CHIKAN
Means ‘molester’ or pervert. Commonly refers to disturbed males taking advantage of packed Toyo commuter trains to grope whichever female is squashed up nearest to them. But sexual assaults of this nature are just as likely to occur at rock concerts and in crowded shopping malls. There are even signs by some bicycle parking lots, warning women to be on their guard as they bend down to undo their bicycle locks.
At the time of writing, an economist named Kazuhide Uekusa (formerly a well-known TV commentator) has been indicted by public prosecutors in Tokyo for allegedly molesting a female high school student on a train in September 2006.
If found guilty, it will be Uekusa’s second offence: he was convicted in 2004 of using a handheld mirror to look up a schoolgirl’s skirt while the pair of them were stood on an escalator. Fined ¥500 000, his career and reputation in ruins, he was also ordered to surrender his precious mirror, net worth ¥100 (about fifty pence).
You’d have thought that would have taught him—I mean, those ¥100 mirrors must surely mount up—but here’s Uekusa, apparently back to his old tricks. Despite having only ‘hazy memories’ of the whole incident, due to his earlier consumption of twenty cups of Chinese wine, Uekusa vigorously denies this latest charge.
‘My hand touched the student when the train rattled,’ he’s been quoted as saying, ‘and I may have been misunderstood.’
To which the majority of the Japanese population reply: ‘You certainly are misunderstood, wacko-boy.’
However, the nature of his defence does raise a serious point. Namely that on some trains during certain times of the day—and especially during the Tokyo morning and evening rush-hours—people are packed together so tightly that it is impossible not to have some sort of physical contact with the person next to you.
Chikan have commonly relied on this fact to disguise their nasty deeds, and are assisted by the traditional reluctance of Japanese women to cause a scene, even if they suspect they are being assaulted. But times are changing. Kazuhide Uekusa himself was captured after the female student he was allegedly groping shouted ‘Stop! Stop!’ and then—assisted by other commuters—performed a citizen’s arrest on him.
But there is a growing, discomforting feeling that many men have met a similar fate through what has been a genuine accident. Take, for example, Hideki Kato, who whilst on a packed train was grabbed, apparently at random, by the man next to him when a thirteen-year-old began to scream that she’d been groped.
The Japanese legal system has an unfortunate habit of presuming guilt, and commonly favours those who confess (an expression of sincere remorse by a murderer often helps them avoid the death penalty, and may even result in a reduced prison sentence). So many men accused of being chikan feel that they have no choice but to pay the fine, if they wish to avoid going to prison.
Not so Hideki Kato, who stubbornly proclaimed his innocence in court, only to end up receiving an eighteen-month jail sentence. He continues to fight back through the ‘Victims of False Accusations Network’, although in a few similar cases the accused male has ended up committing suicide.
Many trains now have carriages adorned with pink lines and signs stating that they are Josei SennyŦ SharyŦ : ‘For Women Only’. Hopefully this will reduce the number of women being assaulted—and also the number of men who are undoubtedly being falsely accused of being chikan.
CHIKATETSU SARIN JIKEN (SUBWAY SARIN INCIDENT)
On the morning of 20 March, 1995, at around 7.30 a.m., five men boarded trains at various stations along the Tokyo subway system and dropped a couple of small, polythene packages upon the floor. Inside these packages was the deadly nerve agent sarin—a pinhead-sized drop of which is more than enough to kill an adult.
Piercing these packages with a couple of jabs from an umbrella, the five men then hastened off the train, each meeting with a ‘getaway driver’ at a pre-arranged spot. One man called Kenichi Hirose, however, was not quite quick enough—beginning to feel the effects of sarin poisoning, he was obliged to inject himself with the antidote each of the men carried.
The five men—along with their getaway drivers—belonged to the Aum Shinrikyo, a shadowy religious cult whose leader was the fat, partially sighted son of a tatami mat maker. This man, Shoko Asahara, lusted after a violent coup that would topple the government from power and install him as emperor—deciding that this was something of a tall order, however, he instead elected to unleash a poison on the 5 000 000-plus civilians who use the subway system every day.
Twelve people died in the attacks, and close to a thousand were injured—one woman so seriously that she later lost both her eyes. Asahara and his followers’ lunacy deeply distressed a country that had, until then, considered itself to be virtually free of crime—at least of the violent variety.
At the time of writing, Shoko Asahara remains on death row, sentenced to hang. Three of the ten men who carried out his orders—poisoners and getaway drivers—remain at large.
‘CHIN-CHIN’
So, you’re there at an akachochin and are having a whale of a time with your Japanese friends. You’ve probably figured out by now that kanpai means ‘cheers’ but, after saying it numerous times—while also teaching your social circle its English equivalent—you begin to wonder how else you can initiate another round of beer-glugging.
‘I know,’ you think, brain just a little fogged with Kirin lager and lovely warm sake, ‘I’ll say “chin-chin” instead!’
Don’t. Because plenty of gaijin before you have had to learn the hard way—through an awkward silence and shocked stares from their Japanese companions—that “chin-chin” is, in the Land of the Rising Sun, slang for ‘penis’?
CHťMEI, KAMO NO
Famed writer, monk and hermit, born around 1155. His father was a Shinto priest in charge of an important shrine. When his father died, it was naturally assumed that young Kamo would step into his shoes. As it transpired, however, this was not to be.
‘Sorry,’ said whoever it was who decided such matters, ‘but we want someone with a wee bit more experience for this job.’
Deeply disillusioned by this, and grieving still for the loss of his father, Kamo turned to a priest called Shomyo (who may, in fact, have been the young man’s grandfather) for some words of wisdom.
‘Concentrate on composing poetry,’ was Shomyo’s rather obscure advice; and with a shrug of his shoulders and a sigh, this was just what Kamo proceeded to do.
In fact, he had something of a knack for it. Within a few years, he’d had an anthology of some one hundred poems published, with a few finding favour within the imperial court.
Kamo, however, soon considered his emerging fame and fortune to be something of a fickle thing. He was becoming obsessed with the Buddhist concept of mujŦ, or impermanence—the idea that this world, and everything in and of it, from gods to insects, is in a constant state of flux. With this in mind, considered Kamo, what was the use of money and material items?
To the bemusement of everyone around him, Kamo retreated to a group of mountains called Ohara, where he changed his name to Ren’ in. A move to another mountain called Toyoma followed, before Ren’ in performed his anti-materialistic and wandering-hermit-like masterstroke: determined as he was to live in a sublime state of poverty, renouncing all worldly wants and desires, he built himself a shabby hut that, at exactly ten foot square, was what an estate agent might call ‘cosy’.
It was here that