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Be careful what you post on Facebook. You may (in all innocence, so to speak) be testifying against yourself.
Ask actress Kazuyo Matsui. In the midst of much-publicized divorce proceedings last year, she dropped by the apartment occupied by her husband, actor Eiichiro Funakoshi. He wasn’t home, which mattered little. She hadn’t come to see him but to pick up some things she’d left – smartphone, notebooks and so on. Later she mentioned it in an online post, little supposing it would get her charged with breaking and entering. But that’s exactly what happened.
What’s a crime and what’s not? asks Shukan Gendai (Feb 17-24). It’s hard to know. A little-known law passed in 1948, the Minor Offenses Act, is the leading, though not the only, criminalizer of some extraordinarily ordinary behavior.
Imagine this: Your bicycle has been stolen. You’re walking along the street one day and there it is, your stolen bike. What a stroke of luck! You’d never expected to see it again. Seizing the opportunity, you hop on and ride home.
What could be more natural? Just make sure you don’t get caught, because if you are you could be charged with theft. The thief who stole it from you may have sold it to an unsuspecting buyer, from whose point of view you are a thief. What you should do – what you in fact you are obliged to do by law – is report your find to the police. Of course, by the time they arrive at the scene the bike may be gone – but that’s life.
Or this: You slip some coins in a canned drink vending machine, and out pop two cans instead of one. A bonus! you think – wrongly. It’s a violation to take possession of the second can. What to do? One of three things: leave it, call the vending machine company, or call the police. Supposing not you but the customer before you is the one who scored the two cans and left one, and there it is, waiting for you. Can you help yourself to it? No.
Garbage disposal regulations are notoriously finicky. Trash is classified differently by different municipalities, but broadly speaking there is burnable waste, unburnable waste, plastic waste, empty bottle waste, empty can waste, and so on, each category to be disposed of on a set day, the pickup usually taking place early in the morning – too early in the morning for some, for whom the solution is to take it out the night before. This, too, turns out to be illegal. It’s no laughing matter. The Waste Disposal Law provides for up to five years’ imprisonment in extreme cases. A homeowner disposing of ordinary household trash would never be treated so harshly, but Shukan Gendai mentions a Hyogo Prefecture case in which three housewives, repeat offenders, were fined between 30,000 and 50,000 yen.
Vagrancy is a crime under the Minor Offenses Act. If you have no job and no fixed address, be careful where you hang out – you’re liable to be picked up, as in fact a 54-year-old man was in Ishikawa Prefecture in 2012. We’re not told what the final outcome was, but it raises, Shukan Gendai says, the obvious question: does this put all homeless people in jeopardy?
At the golf course, don’t help yourself to lost golf balls. At hotels, don’t make off with the soap. And don’t scold other people’s children, however much they might deserve it. You can bad-mouth them, call them “snot-nosed little brat” and so on, but anything construable as a threat – “I’ll murder you, you little…!” and the like – is not permitted.
Almost all of us do almost all the things mentioned here at one time or another, if not constantly, and never have been and never will be arrested for them. Generally speaking, law enforcement is busy with more important things. Still, be careful about what you post on SNS. It could come back to haunt you.
© Japan Today
11 Comments
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1glenn
Cultural differences are very interesting, and also, things change with time. When I was a kid, corporal punishment at school was accepted by everyone. Now, it will get you arrested. When I was a kid, we didn't think anything about taking a pocket knife everywhere we went, including school. Don't get caught taking a pocket knife to school these days!
katsu78
This seems like less of an article about the need to not incriminate yourself on social media and more of an article about how Japan has a bunch of very absurd laws.
Pukey2
I can never wake up on time to make the 8:30am deadline for putting out the garbage. We're told specially to put it out on that day and not before. So I wait just after midnight. I, at least, sort out my garbage properly. I can't say the same for my Japanese neighbours.
And why do people feel the need to broadcast everything on FB Twitter, etc?
Ah_so
I imagine that Kazuyo Matsui had her own set of keys, so I am not sure how that counts as breaking and entering.
maybeperhapsyes
If my bike get stolen (and it was recently) and I see someone riding it, then I will take it back from them. By force is that's what it takes.
I registered the bike. It's in my name.
The thief stole it and then sold it on.
The new owner then has a legal responsibility to register the bike in his name.
It should come up then that the bike is stolen. If he doesn't register it...why not?
I've had 3 bikes stolen over the years. All registered. Only got one back. My most recent. And it was trashed. Stripped of the brakes, gears...you name it.
Trashed!
What's the point of registering it?
But I do it anyway.
Like I said...if I see MY bike. I'm taking it back!
BeerDeliveryGuy
Even if the door is wide open, if you enter without consent you may be charged with breaking and entering.
As I understand, Matsui had previously destroyed many of Funakoshi’s belongings and stole several valuable and official documents before she ran from home.
Funakoshi filed a restraining order against her while the divorce hearings were being held.
bosphorus
A simple online privacy tip - never use your real name on social networks, never post your personal photos, videos or any other sensitive personal information. Remember - anything you post online may be used against you.
Christina Tsuchida
Concerning getting two cans for the price of one by mistake of a vending machine, it seems like finding a wallet with cash in it. One used to be told to bring it to a Police Box. Now, does one CALL the Police? Does this assume that everyone reading this can speak that much Japanese? (I realize that in an NHK drama--"Churo-san" was it?--getting to the KOBAN was fraught with difficulties. Has that changed the custom? What about Olympic visitors who have only a small travelers' guide to Japanese? Furthermore, in warding off everyone from drinking the left-over can if they find it, is it wise to recall that one such deed ended in death for a driver whose drink had been laced with agricultural chemicals (Aichi Pref., about 33 years ago)?
You warn the person without a job or address to "be careful where you hang out" (viz., loiter), but you do not suggest the probable circumstances on which such a person would be "picked up" by the Police or explain whether violations of this law on "Minor Offenses" involve being arrested. In "Alice's Restaurant" (US movie), men who had been arrested for breaking a garbage law were asked whether they had ever committed a "felony" (which has its definition in "English common law"--I guess that means Anglo-American type Law--in my PC's dictionary). Yet, Japan's system of law is not in that group. It is classed with other countries such as Germany which also supplied models for writing the Constitution we have today. What does this mean concerning avoiding the onus of getting arrested, albeit innocently?
Once at an unrelated meeting, I heard that "police are too busy to worry about stolen bicycles." This seemed to stick in my mind as very unsatisfactory: First of all, I doubt that it is true; but even if it is, it is not conducive to preventing crime to announce such thing!
If a law is there, it MAY be used when a person violates the spirit of cooperation and good-neighborliness in a degree that seems to merit official opposition--is this not the case here as everywhere? The laws were made to clarify what to do so we can spare our synapses for more important tasks. Are the discretion of the police and their alleged "busy-ness" two different things? Maybe the bigger crimes which are given priority in their work schedule do not need coverage in this article? It would not be helpful to promote "scruples" about minor offenses (so there is a good aspect to your final paragraph), but I wonder whether even scrupulousness is not best cured by an even more clear description of what must be avoided.
In some cases, such as whether to pay NHK fees or not, the law needs clarifying. If one has a PC even without a TV, even if one never watches TV on the Web or other PC function, one has to pay, right? I conclude this because if one has a TV, even if one never watches it, one has to pay. This payment of broadcast dues has, moreover, recently become mandatory--is this not right?
Yet, noise pollution (excepting threats, which you mentioned, and "hate speech"--which you did not mention!) seems not to be criminalized. Is this still true?
commanteer
Modern laws are not there to protect us. They are there to give the authorities an excuse to arrest anybody they want at any time. There are so many laws, it's hard to avoid breaking them. I have heard one estimate that an average American commits about one felony per week, without being aware of it.
Not sure whether it's worse in Japan or not. The police in Japan have an inappropriate amount of authority in deciding which laws they will enforce, so they go after vagina kayak artists and dancing after midnight, while ignoring real criminals.
I the US, the police have less leeway. But their bosses in government aren't shy about going after their enemies. And when the law is enforced, it usually involves excessive force and a kind of zealous self-righteousness that overrides any concept of human rights.