Japanese set the blogs on 'sleazy Australian' writer

• Justin Norrie, Tokyo
• July 5, 2008
• Page 2 of 2 | Single Page View

There was also an article about chikan (men who grope women on trains) who meet monthly to trade tips about the best ways to surreptitiously manhandle other passengers, and the account of emotionally stunted salarymen who use lifelike mannequins as surrogate wives.

"Campus confidential: co-eds collect currency conducting extra-curricular coitus" began one of Connell's recent columns, all of which are transcribed from Japanese before being rendered — with a large dollop of creative licence and a brain-melting dose of alliteration —in the style of the raciest British tabloids.

It is their popularity with some Western readers that has especially incensed Japanese bloggers. Many feel their country's reputation has been "debauched" around the world.

"Foreigners who don't know the truth will believe these stories are true," wrote one. Another railed: "Ryann Connell is a degenerate scatologist — a typical Australian." And a third wondered: "Why doesn't someone drop a hydrogen atom bomb on Australia?"

Others still believe that the WaiWai column had turned Japan into a popular tourist destination for sleazy foreign men convinced that Japanese women are "cheap and easy".

In an interview late last year, Connell admitted that his transcriptions might have contributed in part to a lazy notion that if Japanese are not totally inhibited by their strict social codes, then they are hopelessly debased by bizarre fetishes.

"It does concern me that we resort to these stereotypes all the time," said Connell, who arrived in Tokyo in 1989, coincidentally the year that WaiWai was launched. "Downtrodden salarymen, slutty schoolgirls, crazy housewives, corrupt old bosses and so on. … By and large I'm presenting to the English-speaking world things that the Japanese are writing about themselves."

Coming to the defence of the weeklies, as well as Connell and his collaborators, is unflagging media critic and campaigner for human rights, Debito Arudou.

It's about time, he says, that people realised foreigners can and do read the tabloids.

But now that WaiWai is out of the way, the weekly tabloid magazines that provided Connell with his material have been free to moralise with everyone else about his downfall.