With it being de riguer in Japan for kindergarten kids to wear smocks, schoolboys to be decked out in Prussian military uniforms, schoolgirls to be clad in sailor suits, dowdy dresses for office ladies and drab suits for salarymen, there's no doubt this country has a thing for uniforms. Some Japanese, however, take this national obsession for homogenized outfits a little too far, as Shukan Jitsuwa (10/21) notes.
Kenji Hishida is now awaiting trial for burglary after he was allegedly caught trying to rob a West Japan Railway Co. dormitory in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, on Sept. 6.
Hishida, however, ignored the wallets, cash and other valuables ripe for the taking at the employees' housing area, instead aiming for a couple of pairs of pants.
Cops suspecting the unemployed 39-year-old's actions were a one-off got a rude shock when they raided his home in the wake of his arrest.
"Hishida's place was packed full of every type of uniform imagineable. When investigators asked where he got them from, the suspect freely admitted to stealing them all," a local reporter covering the case tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "Nearly everything he'd stolen was a uniform, but there was other stuff, too, like helmets adorned with company logos. Even then, the sheer amount of stuff he'd pinched was incredible. Altogether, there were about 10,000 stolen uniform-related items in his home."
Hishida's apartment was so crammed with all the gear he'd gathered, the only available space in the place was a couple of square meters he'd left open on the floor so that he'd have somewhere to sleep.
Hishida had a thing for uniforms for some time. Police say he told them he's spent the past 15 years traveling around Japan picking up uniforms from places like JR, private railway companies and airlines.
"He once worked as a security guard for an airline and at Kansai International Airport, so he knows a little bit about how the security business works, and this helped him find a way into companies' facilities and gave him hints about where he could find uniforms inside there" the Hyogo hack says. "He had no urge to take advantage of the demand for these goods in online auction sites and kept everything he stole in his room."
In Hishida's apartment, raiding police found filled with uniforms 80 large cardboard boxes and 10 bags usually reserved for storing futon. They needed a two-ton truck just to carry all the booty seized as evidence from Hishida's home.
Hishida, meanwhile, has admitted that he used to spend his time changing in and out of the uniforms, gazing at himself in a mirror and satisfying his fetish.
His urges are shared by large numbers, if not always acted on with such feverishness, presenting companies like JR West with plenty of headaches.
"We supply our workers with uniforms, so it's impossible to put a price on them. But they're nothing special, pretty much the same gear as the average laborer would wear," a spokesman for JR West tells Shukan Jitsuwa. "It's a good thing he didn't steal the trousers in the end. If he had've got away with it and worn the pants, he could have sneaked into a station or onto the tracks and possibly have caused an accident. If that had happened, we would have been in real trouble."