Schreiber's Scene Japan Crime Statistics Demons Made Me Do it Abduction in Niigata Aum Shinrikyo

Mark Schreiber, author, journalist, and translator, has written extensively on crime and criminals in medieval and modern Japan. He is the author of Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan (Yenbooks, 1996), The Dark Side: Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals (Kodansha International, 2001), and editor/author of Tokyo Confidential: Titillating Tales from Japan’s Wild Weeklies (East Publications, 2001). Tokyo Confidential is an anthology that grew out of a page, known as “Waiwai,” carrying translated stories from Japanese tabloid weeklies, which ran in the Mainichi Daily News from 1989 to 2001.

The Japan Times resurrected the column under the title Tokyo Confidential. The Japan Times describes these popular vernacular magazines as “often salacious, libelous and utterly unreliable” but insightful on what the Japanese are “really thinking.” According to Schreiber, the stories in the column allow foreign readers a look into the “creative” side of Japanese journalism, which is in supply. In The Dark Side, he takes a wider view and surveys crime and criminality over 400 years of Japanese history.

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native, he has resided in Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Guam, since 1965. Before turning to writing he worked as a retail store manager, travel agent, translator, software documentation writer and market researcher. Schreiber graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Asian Studies in 1969. He is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese and has a passing familiarity with perhaps half a dozen other languages. 

Interview: May 10, 2003

In Writers.net, you are described as particularly interested in crime history, sadomasochism, mystery fiction set in Asia. You’ve lived in Japan more or less since 1965 can you tell us about how you came to Japan? 
In spring of 1965, I was about to finish high school when the U.S. Army assigned my father to Okinawa, which at that time was not under Japanese control but still administered by the U.S. government. I was still only 17 and my folks didn’t want to leave me behind alone in the States, so I went along with them and attended the University of Maryland overseas division on Okinawa for my first year of college. Then in 1966 I transferred to a college here in Tokyo, ICU, and was pretty much on my own after that.


Why crime? Did you always have an interest in crime?
I’ve always enjoyed reading fiction. While I was in high school, British author Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was unbelievably popular so I developed a taste for spy novels set in exotic locales. Then at age 17 I found myself in Asia. Then I was stuck on Guam managing a retail store from 1971 to 1972, and, because there wasn’t much to do on such a small island, I spent a lot of my free time in the public library. It was there that I discovered Canadian author Ross MacDonald, whose mystery, The Chill, literally blew my mind. I read all MacDonald’s works and then went looking to see what other mystery novels were out there.

After that I got into stories set in Asia or involving Asia characters, and have made this a lifelong study. I have an enormous book collection at home, perhaps 8,000 volumes, made up mostly of novels and pulp magazines from the 1920s and 1930s when “Yellow Peril” stories were in vogue. I fund my acquisitions by reviewing contemporary fiction for several publications. I’ve read and re-read the Judge Dee novels written in the 1950s and 1960s by the late Dutch author Robert van Gulik. More than any other books I’ve read, these were what inspired me to write about crime.


What’s in your own dark past?  
Ha! You’ll have to wait for my autobiography, if I ever get around to writing it. 

Can you tell us a little about your most recent book, The Dark Side, Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals (2001). What are your main conclusions? 
One of the things, I feel, many westerners don’t fully appreciate is the wonderful ability of Japanese writers to bring to life accounts of their own historical events. I was able to write The Dark Side because they did an incredible job of collecting and preserving these wonderful old true crime stories. I could have easily written twice as much. But the Mainichi folded in March 2001, so the series—called “Crime and Punishment in Old Japan”—came to an end. By that time, Kodansha International was ready to go with what we already had. I am glad that this book could be produced by a Japanese publisher, by the way; our working relationship was excellent and they’ve been very friendly and supportive.

What do you think crime and criminality say about a society? Can crime be simply senseless and random or is it always rooted in societal ills? For example, what does the Jun Hase case, in which fourteen year old boy decapitated an eleven year old boy and left his head at a school gate, say about Japan? Or what about individual in Niigata whose mother did not realize that he had abducted a girl and kept her in his room for nine years? Or the Aum cult?
These, I think, were rather extreme aberrations that happened to occur in Japan. I don’t know how to draw any real conclusions from them. But there are cases that do fit into a broader social context, or, if you prefer, a pattern. For example, so-called toshi-gata hanzai (urban-type crimes) became more pronounced from the 1960s when Japanese communities began losing their close-knit nature and criminals could take advantage of the anonymity afforded by the large cities. Certainly the Aum Supreme Truth was of great interest to me, because I had a ringside seat to a lot of their shenanigans. I even rode the Tokyo subway the day they gassed it— although not until around evening, long after the all-clear was sounded.

Much of what went on was a case of watching and reporting news in real time. Aum’s publishing arm was located ten minutes’ walk from my house, and they had another branch not far away. It’s funny how people never noticed those wackos until they went off the deep end. There seems to be no shortage of flaky new religions in this country.

What aspects, if at all, of crime in Japan are unique? Or is crime universal? What are the main motivations from criminal activity in modern Japan?
Well, let’s exempt organized crime—which feeds on vices like drugs, gambling and prostitution —and just deal with general mayhem, okay? I see things from three perspectives: One, crime that reflects economic and social change. When the economy sours, thefts go up. When the family disintegrates, juvenile crime goes up. These are transitory phenomena with fairly well understood causes. 

Most criminals, fortunately, tend to be a rather stupid bunch, and putting them away is just a matter of making the effort. On a deeper level, however, are the psychological crimes. Some people, for reasons not yet well understood, have a propensity to commit “copycat” crimes, and these can be quite scary. So-called “delusionary” crimes, like stalking, eavesdropping, peeping, pedophilia, underwear theft, etc. on occasion cross the line and become rapes, abductions and murders. It’s hard to prevent, and the police have been slow to update their methods for dealing with it.

Finally, “internationalization” of crime is a real problem here and will probably remain so. There is a tendency for the Japanese authorities and media to refer to foreign criminals as “mafia,” but at present it would appear that foreign criminals are pretty much subcontractors for the yakuza.there are tori-ma, random slashers who just go off the deep end and start killing people, like the nut case who cut up those kids at the Kyoto primary school.  


While we would all probably agree that walking around Tokyo’s Yoyogi Koen after dark is a lot safer than walking around Central Park in New York, do you think Japan is really a safe country? Or is it a myth?
Tokyo is relatively safe, but its bed towns are a lot less so. Once when I did a piece on juvenile crime for Japan Quarterly magazine, I asked a high school boy in Chigasaki about bullying. He told me there are some really mean and crazy kids out there, and you never want to meet their gaze on the train because they’ll immediately pick a fight with you. Hot rodder gangs run wild in Tokyo’s distant suburbs. They’re a big problem in Hiroshima too. The media reports it, but with a very few exceptions leaves out that many of those Hiroshima kids have buraku backgrounds, i.e., they’re not just rebelling against adults, but against entrenched social discrimination against the descendants of the former outcast class. Japanese society is certainly not the harmonious place it seems. 


Have trends in crime changed markedly from postwar to present day Japan? What differences have you seen? Any constants? What sort of crime trends do you see going forward? What sorts of crime do you think will increase? What sorts of crimes are waning in popularity?  
Not long ago, a Japanese asked me if I thought Japan had changed over the past two or three decades that I had been living there. But even in the Edo period, from what I’ve read, there was a very lackadaisical attitude toward ethical concerns, such public servants accepting gifts and so on. Since the collapse of the bubble economy it’s generally agreed that the gap between the rich and the poor seems to be increasing and if Japan becomes a society of haves and have-nots, this could lead to more crimes against property as well as more violent crimes. At the moment, aside from military bases I’m not aware of any walled communities manned by security guards in Japan, like they have in the U.S. But if security worsens it could conceivably happen here. That would spell the end of the “egalitarian” society.

What sort of crimes captures Japanese media attention? What causes a media frenzy? What sort of crimes go largely unnoticed? Why do you think “true crime” fascinates people?
All the cases that appear in my books were notorious in their own time, which is why they are remembered and written about today. I try whenever possible to show how the media responded. It’s been said that fascination with true crime is a reflection on how far we’ve come, in the quality of life, in that we need to read about crime because there is so little involvement with it in our own lives. This may make sense. Most of the friends I have in the police don’t enjoy reading about it. As for the criminals, some day I’ll have to ask one if he likes Perry Mason mysteries.


From all your research, do you have any “favorite” crimes or criminals? Have you found anything close to the perfect crime?
Both the Teikoku Bank poisonings and Shimoyama Incident, involving the mysterious death of the president of the Japan National Railways, which took place in 1948 and 1949, respectively, have never been satisfactorily explained. Part of the reason why they were never solved was the poor forensic police techniques at the time. The robbery in December 1968 where a man masquerading as a motorcycle policeman stole 100 million yen from Toshiba is another classic puzzler.  

Where does most of your information come from; court documents, tabloids weeklies, “sport” papers, police reports? Do you depend on media sources or have done some of your own sleuthing? Have you interviewed criminals? Have you had any hairy personal experiences in the course of your research?
For the historical crimes, the research was mostly secondary, although I did make an effort to track down the severed penis of Kichizo Ishida, the man who had his manhood sliced off by his lady friend, the notorious Sada Abe, in 1936. It was last seen at a department store exhibition in 1949. It is probably still in the specimen room at Tokyo University hospital, but their records were a shambles. I’ve interviewed a few people in jail or after they were released. Also tried whenever possible to talk to retired policemen and news reporters who were present at certain incidents, to hear their eyewitness accounts. In Shikoku they took me back to the scene of the crime and reminisced for me. Then we all went to an onsen and got crocked. It was great. 

You also have extensively researched eighteenth and nineteenth century crime and punishment. Do you see any connection with present day crimes or crime networks?
Tokyo’s modern police has its roots in troops of samurai from Kagoshima and Kochi. Even today, this tradition is ongoing, to some degree, so the evolutionary threads are still visible. The police at one time had a reputation for being very diligent. I remember being taken by a cop to the small museum in MPD headquarters and being shown the blood-stained uniforms of civilian policemen who guarded the cabinet members, who were killed in the line of duty when they shot it out with the rebelling army troops during the Feb. 26 coup d’etat incident in 1936. There is also a special corner in Aoyama Cemetery for police heroes. There are still some dedicated cops who believe in what they’re doing, and I find it very moving.

What are your thoughts on the Japanese death penalty system? Why do you think the Japanese have persisted in keeping this system? Do you feel that it has worked as a crime deterrent in Japan?
The courts often say they impose death sentences out of consideration of the “feelings” of the victims. To be honest, I think that’s bull. Laws should be imposed, and sentences carried out, to protect society, not consider feelings. Back in 1964 a writer named Stephen Becker published a brilliant novel, A Convenant with Death, about a judge in New Mexico who agonizes over enforcement of the death penalty. It’s out of print, but can be purchased used via Amazon. A wonderful read.

Japanese no longer revel in the death penalty. The number has declined and some prime ministers serve out their entire tenure without a single execution taking place. I think it’s been quite some time since the annual number of hangings rose to two digits. Like the death penalty in the U.S., though, it’s pretty arbitrary. For example, although there have been quite a few nasty murderesses, no woman has been executed since 1965 or so. Killers may have a chance of avoiding the gallows if they confess, weep and show contrition. In the States, in contrast, they are “born again.”

At least Japanese do not announce a scheduled execution in advance—heck, they don’t even publicize it after the fact—so they manage to avoid the kind of hysterical dramas by the bleeding hearts, milked by the media for all it’s worth, that repeats itself in the U.S. each time an execution takes place. The ordeal of watching the hysterics in the U.S. is almost as bad as being forced to watch a public hanging or decapitation.

That having been said, the conditions on prisons’ death rows in Japan are terrible. And despite the law that says a prisoner must understand why he is receiving capital punishment, so many years pass during the process of sentencing, appeals and execution, it’s pretty obvious that many of the condemned are not of sound mind at the time they go to the gallows.

I’m of mixed feelings about the death penalty. I don’t think it’s much of a deterrent, and the fact is, some criminals are pathologically incorrigible. In A Clockwork Orange, a biting satire, Anthony Burgess wrote about using mind control techniques on criminals to make them meeker, and how it backfired badly.

What are your thoughts on modern Japanese law enforcement? Are they battling crime or drinking tea in koban boxes? In the event of a large scale catastrophe—another Aum or worse yet a terrorist attack—could they be able to cope?
Too many Japanese civil servants provide a minimalist effort. But a koban—which, incidentally, is the invention of a Prussian advisor during the Meiji period—is not there for the purpose of battling crime. It’s official name is a sub-station, and the police posted therein are not forensic investigators. Their job is to keep an eye on the neighborhood. As for battling terrorists, let’s hope the bad guys realize that wreaking havoc in Japan is unlikely to accomplish much more than bring the U.S. military down on their heads. 

There’s sometimes a relationship between the economy and crime. For example, in the UK, some argue that violent crimes (i.e. assault, murder, rape) are more prevalent in times of affluence, and property crimes (theft, shoplifting, snatch and grab) are more prevalent in economic downturns. Do you see any effects of the economic downturn on the type of crimes committed in Japan?

Sure, and if you look back to the late 1940s and early 1950s, you’ll see there was a much higher crime rate here than there is now. One of the more interesting statistics I’ve noted lately is that homicides, which used to be concentrated on the 18 to 25 age group of males—when their testosterone is at its peak—is becoming distributed relatively flatly between the 20s and 60s!

Sure there are more bicycle thefts, etc., but I would point out sometimes it’s good to take a look at what kinds of crimes have not increased. Thank god, guns are kept off the streets—so there were just 28 murders by firearms in 2002 if memory serves me right. With the exception of amphetamines, which is a Japanese invention, by the way, they have a fairly good handle on drugs, although they could do better. Cocaine and heroin are confiscated occasionally, but there’s no “French Connection” stuff going down. 

What are you working on now? What is your latest project?
I want to finish a book about the study of kanji (Chinese ideographs) that keeps getting put on the back burner. I have two proposals out to publishers for a book on the history of sadomasochism in Japan. I also have the outline for a science fiction novel in the back of my head. But of course all these take the back burner to the day-to-day concerns of earning my livelihood.

What are your vices?
I’m not lazy, but I’m easily distracted. I enjoy surfing the web when I should be working. I like to eat too much. I don’t get enough exercise. But on the other hand, I’m pretty focused on what I do. I haven’t paid money to watch a cinema for more than 10 years. I seldom rent videos any more—it’s getting harder and harder to watch movies. I don’t go to concerts or museums or stage dramas. I’m pretty focused on my writing work and the research that goes into it. I worry sometimes that limits me, but shikata ga nai [it can’t be helped]. 

What do you think are the best books on Japanese society? What do you think are the worst? Any recommendations on the best Japanese mysteries?
I look back at all those books about “Japan the emerging superstate,” like Ezra Vogel’s, and don’t know whether to laugh or cry. With no disrespect intended toward my colleagues, I’ve almost stopped reading books in English about Japan. Some things are changing so fast, I find they are often out of date by the time they appear in English, or for that matter, even in Japanese. Being a translator of magazine stories, many of the articles I see are expanded into books, and then three or more years later I see the same things being quoted in some English book. So you can see we are dealing with a time lag.

That having been said, I’ve enjoyed reading Karel van Wolfren and Ivan Morris, whose books are more panoramic in scope. Alex Kerr is an excellent writer, but I don’t see his work having a strong impact.

As far as Japanese mystery novels are concerned, if you are talking about those in English translation, John Apostolou, an American authority on the Japanese mystery genre, once made the observation that the sum total of Japanese mystery titles translated into English is roughly equivalent to a single month’s output by Japanese mystery authors.

As for the best Japanese mystery I've read, that's a tough call. Actually I find most of the books slow going. Those who want to develop a taste for the genre might want to start by reading some of the very appealing mystery short stories, move their way up to novelettes, and then try a full-length book. I enjoyed Masako Togawa's books, and also the two Edo-period mysteries by Shotaro Ikenami that my good friend Gavin Frew translated into English. Gavin, by the way, is something of an unsung hero in that he is, I believe, the most prolific translator of Japanese mysteries into English. 

What are you reading right now? What do you like to read?
From last summer, I got back to writing reviews of mystery, adventure and spy fiction set in Asia, this time for The Japan Times. Over the past year, I’ve enjoyed historical mysteries by Laura Joh Rowland, Ingrid Parker and Dale Furutani. I like contemporary authors too—Guy Stanley, Peter Tasker and Sujata Massey. I try to read fiction set in the Far East, like the hard boiled “Vinny Calvino” series by Christopher G. Moore set in Bangkok. I read Qiu Xiaolong, Eliot Pattison and Lisa See.

I am also a big fan of U.S. mystery writers Michael Connelley, Thomas Perry, whose character is Jane Whitefield, an American Indian woman; and Stephen Hunter, who writes about a former U.S. Marine sniper named “Bob the Nailer.”

I really enjoyed Nelson DeMille’s Up Country, about a Vietnam vet who returns to visit Vietnam 30 years after the war. DeMille himself served in a combat unit in Vietnam, and this novel combines his personal war reminiscences with romance, a murder and a little bit of Yellow Peril thrown in.