Walking While Foreign

 

A little way after visiting Kitakata Hachimangu, I turned off the old Sanyo-do and took a more modern, rural bypass type road that has few houses along it but wide sidewalks. Up ahead I spied a couple of guys standing around, leaning against the metal railings. As I drew level with them they stepped out into my path, flashed ID's, and demanded to see my papers. As I put down my pack and went into my pockets for my wallet a patrol car pulled up and was waved away by one of the plaincothes cops. It was then that I realized this was an "operation", not a random stop.

I have been stopped by the cops in Japan many, many times. One of the reasons I walked pilgrimage routes wearing pilgrim garb was because I had thought that would mean I would get stopped less while exploring rural Japan on foot. I had never been stopped by plainclothes guys before, and they had obviously come some distance. Usually it was local koban cops responding to phonecalls from nervous citizens who had seen a suspicious activity, someone walking while foreign.

many time the young cops don't even ask to see ID, just ask where I am going. In Japanese I explain I am on a pilgrimage, or looking for a local shrine. Often I will ask an obscure question about a local shrine or some local history that they have no idea about and that seems to satisfy them.

Occasionally there will be an asshole who goes in for a long interrogation. According to the law, cops must have reasonable suspicion to be able to stop someone and ask for ID, but in truth, racial profiling is the norm. They can lock you up for 28 days with no phone calls or lawyers allowed, so I am always polite. In almost every case it has been that someone has found me suspicious and called the cops. The only suspicious activity I can think I exhibit is walking while foreign.

Not long after arriving on these shores, Japan held the Football World Cup. In their expectation of hordes of foreign hooligans, every home in Japan was leafletted with requests to call the cops if they saw something suspicious. There is a meaning, recently echoed by the new prime minister, that making Japanese feel uncomfortable is suspicious. Japanese are, in general, uncomfortable with difference, hence it means that walking while foreign is a suspicious activity.

After checking my ID and finding I was legal and with nothing to arrest me for they let me on my way.

I was deeply sad and feeling somewhat uncomfortable. I have yet to find a Japanese person who finds anything wrong with racial profiling by the police.

A little further and I turned off the main road and headed down a narrow lane. Googlemaps assured me this was a shortcut along a hypotenuse that would save me some miles. A couple of K downhill and the road kind of petered out. It seemed to become a track that ended at a house, or possibly went right next to the house. There was no-one around and no other houses nearby for me to ask about the map and route. I sat in a shed next to a small local shrine and pondered my choices while it rained. I was afraid that if I went right past the house I would alarm any resident and they would call the cops. A little ways back up the road there was a new road being constructed.... logic suggested that it would go where I wanted, but again I worried that walking an empty construction site would be cause for arrest. I decided to go back the way I had come, a couple of kilometers uphill. Not much further along the main road was a bus stop and the timetable showed a bus soon, so to get to the next temple and nearby hotel before dark I hopped the bus.

The previous post in this series on walking the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on Kitakata Hachimangu Shrine.

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