IN PRAISE OF SAMARITANS

The anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan is getting out of hand.

I had quite an unpleasant experience on Friday night .

Ironically, three of us had got together – ageing expats, two Brits and an American – to catch up and specifically lament the current environment in Japan where a xenophobic tinge is becoming more mainstream and palpable; the fact that so many long term non-Japanese residents of this (still fascinating) country are coming to the sobering realization that Nihon simply DOESN’T WANT THEM and never did. A point most clearly illustrated by the number of people I know who are currently being chased for back payments of the nationally mandated pension and health insurance requirements for visa extensions in the country that they thought they had been paying out of their monthly salaries, only to find that their companies had deliberately not being paying them all along, keeping them on renewable six month visas or on teaching schedules with just few enough hours in week to allow the company to think of these employees as ‘temporaries’ – and thus not eligible for the same rights as J-citizens even when they have been here for many many years. One friend has had his salary seized by the government for the next few months and is leaving in a fury; a Canadian woman I know, who loves Japan, her job as a kid’s teacher, was horrified to recently discover the true circumstances behind her working situation and is now seeking legal action with a labour bureau: childlike and innocent at heart herself – probably why her Japanese students love her so much – she has really had her eyes opened to the blatant discrimination that often lingers beneath the surface here – and is being squeezed out now with new hard-hitting legislation into the open like insidious poison.

2025 has been The Year Of The Foreigner. The government long wanted to increase the number of tourists here for sake of the economy, but 40 million of them has proven just too much (there were less than a tenth of that number annually when I first came here; the yen was stronger; the country a lot more mysterious). Japanese citizens in tourist-overrun places feel overwhelmed, exacerbated by the media who are obsessed with the topic; it becomes a vicious cycle of foreigner-obsessed sensationalism. As we were saying to each other on Friday night, to the sensitive expatriate who has absorbed and partially been absorbed into the Japanese culture, many of the foreigners who rock up here do in fact come across as oblivious elephants trampling on their surroundings, speaking too loudly, dropping litter, wearing hideously obnoxious perfumes, insensate to the people around them; not even trying to tune in – an ancient archipelago nothing but a weird and wacky playground for them to put up on Tiktok and Instagram.

On the other hand, the right wing wave of stringent nationalism means that The Foreigner now gets blamed for everything. They sit on the streets. They carve out graffiti in sacred bamboo craves. They swing like monkeys on the torii gates of shrines. They don’t take their rubbish with them (NOTE: taking your garbage home with you is a recent thing in Japan; it is not an inherent part of the culture. Yes, this is a much tidier nation than average, but THERE USED TO BE RUBBISH BINS, EVERYWHERE. On streets, especially in stations; Japanese people availed themselves of them just like anybody else from any other country. Who wouldn’t? Then they suddenly disappeared; because of the coronavirus, or because of some foreign dignitary or other requiring security protection (or just to save money)and the whole country was immediately inconvenienced. But the foreign visitor is somehow supposed to intuit in advance that there IS NOWHERE TO THROW YOUR LITTER AWAY – and it’s bullshit.

Now, authorities are starting to be a bit more realistic and pragmatic and I have been delighted to observe recycling receptacles, or gomibako, your old fashioned rubbish bins, are returning; one had popped up in Yokohama station the other day, with easy to understand instructions for foreigners! : there was also even one on the high end Omotesando shopping street in Harajuku the other day – Hallelujah!- but this is only one of the gripes of the locals, who do want the cash to prop up their ageing society, but not to have to endure the waddling sight of mouth-breathing, ruddy faced cargo pants shouting in loud voices and not being cowed and self-negating enough like the locals. They jangle the exquisite Nipponesque nerves; they ruin the atmosphere. It has all become a bit of a clash, and you can FEEL it in the air if you have the antennae I do. You start to feel a bit embarrassed and overly self-conscious in your own skin (apologies for my off-putting, rather intense green eyes!) Twitter feeds and Instagram are apparently full of gaijin hating sentiment, one Australian friend tells me, but this is also, obviously, part of a more general veering in that direction worldwide. People in general, in all countries, tend to get whipped up by the crowds and the prevailing winds; the whole world is obsessed with immigration right now and I get it; it is a complicated topic. Humans are ethnocentric and want to preserve their original culture; change is frightening. Almost overnight a couple of years ago it seemed that anyone working in a Japanese convenience store was Nepalese or Vietnamese – for an island nation famous for its centuries of isolation from the world, a sense of’uniqueness’ and apartness that is part of the country’s DNA now, I can understand that this has taken some getting used to; I understand also how the locals in Kamakura feel now that they can’t even get on their local Enoden train line there are so many jostling tourists licking green tea ice creams on their way to take selfies in front of the Great Buddha. The country needs the immigrants to fill the jobs that either nobody wants or there are not physically enough people to do them, but the demographic change makes them uneasy. The economy does need tourism; but the logistics of this ‘invasion’ have none been properly thought through and neither has the cultural impact (Kyoto is ruined, I would never go there as things are now, and hopefully Kamakura is not going that way entirely – at night it returns to its ancient zen capital atmosphere to an extent – thankfully the tourists don’t realize this – although the station does sometimes feel more like Shinjuku on a Friday afternoon with all the throngs and the loud tannoy announcements in English, Korean and Mandarin in a tone that is too declamatory and urgent; the serenity, secluded, and quiet peculiarity of Kamakura has definitely been partly shattered.)

Friday night, we old timers had had a great time at the marvellous Saizeriya two stations up from there in the direction of Tokyo – Ōfuna- at the cheapest restaurant imaginable, something of a national institution here that everybody in Japan likes, from young to old; tasty Italian at mindbogglingly low prices, busy but somehow cozy; I stayed talking and eating and drinking the ridiculously cheap wine until it was time for me to queue up to get the last bus. In truth, I was happy to go alone and decompress in the cold air for a while, but my friends insisted they join me in order to continue the conversation (and thank god they did), including Liverpool Neil’s Japanese girlfriend Mai who had arrived a bit later on. My left leg is still quite swollen, and was very painful on that day (sometimes I overdo the walking and pay the price as a result) so it is necessary for me to get to the front of the line, put my bag there, and sit in the cold for the twenty or thirty minutes until the last one comes to ensure that I get a seat.. The buses in this area used to come much more frequently, but with the population decreases the country continues to suffer from, the bus companies have been shedding services left right and centre in order to maximize profits; the last one is now more packed than Noah’s ark, and if possible, I usually avoid it like the plague or at least get on first so I can sit on the back seat on the left, next to the window, and pretend there is nobody there .

There was a man on the bench. Drunk; in his forties; bearded; wild. He was spread across it, asleep. We had had a few ourselves, so although I should probably have been more wary of disturbing someone who was obviously behaving antisocially, at that moment in time I had no compunction in asking him to budge up a bit so I could sit. I expected him to just be affable. As would usually be the case.

Upon being roused from his stupor, however, and realizing that a foreigner had had the audacity to ask a holy JAPANESE person to move, when he was having a nice sleep, and a foreigner with a FAKE WALKING STICK TO BOOT; IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT IT WAS A SCAM, WASN’T IT..; THAT I JUST WANTED TO BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN ON THE BUS, wasn’t it, AND THAT THERE WAS ACTUALLY NOTHING WRONG WITH MY LEG AT ALL, IT WAS A LIE, wasn’t it; —-how DARE such a sneaky foreign invader demand that he not take up the very bench made for the precise purpose I was using it for; how dare how dare – and he was getting angrier and angrier, a very physically powerful man who was beginning to terrify Mai, wide-eyed and petite as a sparrow, and me, in a very physically vulnerable position on the bench as he stood up and started bellowing like a minotaur (and where the hell were the other two? Why were they taking so long at the convenience store? It felt like an eternity………..we really needed some backup).

Within a few minutes the situation was becoming untenable. He was getting more and more aggressive, and simply wouldn’t have it that I have in fact had THREE operations on this leg now; he refused to believe anything of what we were telling him even when I mentioned the specifics of the operations and the hospitals in question, not that I should have had to do that in the first place, ASSHOLE! – but just to calm him down; it all just felt like a matter of time before something violent occurred; at which very serendipitous moment a woman in her thirties crossed hastily over the busy street, asked if we were ok, and intervened magnificently on our behalf. M whispered some things to her about the situation, I explained to her what was happening as she looked me in the eye and understood, and then she went to work on mollifying him as best as she possibly could, standing there patiently trying to defuse the situation; cleverly understanding and entering his racist, blasted mind and trying to placate him, although I was also starting to get riled up now at the sheer injustice of the situation, which, admittedly, caused a few F Us to start issuing from mine own lips (can’t take the hooligan out of a Brummie); it was then quickly decided I had better get into a taxi instead of trying to stubbornly get the bus after all (the whole point of this had been to try and save money by NOT having to pay for one), but it felt very dangerous now and there was no other option. Neil and Drew finally made their way back to us just at the last minute as I gave them a hug, and I was sped off in the taxi, breathless with what had just happened. Looking out at the scene from the car window, I saw three sturdy police officers approaching the bus stop in firm haste, summoned to deal with the xenophobic maniac that had been terrorizing all those around him, and, drama-queen yearnings to get in there and tell them what was what (yeah, good luck with that, because the police are obviously going to listen to the foreigner) notwithstanding, I was glad I had been able to avoid all the bureaucratic hassle and also remain unmaimed. Mai had been filming some of this on her smartphone, as I am sure had some of the bystanders waiting for the bus just in case things got truly hairy or I was being beaten to a pulp; they looked very alarmed by what was transpiring – ‘LOOK! SEE! HE CAN WALK! IT’S ALL BULLSHIT! I TOLD YOU! ‘ – the man shouted out self righteously as I stood up and walked away like Lazarus (it is true, I can walk, and my gait is normal, thank goodness and I am hardly a wizened Methuselah myself ).

With this unnerving experience, I had an inkling for the first time in my life I think, of what it must be like for people who are lynched for false crimes, when the impetus for the accusations is nothing other than simple racial hatred and bigotry. That sense of UTTER WRONGNESS – someone verbally attacking me for faking my knee problems when I have had the year that I have; the exasperation of not being able to change a bigot’s fixed state of mind; and I think if the situation had not been de-escalated by that kind Samaritan, he might even have attacked my physically because that was the energy that everything was building up to – imagine if he had kicked my leg and actually broken it in this situation, it could have been really horrendous ! ……………….it all made me understand, for a moment, the sheer hopelessness a person can feel from being accused of something that is totally unfounded and merely founded upon the basest and most disgusting discrimination. If I had been Japanese with a cane, there would have been no problem. But because I was a foreigner, and because this man has probably been influenced by the general mood in the country right now and the media and the Internet that foreigners are no good, my walking stick was a fraud. Fake News (thanks, Donald, for that contribution to human culture). It was obvious! For him, it was a simple as that. I was a Bad Foreigner.

Yes. If it hadn’t been for that kind, quick thinking and open-minded Japanese woman who crossed the street without a second thought, an empathetic and quick reacting person who could have just ignored the situation like all the other cowards int the bus queue did, and who was undoubtedly held up in hassle-heavy police questioning for a long time afterwards as they arrested or questioned the man and wrote up a report ; her evening impacted in who knows what unforeseen ways: and also my ultrasensitive Japanese friend who also did her absolute best to contain the situation, I am not quite sure what might have transpired. Sometimes, people really do step up (I am really no saint, but I do stand up for people in similar situations- I have, defended women against angry drunken men who sometimes get scarily violent in Ofuna night frenzies, once even having to make a statement at the local police station); not everyone is a monged out zombie; some, thinking and feeling people actually do look up from their smartphones and self absorption on occasion, and notice what is happening to other people around them. A tired looking woman, miraculously, gave me her seat on a crowded train the other day when I really did need it — though she, very obviously, needed it as well- she looked exhausted. But at that very moment, she had noticed me with my stick in the crowd, and needed the seat at that particular moment in time more than she did. Sometimes, strangers really do have enough empathy to forget themselves for a moment and not think of a person in need as just a foreigner, or an immigrant; or a liar, or a fraud.

Their purer instincts are just to help.