Just Another Interesting Anecdote,Isn't It?
A couple of weeks ago, O. visited Tokyo, or technically the East, for the first time.
I was very relieved when he told me that the journey was immensely enjoyable. O. is a very optimistic, adventurous, and out-going person by nature, so perhaps the horror of being surrounded by a graphic language like Japanese could be overcome easily.
On the night before he flew back to Europe, we had dinner together. He told us an interesting anecdote that happened to him during his stay.
On his first day in Japan, he was stopped by two policemen in Ueno station, who asked him for his passport. According to the immigration law in Japan, visitors to this country are obliged to take their passports or any other identification certificate that is legally equivalent. He said he had left it in the hostel. Then the policemen made some questions concerning about his visit and where he was going at the time. Then they realized O. was a traveler and his nationality, and they let him go. It happened twice to him on the same day in the same station.
According to K., perhaps the police was actually on a mission to find a certain person on that particular date in that specific location.
While O. was narrating his story, my brain was boiling hot, and what immediately came to my mind was the issues of xenophobia and discrimination against tourists. I was frowning at the story and ready to make a complaint. However, before I started my argument, O. laughed away this experience and was somehow pleased by the fact that he was thought to be a 'traveler' instead of holiday maker or tourist.
His reaction then silenced me.
Afterwards I kept thinking if I had been him, I would take that an insult and would complain hard about it.
I don't know whether O. kept to himself any other interpretation of his experience, but his relaxed reaction certainly gave an alternative lesson on being a foreigner and looking at one's own foreignness in a different country.
Sometimes, it might be simply true that I am grounded by some over-politicized arguments about discrimination.
Take it easy and take it light! Perhaps.
It happened to me once last time when I was in Shinjuku in April. There were 2 policemen stopped me and asked me to open my bag. They pointed at my laptop cover to question me what it was. I was suprised about what happened to me. I complaint to me Japanese friends. Isn't Japan a democratic and free country?
ReplyDeleteMost froeigner would not want to be taken back to the police station so they would just let them do it. I was wondering what if I happened to have something embarrassig to show in my bag. I have another friend who is Taiwanese and now studying language in Japan had the same experience. I was told that I look like a Japanese everytime when I traveled there. If I do look like one and they still did that to me. It would make this more interesting. Is Japan a police state?
I think it's always difficult to draw a line between governmental power over and individual right to one's private spaces especially when such violation is made in the name of public security. I do believe that people choose to compromise their right to privacy in order to save trouble with the police especially in unknown environment. And I do think people have the right to live withouth such anxiety and fear.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as I wanted to say in this entry, the issue of governmental control can be quite different from that of discrimination against foreigners. To be honest, I haven't lived here long enough to give a fair report especially with regards to whether their nationals are also under the surveillance of such power.
This is indeed a serious problem that requires more thoughtful attention. However, what I wanted to highlight here is that such seriousness, or sometimes over-politicized awareness, has caused inconvenient sentiment to the daily life.
O.'s reaction to the incident was quite a simple solution to that inconvenience, I found. Of course it can be more constructive to think about what we can do to change the menace and abuse of such power around the world. But sometimes it is also easier and healthier for us if we can just take it light and assume another perspective.