Police departments across Japan are reporting an increase in bizarre requests for police intervention, with prank or otherwise insincere requests for assistance now reaching some 7% (4,800) of the total calls made (69,400).
A selection is reproduced below:
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Police at Shigeru Mizuki Road, a Tottori tourist trap themed after esteemed mangaka Shigeru Mizuki’s works, have taken to cosplaying fairies in their efforts to patrol innocuously.
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Police in Akiba swooped upon another man wielding a knife in Akiba, but the knife in question was a small penknife, the man absolutely innocent, and the police unable to arrest the man, as they clearly hankered to do, as the blade was under the 5cm in length permitted to be carried by Japanese law.
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With the recent incidents, it seems the regular pedestrianisation of much of Akihabara is on its last legs. Police and area committees seem set to announce an urgent suspension of the policy shortly, with police expressing concerns over the possibility of copycat crimes, even though Mrs Wide Open is no longer a fixture in Akiba. However, shops too have been urging an end to the policy.
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Police seem to have aroused the interest of cats in this latest incident in Miyagi prefecture. See the incident in full below.
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43 proprietors and employees of 42 shops selling “obscene” DVDs in Shinjuku’s Kabukichou red light district have been arrested for peddling smut, Asahi reports. Police claim the arrests are unprecedented in number.
The heinous crimes they allegedly committed were for 12 of their number to sell 141 “obscene” adult DVDs worth ¥102,000 ($1,000), and for the rest to display with intent to sell AV DVDs and magazines inside their shops, which each had monthly earnings of some ¥5,000,000; small fry indeed. How bold these criminals have become to sell adult materials inside their adult shops in the middle of the red light district. Police also helped themselves to all the porn in sight, grabbing 93,000 adult articles, they say. Enough to keep the police busy for a while it seems.
The article, and police, are silent on just in what manner these DVDs were “obscene”, my guess would be they fell afoul of local government or had mosaic issues, as the numbers seem rather large for age issues, but it is at any rate clear that Japan’s ludicrous censorship regime has claimed yet more victims, not that many tears will be shed for a mob of Yakuza pawns.
Mainichi reports that a man who doused himself in kerosene after police responded to a domestic altercation, and was subsequently taken into custody by police, was then offered a light for a cigarette; he caught fire, violently, and later died in hospital. The police were kind enough to provide both cigarettes and lighter. The various policemen involved, when asked about just how he caught fire, responded that they “weren’t looking”. Currently, the possibility that some ash from his spent cigarette got into his clothes is being investigated. Nagoya police will surely have to answer some interesting questions as a result of this.
The article drily remarks that the station was a no smoking area. The station chief also has this to add: “For him to come into the station without changing, and be permitted to smoke in a no smoking station, was inappropriate”.
