It's a lively Saturday night in the heart of Hiroshima's Nagarekawa district, and some 100 police officers, riot police, immigration officials and U.S. agents gather for a joint operation to bring an end to a licensing infringement of the Public Morals Law.
Read the rest of SH's Japan Times piece online here.
Read more about the author's investigations on GetHiroshima here.
Japan Times also has a piece on the situation on Tokyo here.
Any comments? Leave them below.
4 comments:
from the article: A City Hall official adds, "It's not dancing that's illegal. You can dance on the street if you want. Anytime. Just not in a club."
Perhaps a good way to protest these actions would be to have a "dance-in" on the steps of city hall...
I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, especially in light of SH's excellent article and GetHiro's extensive coverage, and I've come to a tentative conclusion: the police action has at least 2 factors involved. The first is an earnest desire to clamp down on "illegal activity". I'm not sure why, or why now, this is happening, but I would imagine that there is growing disatisfaction with the slumping economy, moribund birthrate, cultural decline and general malaise that has set in since the Bubble burst way back in early-90s. Koizumi's Neo-Liberal, Thatcherite/Reaganesque economic debacles and his manipulation of the media in order to look like a "strong leader" all the while acting the part of lap-dog and lickspittle to the facist Bush junta is also part of the mix. Obviously Abe is continuing in this pathetic vein, being war criminal Kishi's grandson and all (and Koizumi's lackey). But there does seem to be a concerted effort on the part of the authorities to get up off their asses, out of the koban, and do something to make Japan a "beautiful country". This is where the second factor comes into play: who do they target in such a "clean up"? Will they go after the Right Wing nutjobs in the soundtrucks (see Japan Times series on these lowlifes, if you are interested)? Will they go after the mob, which controls the speed and human trafficking industries? No, of course not. There are too many well-documented studies attesting to the close ties between organized crime and the police in this country. We all know who they will target: the most vulnerable, the "foreigners" who something like 60% of the mainstream Japanese population has repeatedly told surveyors they would prefer "not live here", just "go away". This kind of thing happens in every country, and don't get me wrong--Japan can be a lovely place to live, with the most friendly, amazing people. But there is always, I mean always, this underlying feeling of "foreignness" and "not-being-wanted" involving anyone not "pure Japanese". This is most frustrating for people born and raised here, especially those of Korean and Chinese ethnicity, but it affects almost everyone, every "foreigner"--including the Latino population, who increasingly make up the unskilled factory labor force, taking jobs that are dirty, dark and dangerous, which Japanese youth avoid like the plague. After the heinous Yagi crime and the media spectacle surrounding it, who do you think the "authorities" will target? And there are denials all around, but let's face it: until non-ethnic-Japanese are somehow, by some miracle, "accepted" as equal in this society (and we all know there is a long, long way to go on this, with most of the non-Asian gaijin population short-term, with the "who gives a shit?" attitude), we will see this kind of prejudice. Especially in times of Reaction and Jingoism, such as we are living in at the moment. The best thing to do, other than wait for a miracle to just sort of happen, is for foreign residents to unite and fight for equal rights and justice. This means at every level--housing, work, citizenship, etc. Work to stop being treated as "separate" cases, with "special rules" and the like. Until then, it is all-too-easy for those in power to abuse their authority and to find bullshit, antiquated "laws" or "clauses", city ordinances and the like, to "clean up" Japan and make it a "beautiful country". But "beautiful" for whom?
I think one of the most interesting revelations is about a bar being able to hold both licenses, allow dancing until 1am, everyone goes out and then is allowed back in just for drinking. This sounds like a really workable framework- it would take a bit of adjustment but I think the dance community would appreciate having a venue that even offered this option. Another question might be from what time in the morning is dancing allowed. If daytime dancing is allowed we could see a new club culture that starts when the bars close at 5am and allow the drunken partyers to dance till noon and then go home to crash- I always thought the daytime dance clubs seemed like such a nice option when in Sydney or London, why not Hiroshima?
I agree with JJ that a temporary way forward could be to generate two-stage dance and lounge nights, with djs getting people to dance in the earlier hours, then djs getting people to chill afterwards. It might lead to a shift in the range of hours people go out clubbing, but that doesn't immediately mean the events would lose their draw. Seeing the likes of the White Stripes et al perform at 6pm in Club Quattro (due to Parco's closing times) took some getting used to, but it's something I don't really think twice about when I go to a gig now. If clubs and djs can be convinced to try for a shift in programming, then that's definitely worth a try. At least until the laws catch up.
On that note, the Halloween event at Chinatown seems to have been a great - and multicultural- success. There was one incident, however, where one of my compatriots got into a drunken argument with staff from a different part of the world, and after some pretty abusive remarks about visa-overstayers and arguments with the organizers, this customer went on to phone the police. If we are to convince the authorities that late-night drinking can be compatable with dance-culture, then I think we really have to be careful not to give the authorities instances for them to point to in countering the argument for changes in the law. In the event, the police came but stayed outside and left after checking all was okay. It could, of course, have led to the closing of the event, at one of the only venues where events still seem to be able to be held. I acknowledge that I've only heard one side of the story. However, whatever the full series of events were, we really need to be more careful. The organizers are putting themselves out there for the community. They don't need things to be made more difficult for them.
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