You're not big, you're not clever

I'll keep this brief because the tale is recounted in detail on other blogs - but there is an illuminating flap in progress over a magazine which appeared a few days ago in Japanese convenience stores. It is entitled Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu ('Foreigners Underground Crime File'). I don't yet have a copy myself, but a number of pages are scanned in at the pages indicated below. From these it is clear that it is a work of scabrous racism of a kind which, in the west, you would not find outside the publications of the dedicated ultra-right. But this magazine was on sale in Family Mart, a chain convenience store with branches every few hundred years across Japan.

The magazine (or mook - Japanese for a hybrid of a magazine and a book) gives explicit expression to a notion which peeps between the lines of a lot of crime reporting - that crime in Japan is simply and straighforwardly the fault of foreigners. Not Caucasians or Europeans/North Americans (one and the same in this kind of thinking), but Africans, South Americans, South Asians and people of the Middle East.

There is an article about the state of Tokyo entitled:

City of violent, degenerate foreigners!

Another piece is headlined:

Catch the Iranian!

But the giveaway is a series of photographs, sneakily shot with a telephoto lens, of Japanese women canoodling with gaijin men (reminiscent of those old Ku Klux Klan publications showing pictures of mixed race couples guilty of "miscegenation".)

Profanity and racist invective follow.

You sluts really think foreign guys are so great, huh!!

and

Oi Nigger!! Get your fuckin’ hands off that Japanese lady’s ass!!

and

This is Japan! Go back to your own fuckin’ country and do that!

And then the clincher:

We know Japanese guys are small, but . . .

Oh no. How sad. How disappointingly obvious. There was I, hoping to identify a complicated racial paradigm shift, or a radical rippling of the zeitgeist (or at the least a dangerous breach in the space-time continuum). But it turns out to be all about a little bloke somewhere who, in the words of Lily Allen, is "small in the game" . . .

A Google Blog Search for Gaijin Hanzai Ura File or Gaijin Hanzai Ura File or 外人犯罪裏ファイル will lead you to the latest webchat. The most comprehensive blogging on the subject so far is by that tireless campaigner for gaijin rights, Arudou Debito. He's updating with new posts, so start from the top of the page, but the original post, including images from the mook, is here. The later posts contain the text of a letter to Family Mart (which ahs outlets in the US) demanding the removal of the offensive publication. Apparently they have agreed to do so within a week - which doesn't strike me as particularly prompt or effective action.

If you want to buy it for yourself, it's here on Japanese Amazon.

There's a version of the story which I wrote for Tuesday's newspaper here.

Comments

[Ken]

Interesting post. It's good to see this issue getting some coverage outside of Japan, and outside of the circle of Japan-blogs. The thing is, this is getting a lot of English blog attention, and some English-language media attention, but so far almost zero attention in Japanese. I'm wondering what message we should get from that.

[Nick]

My photo lives!
Let that photo roll all the way to the USA today...

thank you for reporting on this, I just wish it would crossover into the jpress.

[Note from RLP: Nick took the photograph of the offending mook, used without credit on this blog, and many others. Thank you for being so laid back about the use of your intellectual property . . .]

[Chen]

every few hundred years - yards

[Captain]

[quote]But it turns out to be all about a little bloke somewhere who, in the words of Lily Allen, is "small in the game."[/quote]
I completely disagree with this explanation. Very little of the rag deals with the hopelessly tired charisma-man condition (even that part is buried near the back). Most of the over 100 pages is about murder, theft, prostitution, etc. I think you should have picked up a copy before writing the story. The reason it got published was to make money by feeding a market that it knew existed. It also further knew that few would be sensitive about it being overly racist - something that is totally true given that I don't know of one Japanese pub that has picked up this story. The publisher is not tormented. I walked past the offices of Eichi (the publisher) in Shibuya on Saturday night. Pasted to their front windows are covers of their pubs (but not the gaijin rag). The mags are about business, celebrites, etc. For IJ (perhaps ironically short for Intellectual Japanese) a promo poster from some kind of event was signed by all sorts of people - including Miss Universe Japan 2006. This is not a small-timer with a grudge.

[Andrew Milner]

Out at the car auctions, they've taken to locking the pricy cars with expensive SatNavi type equipment, as gear was walking. For years the cars were unlocked with the key in the ignition, allowing prospective buyers to rev up. In UK this would essentially be a "Help Yourself" sign. Did seem to coincide with opening of a Muslim Prayer Room. Obviously simply a coincidence as Chinese and Russians are seldom Muslims.

[gme]

I just emailed Amazon Japan's press office to ask them to take the book down from their website and dispose of their stock. There are however several more online bookstores that come up in a Google search for the book's title, and some (7andy, Seven-Eleven's Japan bookstore, to name but one) seem to be going out of their way to avoid disclosing a contact email address or phone number. I will contact those I'm able to, though. I would encourage others to do likewise.

[john gregory Flinn]

Well, its nice to see there are no taboos on debate of this topic in Japan! Perhaps it will grace European webspace soon.
I mean, just watch BBC news regularly at 6pm, and almost all the crimes reported are down to people of foreign origins or actual foreigners. So, why not discuss it here as well?

I don't think this is new though, I can remember a similar - but lower key theme - in the 70s, in both Japan and S.Korea.

[rev.paperboy]

I work in the English language media in Tokyo and this issue is a constant source of frustration. Japanese management and editors are too busy running the latest story of pernicious foreign criminals to bother with stories about racism and sexism among Japanese. "Everybody knows" that foreigners are responsible for most of the crime in Japan is the usual line we are given. The numbers however show the crime rate among foreigners in Japan to be slightly less than among Japanese. When visa-related offenses are left out of the calculations, the crime rate among foreigners is about two-thirds the crime rate among Japanese.

[Andrew Milner]

The article in question overstepped the mark when it went from condemning “Gaijin” crime to offensive comment regarding sexual contact between foreign men and Japanese women. Always felt that one of the good points of Japan was that Japanese and say Caucasian men were seldom in competition for the same women. The qualities that attract Western men (confident, assertive, tall, intelligent, educated, experienced, accomplished, international; bringing a basket of business and social contacts to the table) were the very qualities that Japanese men would find a threat and major turn-off.
And as for size, this is such a non-issue. Sit down for this guys, but Madam doesn`t really like playing the uncut bedroom scene. Sex is simply something she has to trade with. For women, the price of marriage is sex, for men, the price of sex is marriage. So while at the esoteric level, we’d all like to see harmony between the genders … Lost causes I have known, but this has to be the Mother of them all.

[EX]

I have not read this book...........
But Richard Parry and paperboy are liars.　The crime rate of foreigners in Japan is high.　The crime rate of Chinese and Korean is very high, and the crime rate of European and American is low in Japan. Recently, Crimes of South America persons are increasing rapidly. and, to begin with, Middle East people and Africa people's population are few.
Of course, it is by the a population of ratio. Besides, because foreigners escape abroad, arrest rate is low.

[high voltage]

Dear EX,

The offensive thing about this magazine is that although only 3% of crime in Japan is done by the 1% of foreigners (including visa violations), the magazine distorts it to make it seem as though most crime in Japan is committed by gaijin.

The other point is their focus on interracial couples. Would you like to be photographed and labelled with abuse just for dating somebody from another race? This book is indefensible.

[Kevin O'Toole]

I think this a question of free speech. Free speech means all speech that is not intended to provoke physical harm should be exempt from prosecution. The Japanese people have shown themselves to be positively nationalistic in their protection of crime victims. Here in North America likewise publications may be technically legal, but would certainly provoke harsher criticism than “Kill Whitey”, no matter how many times this hateful statement is acted out. We hear more about how the white power structure is everyday derogating the rights of non-whites and religious minorities. But when someone attempts to demonstrate how the recent rise in immigration (spearheaded by wealthy business entrepreneurs) can be linked to the higher crime rate that is everyday climbing, they are called a racist. Not only do I support and respect the magazine publisher’s right to print what they see as a degradation in their country; I lament that we, as one of so-called freest countries on the planet, are not afforded the right to speak out against hazardous foreign immigration. Even non-violent protests such as these are met with seething name calling by tax-exempt organizations who are at this very minute waiting for someone to attack. Multiculturalism is the new religion of the Western world (of which Japan is apart of), and heretics are discredited before they are burned at the stake. Suggesting that one way to build a cohesive society is to take measures to maintain its ethnic integrity will have demonstrators on your doorstep with placards calling you Hitler. This magazine is only offensive to people attempting to alter the complexion of Japanese society. I genuinely wish that we had a similar, if less vulgar, publication in Canada that could go against the tide of pro-multiculturalism that has been forced on us.

I would be very surprised if this ends up being posted, but I would be doing my people a disservice not to speak up.

[WOW WTF]

Accoring to Amazon japan, the two comments that gave the book a 1 star; the first comment: 21 of 70 people found the following review helpful.

The 2nd comment: 38 of 94 people found the following review helpful

That is saying something.

[unknown]

I’m Japanese and have been living in US for over 15 years or so.
Do you know, I noticed that Japanese are rather developing country when it comes to racisim.

I noticed now, how inmoral they are sometimes, especially comments made in TV, that I didn’t notice before when I lived in Japan. (not only to other races but against people with less phisical attraction)

They seem no ideas what “discrimination” really is, so, I’m pretty sure this publishers and readers haven’t sense of what they really means.

Using a word “nigger” and they don’t mean anything? I don’t think so. There you have it, that’s how ignorant still Japanese are when it comes to discrimination.

I feel so sorry about it, that I am Japanese too, now I see, kind scars me.