Sunday, April 1, 2001

TOKYO CONFIDENTIAL

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN

Once upon a time there was a young couple who decided to name their baby son Akuma. So? So nothing -- except that Akuma is the Japanese word for "devil." No dice, ruled the courts. Discouraged, the couple disappeared from view. The baby, now 7, presumably has a name meeting official approval. How much will he ever know of his bizarre fame? And how much will we ever know of the causes behind it?

See also below:

Problem teachers slapped with failing gradesBy Mark SchreiberAera (April 2)

Setagaya killings linked to 'Prophet's Game'By Mark SchreiberShukan Taishu Extra (April 24)

Plagued by 'lunch-mate syndrome'By Geoff BottingYomiuri Weekly (April 8)

We can identify two easily enough: the hunger for attention that motivated his parents, and the eagerness of Japan's weekly magazines to feature anyone bold, brash, original or just plain silly enough to live a story for them.

The weeklies are a story in themselves. "Salacious, libelous, utterly unreliable," author Peter Tasker wrote of them in his book "Inside Japan." He meant that as a compliment. "They are the most vital of all information sources for anyone who wants to know what the Japanese are really thinking."

"What the Japanese are really thinking" is Tokyo Confidential's subject matter, and the weekly, biweekly and monthly magazines -- there are dozens of them -- are our sources. "They feature material," Tasker goes on, "that the conventional press cannot print . . ."

Why can't the conventional press print it? One reason is the ease, thanks to the kisha club (press club) system, with which government and corporate sources can blacklist reporters for probing too deeply behind the official story line.

The weeklies, working outside the kisha clubs, are offensive. The rich and powerful despise and fear them in equal measure, knowing how vulnerable their nasty little secrets are to gleeful, gloating exposure. The highbrow look down on them because they are unabashedly lowbrow.

Even readers who respect their investigative reporting might find themselves flinching at their gutter tactics -- in the form of hidden-camera photos of ladies' baths or toilets, for egregious example.

Is nothing sacred? Apparently not -- not even the law. "Sue us," said Focus magazine in effect when, back in 1997, it published the name and photograph of a notorious teenage murderer in defiance of a Juvenile Law clause protecting the anonymity of young offenders. The government did indeed sue. Focus, however, is still around.

The monthly magazine Title devoted most of its April issue to a survey of what it calls "magazine addiction." The addicts are as varied as the magazines themselves. Who's the girl clutching in her eager hands a copy of Egg, the teen fashion Bible? She looks (no coincidence here) as though she just stepped out of one of its pages -- short skirt that's every color of the rainbow and eyeliner to match.

Would she admit to having anything in common with her fellow addict, a 28-year-old career woman who gravitates toward the relatively sober newsmagazine Aera? Single and proud of successfully making her way in what's still considered a man's world, she acknowledges moments of uneasiness when she looks to the future.

Perusing the weeklies, "You never know what'll leap off the page at you," as Title puts it. What an assortment of characters one meets here, caught in what sticky webs of shifting circumstance! Middle-aged men looking for love. Teenage girls selling it. The new homeless, the new jobless. "Hello, is my daughter there please?" "I'm sorry, she's out of the office right now . . ." Actually, she was never in it; she works in a "soapland"; the number she gave her parents to call is that of a company specializing in covering the tracks of that increasing portion of the population who want their tracks covered.

Things have never been like this before. We're living in new times. Anything can happen. Anything does. Japanese magazines see it more clearly than most, and print it more boldly. Thus encouraged, so does Tokyo Confidential. Long life to you, Akuma-kun.

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Problem teachers slapped with failing grades By MARK SCHREIBER Aera (April 2) With the growing recognition that undisciplined children are not solely to blame for declining education standards, Aera reports that a new buzzword has popped up in pedological circles: The word is "M," or "maru-M" -- the first letter in mondai-kyoshi -- problem teacher.

Take "Hitomi" (names in quotes are pseudonyms), a 52-year-old teacher. One of her fifth-grade students, a girl named "Tomoyo," suffered from an allergy and was obliged to drink tea instead of juice during a class picnic. This caused her to be singled out for ijime (bullying) by classmates.

Via the local PTA, Tomoyo's mother repeatedly appealed to Hitomi (in vain, as it turned out) to elicit understanding from the other children about her daughter's condition. Both have since left the school. To escape the bullying, Tomoyo transferred to another institution. Her teacher broke down in tears in the classroom and applied for leave of absence.

"Susumu," a third-year junior high school student, was aghast at the thuglike behavior of his English teacher (a Japanese), who would slouch atop desks during lessons and kick the students' desks when they failed to answer his questions. Together with six classmates, he organized "The Group to Expel Problem Teachers."

When other teachers proved unwilling to become involved, he sent an anonymous complaint to the board of education. This prompted an investigation, and the teacher received a verbal warning but continued his loutish instruction methods.

"Naturally he's going to behave himself when board members or the principal are present," Susumu grumbles.

Aera notes that in November, the Osaka Prefectural Board of Education announced that out of 11,000 instructors in local secondary schools, 420 (nearly 4 percent) were judged to be "incapable of providing appropriate instruction to students or children." Yet nationwide during 1998, only 25 teachers were subjected to dismissal, and in most cases these were for such extreme acts as sexual assault or bribe-taking.

"About 10 years after they start their careers, many enthusiastic teachers run into a wall and lose their ability to relate to children," observes Manabu Sato of the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Education. "I think at some point, any teacher will confront the possibility of becoming a 'problem.' But with the support of their colleagues, they can overcome it and continue to develop."

But can there be any usable criteria for rating a teacher? Aera's writer fondly recalls "Teacher Scum-tar," a reference to his junior high school instructor's perpetually tobacco-stained teeth. The slovenly man's teaching skills were nonexistent, he smoked in class during lessons and even listened to horse race broadcasts on the radio. Yet he had an uncanny charm that made students feel relaxed in his presence.

By the ministry's new evaluation standards that will come into force next year, this man would no doubt warrant the "maru-M" designation. But perhaps Japan's hard-pressed schools could use more people as laid-back as him.

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Setagaya killings linked to 'Prophet's Game' By MARK SCHREIBER Shukan Taishu Extra (April 24) When Tokyoites unfolded their newspapers on New Year's Day, the sense of excitement and hope for the new millennium was blunted by front-page headlines reporting the shocking murder of an entire family. On the night of Dec. 30, business consultant Mikio Miyazawa, 44, his wife and two children were brutally murdered in their home in Tokyo's upscale Setagaya Ward.

While the police investigation into the crime drags on, the weeklies have come forth with various articles suggesting, among others, that the perpetrator may have been a foreign hit man who fled the country; a jealous gay lover; a member of a bosozoku (hot-rodder gang); or a player for a university baseball team whose squad regularly practices on a field adjacent to the scene of the crime.

Now an extra edition of Shukan Taishu (April 24) has yet another theory: Blame Hollywood. Specifically, the circumstances of the killings, the magazine reports, bear some remarkable similarities to the 1998 film "The Prophet's Game," which was released on video in Japan only two months before the Setagaya slayings.

In the film, leading actor Dennis Hopper, playing a Seattle cop, receives a telephone call from a serial killer who challenges him to a game. As Hopper struggles to unravel the puzzle, the corpses keep mounting up.

Especially disconcerting, Shukan Taishu reports, is how certain aspects of the Setagaya murder, such as the disfigurement of the two female victims, were identical to the film. And, like the film, the killer is alleged to have posted information on the Internet and given notice of his crime beforehand.

"We don't have all the facts, but we've been hearing rumors to the effect that some newspapers and a police station received a message from the killer before the murders took place," says one reporter. "Adhesive plaster and a handkerchief were enclosed. We heard that the fingerprints matched the ones found at the crime scene."

"Violent videos have been known to inspire copycat crimes in the U.S.," remarks an unnamed psychiatrist. "The media made a similar observation about the murders committed in 1997 by a teenage boy in Kobe. I'd say there's a good chance some youth was moved to commit the crime by watching this kind of film."

Whatever his motives may have been, the killer remains at large. "We are working on the case flat-out," a source close to the investigation assures Shukan Taishu. "We've followed up on close to 5,000 leads. Our detectives are even cutting down on sleep time.

"We're definitely going to get this guy," he asserts. "We don't dare let him walk around loose."

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Plagued by 'lunch-mate syndrome' By GEOFF BOTTING Yomiuri Weekly (April 8) It was around last autumn that Akiko had her nervous breakdown. The 22-year-old had been suffering from insomnia and depression, and for several days she couldn't bring herself to go to her job at a midsize trading company in Tokyo.

After she checked into a mental health clinic, doctors pinpointed the cause of her suffering -- her lunch hours. Specifically, Akiko's employer had pressured her to end her long-established habit of spending every lunch hour with a group of her closest friends. And eating lunch without them proved to be an unbearable psychological strain.

Akiko (not her real name) is among a rapidly growing number of young Japanese who suffer from "lunch-mate syndrome," Yomiuri Weekly says. For them, the lunch hour is critical to their psychological well-being. They use the chance to bond, either with friends or workplace colleagues. But when deprived of that opportunity, they can easily suffer a plight similar to Akiko's, the magazine says.

It was at university that Akiko started regularly lunching with her friends. She continued the practice after entering the workforce, as her friends all worked nearby.

Not for long, however. Her boss made a habit of having all his staff members eat lunch together. She was obliged to join in. Yet her fear that she would lose her friends forever became unbearable. And that's when she cracked.

Shizuo Machizawa, a psychiatrist at Rikkyo University, says lunch-mate syndrome emerged about seven years ago. Sufferers tend to be the type who have a strong sense of affiliation to others and fear being alone. When not accompanied by close acquaintances at lunchtime, many simply lose their appetites. Another symptom is a sense of isolation, stemming from the belief that eating alone is somehow a humiliating experience.

The result is often depression and an intense fear of going to work. Most of the victims are women, although the number of male sufferers is growing particularly quickly. Machizawa says the condition becomes especially prevalent in spring, when the entry-level recruits start their jobs.

"At this time, it's critically important whether or not you're going to be approached to be someone's lunch mate. That's particularly true in the case of women. As they form extremely tightly knit groups among themselves, it's difficult to join once the groups have been set up," he says.

Yomiuri Weekly suggests the condition is a sign of the times. For many members of the younger generation, it says, social lunches are a definite lifestyle priority, ranking higher in importance than even their jobs or the demands of their bosses.

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