My friend Lars, dressed like a Western tourist might, emerged from Tokyo station’s ticket gate yesterday to be suddenly swarmed on by three police officers. “Are you a tourist?” Lars answers, “Umm, No.” Then they ask, “Do you work here?” and Lars replies, “No. I am a graduate student [at Waseda University]” The police officers then asked him for his “Foreigner Identification Card” He handed it over but asked, “Can I ask why I have been approached?” They told him, “There has been a terrorist attack.” Lars asked, “Where?” to which they replied, “Spain.” Lars then replied, “Oh really? When was it?” The police then replied, “Several months ago.” They soon let him go and Lars then went on his way, wondering what a terrorist attack that happened in Spain several months ago had to do with him walking out of a train station. This happened to my Canadian friend Andrew, also at Waseda studying engineering a few months ago as well. When Andrew asked why he was stopped by a police car when walking down a street, he was just told that, “We have a lot of crime. Foreigners often commit crime.”
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Sorta makes you wonder how much longer it’s going to be before we start seeing this in America — if it’s not already happening
Muslim ethnic minorities are already reporting an increased number of stop and searches in the UK. I expect it’s the same in the states.
I saw a Time-asia “By the numbers” column that observed that surveys in Japan indicated well over half the citizens were opposed to increased immigration due to fears of rising crimes rates while in fact around 3% of crimes in Japan are committed by foreigners.
It astounds me that they can be so fearful of foreigners and crime yet so passive and enabling when it comes to yakuza and other related peoples and organizations.