CULTURE: Japanese police

 As I am privileged (in an ironic sense) to live by a police station here in Kobe, I am able to witness various incidents throughout the night with a clear, over-watching view from my balcony. Throughout my exchange thus far I have come to view the Japanese police, at least in this area of Kobe, as relatively spineless, or failing that, lazy, but the view comes with an understanding of cultural influences that contrast to the way police in the United States behave. Recently, however, there have been many violent and startling incidents in the Kobe area that makes the behavior of the police around here a bit troubling. Recently, near my area here in Tarumi, there were two young men nearly beaten to death (one man later died: read article here: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101030p2a00m0na005000c.html) by a group of other young men. A month or so ago, a high school student was randomly stabbed to death in Kobe's northern ward as he was walking with his girlfriend. On top of that, there was an explosion in front of a mob group's office building today. While the police surely handle these matters in some way I'm not giving them credit for here, the way they act from what I've seen in the neighborhood does not inspire confidence in their ability to maintain public order.

 Some examples of what I've seen outside my apartment:

 As I had once posted back in June, about right-wing Japanese propagandists, they often make their way through this neighborhood blasting the most cheerful of Japanese nationalist anthems (by cheerful I mean dreary and creepy) out of loud speakers. They're prone to disturbing the peace in many ways; they believe their message needs to be heard so much that they drive right down the middle of the street, effectively blocking both incoming and oncoming traffic due to the relatively timid nature of Japanese motorists. The rightists drive very slowly so that they make their presence known within a large radius. Occasionally they even drive around the smaller neighborhood streets so that they can be heard in every home. While this occurs maybe once a week at most, and I've only seen them deliberately impede traffic once, the reaction by the police was next to nothing. I watched the rightists go down the street and then watched the police station doors until about three officers walked out and stood there, watching the car go by slowly. After the car was relatively far away they simply walked back in, not bothered to pursue the vehicle.

 While the issue with rightists does not evoke any real sense of public danger, the police reaction to motorcycle gangs, or "bousouzoku" (暴走族) yields the same lack of enthusiasm for swiftly enforcing the law. Lately, around 3AM, motor cycle gangs will drive around in circles in the middle of the street, blocking all traffic, and incessantly honking their horns until the police come out of the station. I heard the biker gang members shout "He's coming!" as they proceeded to make a slow and teasing getaway. I saw the officer who came out shake his fist like an annoyed old man. Some officers ran up the street in the direction the bikers were going. The bikers than proceed to drive around the nearby cross-streets, honking their horns to provoke the police into chasing them. The fact that these kids get away with bullying the police like this says a lot about how the police around here operate. They would be clubbed, tasered, and maybe even shot by the almost cocaine-induced-like aggression of many American police officers.

 Culture obviously plays a huge factor in the police behavior. One night I saw an entire group of officers outside station trying to hold back a disgruntled, clearly intoxicated older man who appeared to be in a fight with another man nearby. The man was screaming and kicking and trying to move away from the officers from the sidewalk onto the street. The officers kept telling him "It's dangerous in the street, come on!", as if trying to convince him to follow their orders rather than carry those orders out. There was no firmness in their treatment of the man, and at one point he even took off down the street and the officers kept making their effort to subdue the man in the same, almost pleading way. It more resembled a group of friends trying to calm down the one that got carried away (and for all I know, maybe the man worked at the department; I've seen police go head to head with each other during previous times in Japan). While this kind of event might be normal for people around here, it's a sharp contrast to how police behave in the United States.

 From the treatment of biker gangs, which is similarly lax when they show police chases on Japanese television programs (the police simply follow the biker gangs until a certain point, trying to get down information to go nab them later, satisfying the thrill of being chased by the police for the young gang members) to their general attitude about other disturbances and unrest, the image of the police in Japan doesn't conjure the fear that many people feel in the United States. I cannot call it any better or worse just because of the way they handle certain incidences, and there is undoubtedly a lot more credit deserved for Japanese police and what they can and have accomplished. The fact that most officers don't regularly carry firearms too creates a different image, and it can't be said that the accidental shootings in the United States by police officers is a good case for a more aggressive police force in Japan. It's also important to note that in spite of what I've said about public disturbances, the neighborhood and area, like most places in Japan, is a safe and peaceful environment even with what's going on in the local news, and this is mainly due to the fact that the fundamentals of social and public order in Japanese culture are still intact. Nonetheless, when the biker gangs get bored in the dead of night and start their masturbatory rituals in street outside my apartment, I can't help but somewhat wish (likely to the chagrin of any so-called anarchists at Evergreen) that the officers would go out and crack some heads.