Cops in Tokyo + Yuheisha

[M Arnold]

Thank you for all the responses, public and private! I hope I don't sound 
too paranoid about this, but like I said, until last December the police 
never bothered me, so this has been very educational. I made myself known to 
the two koban near my apartment soon after I moved in--and even let 
policemen into my messy room--when I reported my Japanese neighbors' 
unneighborly "activities," so the police nearby have known who I am and why 
I'm here. As far as my looks are concerned, occasionally people have joked 
(?) that I look Middle Eastern, whatever that means to them, but others have 
complemented (?) me on how shiroi I am, and often people say that I look 
like U.S. military.

I'm not surprised that the police do this in Japan, but I am surprised by 
what feels like a rapid increase in the number of overzealous cops on the 
street. In a way I'm glad they're being so obvious about it all, but if they 
have so much time to go around chasing shadows I sure wish they would do 
something that would actually help to improve public safety, like enforce 
the traffic laws once in a while, or keep the sidewalks clear.

I was hoping to write back and say how surprised I was that I didn't have 
any trouble since my message a few weeks ago, but on Monday, as I was riding 
home from Oizumi to Shinjuku, two uniformed policemen stopped me again. I 
rode through a crosswalk on a one lane road against a red signal (after 
stopping and looking both ways, when there was no car or pedestrian traffic 
at all, and with at least two other bicycles crossing before and after me), 
and two cops who were waiting about 30 meters down the sidewalk stopped me 
with the excuse that I had crossed on a red light. I apologized, almost 
happy that they were stopping me for a reason that was nearly legit, but the 
next thing they said was, "Oh well, don't worry about it, it's not a big 
deal. By the way, is this your bicycle?" They asked for my name and 
gaikokujin registration card and called my bike number in by walkie-talkie. 
When they confirmed it was my bike they let me go.

I still see an unusually large number of police prowling around every day 
when I travel in and out of downtown, and sometimes they pause and check me 
out. As I was walking home tonight from the supermarket, a cop car driving 
up the opposite side of the road pulled over and shined its headlights at me 
for a few seconds before moving on. I don't know what's going on but it 
still feels pretty weird . . .

As I mentioned in the last message, although I doubt this has anything to do 
with my police encounters, I have been in touch with a few "lefty" film 
people over the last several months. Last week I attended the premiere 
screening of Adachi Masao's "Yuheisha / Terrorist" at Athenee Francais. It 
was a full house; I've never seen the theater so packed. There were a lot of 
familiar faces in the audience, and the movie is filled with cameos by well 
known directors, critics, musicians, college professors and more. The movie 
is based on the story of Okamoto Kozo. After three Japanese terrorists 
attack people at an airport, the one surviving gunman is thrown in prison, 
where he endures various kinds of torture and starts to hallucinate about 
his family, his comrades, and various revolutionary figures. It's an 
interesting film to say the least, and it's very exciting to see Adachi back 
in action as a filmmaker after so long.

When everyone left the theater and walked down the street to the nomikai, I 
saw one police car and two policemen on bikes going up and down the road 
along side us. Part of the conversation at the party revolved around whether 
or not there were secret police agents in the audience. "Did you see that 
strange guy standing by the entrance when we were going in . . . ?"

Michael Arnold