George Bush Snr. repaid the hospitality of his hosts by throwing up in the lap of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. The unfortunate incident was quickly blamed on a feeling of ‘nausea’ that had plagued Bush all that day; but soon the verb Bushusuru—literally, ‘doing a Bush’—had been invented to describe those who vomited without warning.
BUSH WARBLER, JAPANESE
You’re much more likely to hear rather than see this little critter, though to be honest you won’t be missing all that much. The Japanese Bush Warbler, or uguisu, is usually small, brown (sometimes with a hint of dark yellow around its belly) and…er…that’s about it really.
The beauty of its mating call—which I won’t even attempt to transcribe here—commences from around the start of spring, and once led to it being dubbed ‘the Japanese Nightingale’. This name, however, completely ignored one important point: namely, that the uguisu never chirps away at night.
This bird also lends its name to that special type of ninja-defeating flooring, uguisubari. It’s also often mentioned in haiku, given its association with spring, sakura, and other things that tend to get the Japanese excited. And if that’s still not enough, an enzyme found in its droppings is used both as a skin-whitening agent and to remove stains from a kimono.
BYŦBU
Folding screens that originally came from China, byŦbu (‘wind wall’) could at first be found only in the Emperor’s court. ByŦbu acted as draught excluders (hence the name), room sub-dividers and in general livened the place up a bit with the colourful pictures of dragons, mountains, lakes, great trees and the like that were painted upon them.
Around the fifteenth century, however, byŦbu had become so commonplace that nearly everyone—rich and poor—owned at least a couple. Hence their fall from favour: byŦbu are nowadays commonly seen gathering dust inside temples and museums, dragged out every now and then for such occasions as weddings.
CHIKAMATSU, MONZAEMON
Renowned seventeenth century playwright, whose enduring fame has often led to him being referred to as the ‘Japanese Shakespeare’. The son of an unemployed doctor, he began his career writing haiku, before really making a name for himself by knocking out well over 100 plays. Few of these plays, however, are what you might call cheery. In fact, with titles such as The Love Suicides at Sonezaki and The Love Suicides at Ami-jima, the audience knew that they were going to be watching something a tad ‘deep’.
Later in his career, Chikamatsu transferred his formidable talents to bunraku, or the ‘puppet theatre’, where frequently just one person would chant the lines for any number of puppet ‘actors’, all the while accompanied by a lone shamisen. Sound a little more cheery? Don’t you believe it. Chikamatsu was a man obsessed: suicide (and death in general) in his plays—for puppets or otherwise—remained a common theme.
CHIKAN
Means ‘molester’ or pervert. Commonly refers to disturbed males taking advantage of packed Toyo commuter trains to grope whichever female is squashed up nearest to them. But sexual assaults of this nature are just as likely to occur at rock concerts and in crowded shopping malls. There are even signs by some bicycle parking lots, warning women to be on their guard as they bend down to undo their bicycle locks.
At the time of writing, an economist named Kazuhide Uekusa (formerly a well-known TV commentator) has been indicted by public prosecutors in Tokyo for allegedly molesting a female high school student on a train in September 2006.
If found guilty, it will be Uekusa’s second offence: he was convicted in 2004 of using a handheld mirror to look up a schoolgirl’s skirt while the pair of them were stood on an escalator. Fined ¥500 000, his career and reputation in ruins, he was also ordered to surrender his precious mirror, net worth ¥100 (about fifty pence).
You’d have thought that would have taught him—I mean, those ¥100 mirrors must surely mount up—but here’s Uekusa, apparently back to his old tricks. Despite having only ‘hazy memories’ of the whole incident, due to his earlier consumption of twenty cups of Chinese wine, Uekusa vigorously denies this latest charge.
‘My hand touched the student when the train rattled,’ he’s been quoted as saying, ‘and I may have been misunderstood.’
To which the majority of the Japanese population reply: ‘You certainly are misunderstood, wacko-boy.’
However, the nature of his defence does raise a serious point. Namely that on some trains during certain times of the day—and especially during the Tokyo morning and evening rush-hours—people are packed together so tightly that it is impossible not to have some sort of physical contact with the person next to you.
Chikan have commonly relied on this fact to disguise their nasty deeds, and are assisted by the traditional reluctance of Japanese women to cause a scene, even if they suspect they are being assaulted. But times are changing. Kazuhide Uekusa himself was captured after the female student he was allegedly groping shouted ‘Stop! Stop!’ and then—assisted by other commuters—performed a citizen’s arrest on him.
But there is a growing, discomforting feeling that many men have met a similar fate through what has been a genuine accident. Take, for example, Hideki Kato, who whilst on a packed train was grabbed, apparently at random, by the man next to him when a thirteen-year-old began to scream that she’d been groped.
The Japanese legal system has an unfortunate habit of presuming guilt, and commonly favours those who confess (an expression of sincere remorse by a murderer often helps them avoid the death penalty, and may even result in a reduced prison sentence). So many men accused of being chikan feel that they have no choice but to pay the fine, if they wish to avoid going to prison.
Not so Hideki Kato, who stubbornly proclaimed his innocence in court, only to end up receiving an eighteen-month jail sentence. He continues to fight back through the ‘Victims of False Accusations Network’, although in a few similar cases the accused male has ended up committing suicide.
Many trains now have carriages adorned with pink lines and signs stating that they are Josei SennyŦ SharyŦ : ‘For Women Only’. Hopefully this will reduce the number of women being assaulted—and also the number of men who are undoubtedly being falsely accused of being chikan.
CHIKATETSU SARIN JIKEN (SUBWAY SARIN INCIDENT)
On the morning of 20 March, 1995, at around 7.30 a.m., five men boarded trains at various stations along the Tokyo subway system and dropped a couple of small, polythene packages upon the floor. Inside these packages was the deadly nerve agent sarin—a pinhead-sized drop of which is more than enough to kill an adult.
Piercing these packages with a couple of jabs from an umbrella, the five men then hastened off the train, each meeting with a ‘getaway driver’ at a pre-arranged spot. One man called Kenichi Hirose, however, was not quite quick enough—beginning to feel the effects of sarin poisoning, he was obliged to inject himself with the antidote
