to be homogeneous (white and british – not australian). ofcourse that has changed since then, as have the racist immigration policies.
in this respect, japan is a lot like 1950s australia. clear and narrow national identity based on racial and nationalist ideals – despite the obvious diversity in every town and city.