A burning ring of vinaigrette

Among the reasons I hold Japanese journalists in such high regard are their exquisitely honed sense of irony and their perfect comic timing. Time and again, in the newspapers or on the TV news, a seemingly straightforward story will be transformed into a masterpiece of Beckettian absurdity by a single deadpan detail.

Take this story from Kyodo news agency (published in the print version of today's Yomiuri).

Police have arrested and sent to prosecutors a 49-year-old doctor on suspicion of attempting to set a hospital on fire in western Tokyo, police officials said Wednesday.

An insurance fraud? A sad case of mental breakdown by an overworked medical professional? It sounds routine enough, anyway, one of those unfortunate things that simply happens from time to time.

The kicker is in the second paragraph:    

Naruhiko Sakai, who runs a clinic in Ome city, allegedly poured salad oil in the vestibule of a hospital in the same city at around 1 a.m. on June 9 and tried to set it on fire.

Salad oil! Superb! Thank you, thank you, for not putting that in the first sentence. But we need to know more. Was it western-style vinaigrette or Japanese wafu dressing, with a soy sauce base? Shop bought, or whisked up by the doctor especially for the occasion? Did Paul Newman have anything to do with it (see photograph)? And how many trillions of yens worth of damage were caused before fire fighters were able to bring the inferno under control?

Wisely, the wags of Kyodo keep us wondering:

A police officer responding to an emergency call found the suspect in the vicinity of the hospital and apprehended him, police officials said.

"A former female patient of mine is being treated at the hospital, and I got upset that her condition has been worsening,'' the police quoted the doctor as saying during questioning.

That's it.

What I can't understand is how the fuzz got their hands on Dr Sakai at all. Couldn't he have beaten off the arresting officer with a leaf of rocket, and disembowelled him with an asparagus spear? And then made his get away on a carrot mounted on tomato slices, meanwhile blinding his pursuers with a cloud of grated parmesan?

A whole new universe of anxiety opens up when you start to consider the offensive capabilities of salads. I'm not going to sweat over the North Korean Taepodong missile anymore. It's the stockpiles of Hellmann's mayonnaise that are keeping me awake.

Comments

[chenyongzi]

Dear Mr. Parry, i must admire that you are so prolificacy, like a turtle in her season. Yet is seems that you do not cook anyway. I can assure you that Salad Oil (in its Japanese meaning) can be used as fuel, it is really inflammable, though I don't think that it is powerful enough to push a Taepodong missile. As well, I don't believe that North Korea can use those rubbish bikes (exchanged by their lobsters) to make the shell.

[Richard Lloyd Parry]

It's certainly true that I am no Fanny Craddock. But when I do make my occasional, but highly focused, forays into the kitchen I have a strict rule: no setting fire to the condiments.

I bow to your superior knowledge of these things, but I just made myself my usual dressing (extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a bit of salt and vinegar) and attempted to put it to the torch.

Not a spark!

Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you, by the way, for comparing me to the gentle mother turtle. I shall push out another soft white egg as soon as possible.

[chenyongzi]

There is not any need to bow to an awkward experience burning the wallpaper black. As you may know, frying things deep is the fate of most of the Chinese men (something we can develop to multi-culture?). Come on, waiting for your next egg.

[Richard Lloyd Parry]

A trawl through the database uncovers this even more disturbing tale from the Mainichi Shimbun of September 20 2003:

"Robber pours salad oil on convenience store floor but fails to ignite it

NISHINOMIYA, Hyogo -- A man poured salad oil on the floor of a local convenience store early Saturday in a bid to rob it of money, but unsuccessfully struggled to ignite it before being arrested, police said.

Mikio Kinoshita, 59, a jobless man from Nishinomiya, is accused of attempted robbery. "I wanted to rob the store of money," he was quoted as telling investigators during questioning.

At around 4:30 a.m., Kinoshita demanded money from a 22-year-old female employee at a Mini Stop outlet in the Koshienguchi district of Nishinomiya. A 21-year-old male employee fled the outlet with a colleague and alerted police after he attempted to overpower the robber.

Kinoshita then poured salad oil he had stolen from a store shelf on the floor, and was unsuccessfully struggling to ignite the oil when officers rushed to the scene and arrested him on the spot.

Kinoshita had come to the store about an hour before the incident, and bought a disposable camera and a knife. However, he subsequently acted suspiciously, coming in and out of the outlet and taking photos of the inside of the store."

[Chris]

Dear Mr. Parry,

As an avid reader of your column could I ask you to write a follow-up piece on what the Japanese government is doing to ensure that domestically produced salad oil does not fall into the hands of terrorists? Since reading your article I've become edgy and even the first whiff of sesame oil.