You’ve probably seen this on a bunch of blogs, including the always readable Arudou Debito’s blog. It seems some folks have put together an informative book, with photos and illustrations to point out the sheer, unadulterated evil we foreigners in Japan do – Gaijin Hanzai Informative Magazine. There just aren’t enough superlatives to describe just how awful we foreigners are apparently. Well, I say ‘we’, but apparently no Europeans or North Americans commit crime … just the rest of them. Pages here, here and here.
“Gaijin Hanzai Ura File” as the book is known, may well still be available from such hard core right wing establishments as…er…Family Mart.
All in all, it’s just an odd situation, with these fairly normal shops having to apologise and get it off their shelves to save a bit of bad publicity.
This blog is not really the place for me to go into the ‘race issue’ in Japan, or even my own experiences, and though I would say Japan has an inclination to legalised, institutional racism, I wouldn’t say it’s (personally, physically) dangerous, and I don’t think these people represent even a tiny, if vocal, percentage of the population. That said, some foreigners have committed crimes, and I’m not talking about visa overstays either. However, by far, most crime is committed by Japanese, even by percentage.
Overall summary: kind of sad this book can be published in 2007 in what is a very enjoyable place to live.