Starting November 20, 2007, all foreign nationals landing in Japan will be required to submit to fingerprinting and having their picture taken. Yōkoso! Smile! You’re a terrorist suspect!

This controversial new procedure snuck its way into existence on May 24, 2006 when the Japanese Diet passed a law requiring all foreign nationals (with a few exceptions, such as children under 16, diplomats, and special-status permanent residents such as Zainichi Koreans) to submit biometric data to prove they’re not Osama bin Laden or one of his cronies. I’ll spare you the details; if you have five minutes to waste, please check out the cheesy video put out by our friends at the Immigration Bureau.

Basically, the tatemae justification for this new law is that immigration officials will be able to capture any potential terrorists at the airport before they have a chance to commit their heinous crimes on Japanese soil. Sounds fair enough. After all, nobody likes terrorism; what’s the big deal about putting your fingers on a scanner and sucking it up for the camera if it could potentially save lives?

Therein lies the rub. Anyone who has followed the news for the past few decades is aware that the threat of domestic terrorism is much greater than that of foreign terrorism in Japan. Historically, the only terrorism Japan has faced has been from Japanese fringe groups like the Red Army and Aum Shinrikyo. Lest you should think that home-grown terrorism in Japan is ancient history, just this Tuesday news broke of a Japanese man who had explosive substances and was allegedly planning to blow up parts of the Tokyo subway system, having been inspired by the 2005 London attacks. Who presents a greater danger to the citizens of Japan, faraway fundamentalists, or Japanese nationals, disenfranchised with the current system and looking for somewhere to vent their anger?

The logical thing to do would be to fingerprint everyone in Japan who has fingers. Well, it’s not that simple. Japanese may not legally be fingerprinted in Japan unless they are officially charged with a crime. All the easier to get away with chikan! Foreigners, however, in spite of being officially welcome under the Visit Japan “Yokoso!” Campaign, are not offered the same protection under Japanese law.

The actual fingerprinting machine to be used in Japan

My knee jerk reaction upon hearing this news was to assume that Japan was, once again, copying American foreign policy. Upon further inspection, however, it seems that Japan has taken the whole fingerprinting business a step further. Permanent residents of the United States are not required to submit biometric data when they return home – only tourists are. Japan, however, a country that probably ranks pretty low on Al Qaeda’s destruction priority scale, has taken a stronger stance than the U.S., requiring that all foreign permanent residents submit their foreign fingerprints as well. This means that us gaijin with permanent residence status, will be treated differently from our Japanese spouses and children when passing through customs. What an awkward situation, especially when with the little ones… “See you soon son, daddy has to go and line up over there to be fingerprinted with the lovely gaijin “dancers”..again”.

Personally, I would be for any measure that could prevent terrorism, even if it was a little bit flawed. The problem is that the fingerprinting methods used in the U.S., the same ones that are about to be introduced into Japan, would not have stopped any of the 9/11 hijackers from entering into the U.S. Is it possible that this new system is an uyoku (right wing) attempt to crack down on foreign crime (just kidding, George) and visa overstays?

The Immigration Bureau’s FAQ is rather unclear on how the biometric data will be used, except for that it follows the government guidelines on protection of personal information, in which, if you read close enough, you will notice get thrown out the window in criminal cases (Chapter 5, Article 45). None of this is an accident. The Democratic Party of Japan submitted an alternative version of the bill requiring that biometric data be deleted once an overseas national leaves Japan or is granted permanent residency, but this draft was voted down.

Indignant gaijin are not the only ones upset about this law. The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations has published a statement declaring this law to be a bad idea and a half. Amnesty International in Japan has put out a similar appeal against the new law.

It turns out that many Japanese government officials disagree with or haven’t even heard of the law! We’ll see how it all pans out soon enough.

Old Style Japan Alien Registration Card with Fingerprint

As a side note, fingerprinting is not a new concept for those long term gaijin amongst us. All foreigners staying more than three months in Japan are required to get an infamous “Gaijin Card” (Alien registration card). Up until the late 1990′s, the fingerprint of your left index finger appeared on this card. And even though in actual fact, all ten fingers were squeezed against the ink-pad as part of registering one self as an alien, we still loved to joke that we could be safe committing a crime, as long as we only used nine fingers..

Anyway, it looks like mandatory fingerprinting is back, and this time not only for long-stay gaijin, but for every alien coming into the land of the taihen cloud. Will our re-entry permits still permit us to line up at the Nihonjin passport booth? I can’t help but think this is going to land us back into the long snaking gaijin lines, where we will have a frustrating wait for the jumbo full of Chinese tourists (that landed 5 minutes beforehand) to be fingerprinted. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, if any Stippy readers are planning a trip home this Christmas, just be prepared for a special O-kaeri from immigration officers. Remember to smile, and if you’re feeling particularly cheeky, why not throw up a peace sign? After a 10 hour flight, you deserve it.

So what do you think? Is this a heartfelt attempt from the government of Japan to protect us all from terrorism, or are they just using the current state of world affairs as an excuse to crack down on gaijin crime and illegal immigration? Let us know in the comments below.

二枚目 or nimaime is the handsome guy here ↑

にまいめ
(nimaime)

* “J-WOTD” = “Japanese Word of the Day”

For some reason, the Japanese language has many words to describe good looking men. かっこいい, ハンサム, イケメン, 美少年, and Kansai-ben’s 男前 are quite a selection, proving that Japanese can be more expressive that English when it comes to certain things. This means that there are either a lot of good looking men in Japan, or there are a lot of empty compliments being tossed around. Either way…

One more humorous way of calling another man attractive is to say that he is nimaime or “二枚目”. Taken apart, this seems to be an odd expression at first. Literally, it means “The second sheet/ board”. However, when it means handsome, the expression originates from Kabuki (as does 男前). On signs outside the Kabuki theatre, the main actor’s name would be on the first page, and the “beautiful male” role (the sexy actor who has his face painted white, or the 顔を白くぬった色男の役) would be featured on the second page. Thus, “二枚目” came to mean any good-looking man.

A humorous extension to this expression is to call someone (or yourself) “三枚目”. This refers to the actor who played the role of the clown (name on the thrid page of course), and is sure to bring laughter to any conversation that starts out with a “二枚目”

Until June 2002 Magic Mushrooms were legal in Japan

Japan, despite its lax attitude toward tobacco and alcohol, has always been very strict when it comes to matters of “more illicit” drugs. Laws regulating soft drugs such as marijuana are as strict as those toward heroin and cocaine. This was not so until the American Constitution was imposed on Japan after World War II; actually hemp has been an integral part of Japanese culture and religion since ancient times (see www.taima.org for more details), but that is another article altogether.

Generally, restrictions on all drugs in Japan are so strong that it is not uncommon for customs officers to seize over-the-counter foreign cold medicines, and possession of cannabis can lead to weeks in jail. The most famous victim of this law is Beatle Paul McCartney, who spent nine days in jail in 1980 for the possession of 219 grams (7.7 ounces) of marijuana.

Magic Mushroom street vendor in Shibuya, Tokyo

In a country this strict, it may surprise some people to know that magic mushrooms were legal in Japan until June 6, 2002. A loophole in the Japanese law banned psilocybin in extracted or pure chemical form but not the actual mushrooms themselves. Thus, magic mushrooms, sealed in plastic wrap, could be purchased alongside weed pipes and Bob Marley posters in head shops throughout Japan. I’m not sure about the specifics of the law, but the packages I saw said “観賞用” (Basically look but don’t eat) on them. Of course, everyone was eating them, from college students to gaijin to bored housewives. It must have been the housewives, or perhaps the threat of hooligans at the 2002 World Cup that prodded the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor & Welfare to close up the loophole.

Luckily, we had some advance warning. There was a bit of lag time between the decision to outlaw magic mushrooms and the date that the law came into effect. All of the head shops had signs up reminding their customers that they had until June 6, 2002 to stock up on as many mushrooms as possible. This is the story of my experience during this period of lawlessness.

Working as JET’s in rural Japan, my friend and I knew that a weekend trip to Kobe/Osaka would be necessary to score some mushrooms. We had both tried them before in our respective home countries, and thought we knew what we were getting into. The shops were not hard to find – there were several under the tracks of Kobe’s Sannomiya Station. We bought what they had in stock and proceeded to Osaka to test out our newfound purchases at an underground Shinsaibashi club.

It was hard to believe that we had just legally bought mushrooms and were about to eat them in public. But there they were, legally purchased magic mushrooms, smelling like dirty socks, sitting in our hands.

This is what ‘Shrooms look like when you buy them

It was time to eat. Since the mushrooms were “観賞用” they didn’t exactly have the serving size and nutritional value printed on the packaging. They looked to be about 1/8 of an ounce, the average size of one “hit” back in the states. Only later would we figure out that 1/8 of this species of Dutch ‘shrooms (‘shrooms – as they are called – are usually a less potent Mexican species in the U.S.) was enough to make 6 grown men see Jesus.

So at first, we were having a pretty good time – there is a certain confidence that ‘shrooms impart and it seemed like everybody loved us – we had the whole place under control. Control… I gradually began to lose control of my body slowly but surely. I was fully conscious but was stuck in an “observer” state. I needed to lay down. The last thing I saw before I turned comatose was my friend standing on the bar kicking over other peoples’ drinks. Then I got a good ten minutes of ceiling watching in before two monsters with Down Syndrome began trying to tear me limb from limb (actually they were a couple of Australian guys who had called me an ambulance and were lugging me up the stairs and out of the club – thanks guys if you ever read this).

The mushrooms ran their course through my body and I experienced something that can only be described as flickering in and out of existence (yes these were strong drugs!). Being placed in the ambulance triggered a fear reaction and brought me back down to Earth. The nice young paramedic patiently tried to get my to write down my name and address, but I was determined to write on the air instead of on the paper. He seemed to know what mushrooms were, and had seen cases like me before. “Are magic mushrooms bad for you?” I asked him. Wheeling me out of the ambulance and into the E.R., he replied, “Well, they’re not good for you.”

The doctors and nurses in the E.R. were a bit more clueless. I had already fessed up to my semi-illegal deed, so I figured it was too late to change my story, but I felt a little silly explaining what magic mushrooms were to the emergency room doctor. He had never heard of them before and had to look them up on the internet. The internet?? How do you become a doctor in Japan anyway? The nurse seemed not to want to release me, but I lied to her and said that my hallucinations had stopped, and she let me go after I signed the appropriate forms. Luckily my employer never found out about the whole debacle, and thanks to Japan’s health insurance system, the ambulance ride only cost me about 1,000 yen!

So, you ask, whatever happened to my friend dancing on the bar? He got tackled and was nearly choked to death by club security. He had also apparently jumped onto a ceiling lamp and pulled it out of the socket. He ripped some girl’s designer clothes too, so club security tried to threaten him into paying 100,000 yen for damages, saying that the bar was yakuza owned and they’d be there any minute. Somehow he managed to hand someone a 10,000 yen bill and slip away. Needless to say, the next day neither of us were in the mood for any more magic mushrooms. Which was probably for the best since the extras we bought had somehow disappeared at some point that night anyway.

This story is here to entertain, but I hope it does make some people think seriously about the drug policies of Japan and other countries. Although I got off scott-free in early 2002, the same stunt today could earn you up to 7 years in prison! What a difference a silly little law makes. A good Japanese friend of mine swore he would never try “Drugs” like marijuana, but in return he offered me a cigarette dipped in paint thinner. Almost all societies have a long way to go in creating rational drug policies. In the meantime, let’s all just be sure to stay out of trouble.

On that note, if you do have any stories where you pushed the limit with drugs in Japan, let us know with a comment below!