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A high-ranking 59-year-old civil servant in Yamanashi Prefecture may pay a heavy price for the theft of a pair of a woman's panties. In a press conference on April 9, Mayor Masanobu Miyajima announced that if the city decides to proceed with his dismissal, it would "not pay one red sen" (a sen is 1/100 of a yen) of the man's pension -- which would probably be close to 30 million yen.
The culprit would have been due to retire in March 2011.
The man in question was nabbed after a woman in Kofu City complained to police that from several months earlier her underthings were regularly being stolen from her first-floor veranda.
"The police set up a stakeout, and caught him red-handed," a local reporter tells Shukan Jitsuwa (May 5). "He admitted everything."
Two months earlier, a senior police inspector was nabbed in Sapporo City while attempting to take digital photographs up a 30-year-old woman's skirt on a station escalator. He had turned age 60 and was due to retire in March.
What is it with Japanese men and women's underthings?
"Men all over the world like to peep at women in their underwear, but it's only Japanese males who have this pronounced fetish for articles of women's underwear, shoes and so on," asserts an unnamed psychiatric counselor.
"More than feeling anger, a foreign woman here whose items were stolen simply couldn't comprehend why they were being taken. A foreigner with the same sexual impulsiveness would probably commit rape. Only Japanese men appear to be lacking in aggressiveness."
The Yamanashi and Sapporo cases are just two of a recent spate of crimes around the country involving men on the verge of retirement -- a number of who were senior police officials.
Well, if women can suffer from marriage blues and maternity blues (aka postpartum depression), notes Shukan Jitsuwa, then the pathology of "retirement blues" ought to warrant further investigation.
Aside from petty crime, another concern among this age group is suicide.
"Considering the ruthless system in the U.S. of laying off unproductive workers or civil servants, it wouldn't be strange for that country's suicide rate to surpass Japan's -- but that's not the case," the counselor continues. "There's a big difference between the ways American males manage stress or how they respond to it."
"Civil servants such as bureaucrats and cops are in occupations that don't require much discretion in personal decision making," criminologist explains. "We often see slight depression among men who remain in middle management up to their retirement. To keep their jobs in business areas where rank is extolled over work performance, they have to suppress their individuality and assertiveness in order to hang on to their careers.
"It's common for them to emphasize their work over family. And to be booted from the organization upon reaching the compulsory retirement age leaves them without a sense of belonging. In worst cases, the sense of anxiety causes them to lose control over their inhibitions, making them more prone to committing crimes," he adds.
Since the population of young workers is declining, the magazine concludes it is probably a good idea to find jobs to keep these men occupied into their 70s.
© Japan Today
22 Comments
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unrested
i would love to see the sources behind this writers research and also some statistics. this scattered mess of an article holds little more than random subjective ideas from the author.
Taka313
Well I'm glad I don't have those same impulses because apparently I'm pretty aggressive.
Taka
Tessa
Wow, this one's got it all! They manage to take potshots at retirees, civil servants, police officers, and foreigners. What more can we ask for?
SCAP65
The problem with this article is that it constructs a wholly inaccurate picture of reality. People who are informed by this garbage live in a bubble completely isolated from reality. That thing about the rape really bothered me.
Japan is behind the rest of the world when it comes to protecting women from rape or prosecuting rapists. Just check out these two films on the topic:
http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=16265789
http://www.lepak.tv/index.php?page=videos§ion=view&vid_id=106289
These writers are real pieces of work.
cactusJack
I can sum up this whole article in ONE sentence: "If Japanese men, on the brink of retiring, cannot steal panties, they will commit suicide."
Beerplease
"Underthings?"
What the hell was this woman wearing? Small furry animals?
YongYang
What a crock! Especially the 'foreigner will rape', christ, you'll be post 'news' articles about how blood type influences society..
marushka
Do not have a pension is too hard punishment for such a small deal. But when japanese people will start to use tumblers / dry machines to dry their cloths? Cloths exposed on balcony look just ugly and damage aesthetic view
yyj72
Huh?! On balance, public service jobs generally require a higher degree of good personal judgment than most private-sector professions. Nobody's going to wrongly wind up in jail if a shoe salesman screws up an invoice.
kirakira25
Yes Dolphingirl, I was having a good laugh at that too - one soon-to-retire guy gets caught stealing panties, and this is suddenly extrapolated to every retiree having an underwear fetish because of the stress of retirement???!
Better watch my smalls when FIL comes to stay - he`ll be retiring soon!
dolphingirl
How did the writer manage to fabricate a connection between anxiety over retirement and stealing panties? As Monkeyz pointed out, rapists and fetishists are two totally different animals.
Monkeyz
Japanese men do seem unusually fascinated with underwear. But foreign men do that stuff too. Just not to the same degree. It's probably way harder for foreign men to get access to strangers' panties, too. You'd either have to raid a laundromat or find someone who hangs their stuff outside, and in America, at least, the latter is very unusual.
As for rape, fetishes are kind of in a different league. Sometimes flashers and gropers escalate to rape, but a guy who just likes panties is probably just a guy who likes panties. In any culture.
jruaustralia
Time to get tough with unfair dismissal laws, and consider the social impact of long-term unemployment amongst the middle-age demographic.
bobbafett
I think a panty thief and a rapist are different animals entirely.
some14some
very true.
Beelzebub
Good grief. This article is not about foreigners, rapists or otherwise, so stop acting like the outraged wounded party. It's about men who flake out before their retirement.
bcbrownboy
This article is misleading, confusing, unfocussed and erroneous.
sakurala
Umm, about the rape thing...someone got their facts wrong!Japanese men DO rape women! The thing is that it is rarely reportred to the police and even if someone does, they often arent taken seriously. A lot of the time it as seen as the woman's fault anyway so is just dismissed, which accounts for the low number of rapes in Japan. And correct me if I am wrong, but isn't their a whole ganre of Japanese porn just for rape? I even heard their was a character called RAPE MAN and he was like the super hero (think villan) of a major series.
But I may be wrong.....
DenDon
WHAT???
WMD
Crime or suicide. The choices in a capitalist society??
Sarge
30 million yen is a heavy price to pay for a few pair of panties.
"Retirement blues"
I can't wait for my retirement blues.
DentShop
What? What?? I can see why they are an "unnamed psychiatric counselor". No point making unabashedly ignorant comments if it might cost you your credibility.