No pranks

I assume that the "Safety and Security Promotion Council for no Crime in Kanagawa Prefecture" has had a lot of free time on its hands recently.

I also assume this council and its pointless activities are not not funded by taxpayers.

April Fools yet? Poor youth can't have some fun.

They all look like gaijins. Naughty ones.

Ahhh, yes. Japanese Crime Prevention posters depicting all of the criminals as foreigners. Saw my first one twenty years ago in the local bank. I went in and told them I wanted to close my account due to the racist posters they had displayed out by the ATMs, depicting foreigners stealing money from trustingly honest Japanese victims. They explained that it had nothing to do with them but it was the local police and could do nothing, sorry. When I explained that the media would then be contacted, they quickly changed their tune. I was given a pen and pencil set, some lovely tissues and was told the posters would be taken down. Great to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Granted that was a poster of foreigners pickpocketing and stealing money where this is guys goofing around. In both cases, in all of the media coverage I have seen in print, on TV and on the net, it is always done by Japanese. So why did they and why do they continue to see the need to depict foreigners as the 'bad' and 'us' as the good.

I also assume this council and its pointless activities are not not funded by taxpayers.

Police have all kinds of discretionary funds from the money they accumulate from parking fines and the like, which they spread around using these kinds of "quasi-official" councils that are usually overseen by retired cops. It's part of the good old "amakudari" system.

Seriously racist! Usually I don't let "racism"'in Japan bother me too much because most of the times it's just because of ignorance from living in a box your whole life. But this! This bugs me. I don't know you about you, but I saw a ton of those prank photos online. NONE were gaijin. But HERE all, save maybe the one in the middle are obviously gaijin.

brond and brown hair/ If they target to gaijin, why the message is in Japanese language? Just because gaijins are cute, they just use gaijins for this kind of poster?

Anyone who has been in Japan for any significant length of time has doubtlessly seen this sort of anti-crime campaign depicting non-Japanese people as the baddies. One reason being, I think, is that the creators aim to convey an underlying message that nay person engaging in this sort of behavior is somehow less Japanese. "This behavior something only they would do, but not something a respectable Japanese person."

For the most part, I doubt that people drawing up this sort of propaganda even consider it to be bigoted, its just an ingrained mentality on their part that deviance equates to a non-Japanese appearing person. Still, that's obviously no excuse.

All that aside, it looks like these guys in the poster are having a great time. I would think that this particular poster would do more to encourage, not discourage, young people from trying out this sort of prank.

While it this isn't a good thing, doesn't many modern countries do this? Depicting criminals as the foreign group they (that country) has the most problems with? At least that is common here (not living in Japan atm).

I can understand the 1st one but 2nd one ?? guy inside freezer was Japanese.

The poster doesn't say anything about foreigners. If you live in Japan, you know most young Japanese dye their hair.

Show it to a Japanese person and ask them what they see.

I just did. All ten said the guy on the right could be a gaijin.

The other 3 are foreigners.

This could be a shout out to the so-called "Yankii" (Japanese youths who imitate American dress, hairstyles, gangsterism, etc.) ... except that the facial features are clearly Caucasian, and as such this is probably the most racist thing I've seen in ages. What is especially ironic is that the bottom part of the poster, the kid lying in the freezer on the meat, is a clear reference to the Japanese kid who pulled this stunt in his father's convenience store (except he was lying on ice creams if my memory serves me correctly), and no foreigner was involved in any way.

@ tinawatanabe: The poster doesn't say anything about foreigners. If you live in Japan, you know most young Japanese dye their hair.

Plz, look carefully to the characters (10sec), close your eyes and try to figure out their nationalities. "Japanese" will not be in top10.

The pictures are clearly depicted as Foreign people. Japanese do no wrong. Everyone knows that.

Top Don't get down to rail. bottom Mischief in restaurants. Both right side state what kind of law violation. Kanagawa-ken have very many foreigners. The poster should have English sentences to let foreigners understand what the poster promoting. Safety and peace of mind promotion committee of Kanagawa Prefecture is promoting Crimeless towns.

i am a gaijin.....but just by looking at this pic if u say they're gaijins? how about the manga characters????? they look way more gaijins than this poster. just take it as wanna be westerner japanese boys ..duh..

Who cares? It's just a poster. If you aren't doing this crap then you have nothing to worry about. I understand the concerns about foreigners being victimized, but your life isn't changed by this at all. I've been living in Japan for 6 years, which granted isn't that long, and I never let this stuff get to me. You're choosing to live in Japan, deal with it. Besides, racism is everywhere regardless, so what makes you think Japan is a place where it wouldn't be?

Surprised they don't have a black character with an Afro, in baggy pants, holding a ghetto-blaster on his shoulder!

@wangchi: Because above picture is not manga but a poster, no one is writing about manga. Beside, these characters are not manga characters, @bilderberg: This is a poster for Kanagawa Prefecture. Are there ghetto in Kanagawa-Ken? Maybe Kanagawa is not prejudiced toward black people?

This poster is in response to a string of incidences, most at places of work, where employees at convenience stores and restaurants took pictures of themselves doing stupid things and posted them on Twitter and FB, getting themselves fired and embarassing the company. As far as I recall, none of these incidences involved foreigners, and there is no reason to believe this poster campaign is targetting foreigners. Besides, the eyes of the characters on the posters are too narrow (and not blue) to be seen as typical gaijin caricatures. It didnt occur to me until I saw the comments here.

Some people need to get over themselves and stop seeing racism and discrimination in everything and anything, feeling unreasonably threatened just because a cartoon character on a poster has blond hair is a bit paranoid. Of course, if they had the blond guy depicted as the victim of a lynching with perhaps a placard around his next with something nasty on it, feelings of paranoia might be justified.

toshiko: "The poster should have English sentences to let foreigners understand what the poster promoting."

Why? It's Japanese committing the crimes, not foreigners.

I didn't think the characters in the poster were foreigners when I first looked at it. It was only after I read comments here that I went back and looked at it, and while I can see how some foreigners may think it's a portrayal of foreigners, I doubt most Japanese people would think so when looking at it. After all it's not like there are no blond Japanese these days, and with the amount of coverage these pranks got on the news, Japanese people already know it to be a Japanese issue.

I thought they were just "bad boys" with badly dyed hair.

Myself, I think a poster saying something like this might work better:

"If you mess around with private or public property, you will be arrested, taken to court and either imprisoned or fined a huge amount of money which it will take you the rest of your twenties to pay off."

@smithinjapan: The eyes of characters are not narrow enough and hair is not black. Using those pictures, I think it is courtesy to have English in posters to let foreigner knows the poster is not ridiculing foreigners.

They just look like a bunch of idiots and the poster seems to be suggesting people should not act like idiots.

What is really sad about this is that there is a perceived need to let people know they should not act like idiots. One would expect that something called common sense would make it so that such a poster would not be thought to be necessary.

'Hey, idiots! Don't play on train tracks!' 'Hey, idiots! Don't lie down in a meat freezer!' Sheesh, they might as well have written, 'Hey, idiots! Get some common sense!'

They store frozen meat under the train tracks?

Plz, look carefully to the characters (10sec)

I did, and I think they meant Japanese. Japanese draw foreigners with an exaggerated big nose, but all the characters above have an ordinary nose.

Japanese draw foreigners with an exaggerated big nose

Straight from the horse's mouth. Why do they draw foreigners with an exaggerated big nose, tinawatanabe?

@tideofiron

Insidious, everyday racism is more powerful than a few jerks mouthing off with megaphones.

But is this poster racist? Consider what percentage of the Japanese male population has blond or brown hair. Consider what percentage has black hair. How many black haired people can we see in the poster? None. Posters convey messages, some explicit, some subliminal. I think that most Japanese people upon seeing this poster will not regard the people depicted as 'standard' Japanese. They are miscreants of foreign appearance. Because, as another poster mentioned, 'real' Japanese don't behave badly.

How many black haired people can we see in the poster? None.

I see two.

@sammuraisteveFEB. 25, 2014 - 08:26AM JST

Japanese Crime Prevention posters depicting all of the criminals as foreigners.

So what? Why cares ?

Pretty much all Japanese manga characters look white, especially the heroes. So I am finding it hard to take offense.

Concerning the effectiveness of the posters, the gentle approach does seem to be working for Japan, doesn't it? Where has cracking heads actually worked to make a country as safe as Japan? Nowhere. So stop suggesting it.

@taiko666

Why do they draw foreigners with an exaggerated big nose, tinawatanabe?

So it's easy to perceive as foreigners, I guess. You haven't seen those pictures?

@tinawatanabe

... but that's just another absurd racial stereotype. Shouldn't we all be moving on from those?

@slumdog

Perhaps you should adjust your monitor so that it can differentiate between black and brown.

@taiko I didn't know a big nose is offensive term. Maybe a high nose or pointed nose? It's considered a compliment in Japan. By the way, if you can not see the characters as Japanese, I think "that's just another absurd racial stereotype" the other way around.