Menace the TV and porn star
on Japanese TV in 2006 |
One of the first things the police asked me, on my maiden day of questioning at Kitazawa Police Station on May 14, was "have you ever taken any
illegal drugs?" I replied no automatically, and the police didn't pursue the matter any further -- but had they bothered to do a simple blood test,
I would have been cactus. The truth of the matter is, Menace and I had been smoking hash fairly brazenly on the long night before our hard arrest, and I was
in fact stoned when they raced me by squad car, sirens blazing, to the imposing five-storey edifice of the police station. I was stoned and drunk and giddy as the
police led me, cuffed, through the long and bustling corridors, past a room where some kind of crowd control simulation was taking place -- I could hear women
screaming, cops shouting: "Stay back! stay back!" Bizarre stuff, especially when you are off your head, and I said to the policeman who was escorting me: "Omoshiroi!"
("It's interesting!") Taking me for a smartass, the policeman replied: "Omoshirokunai yo!" ("It's not interesting at all!") He misread me -- I wasn't being a smartass,
I was genuinely interested, and felt like a tourist observing my own arrest (or an undercover reporter.) I was, however, stoned, and if the cops had known that, my fate would
have been grim indeed. If Menace had still been carrying his lump of hash when we were nabbed, we both would have been in trouble. We had been smoking all night, in the toilets at a
Shimokitazawa billiards hall, out on the streets with a bunch of Nepali parasites. Miraculously, Menace had run out of hash by the time we were caught. Or maybe it simply wasn't our
destiny to get stung with drug possession charges in Japan.
On the first day there I was convinced they were going to question me and then let me go, but it didn't work out that way. They said they were going to charge me with fraud, which is a serious offence, so they slapped some pretty severe prohibitions on me (no visitors, no phone calls, and Menace and I weren't allowed to talk to each other.) The first time they took me up the cells one of the scariest looking prison wardens I have ever seen looked me up and down and said: "Take off your clothes." I kept thinking: This must be a dream, I can't believe this is happening. It is a nightmare. They took me to a cell, which I had to share with a few other people (Japanese and Chinese prisoners for the most part.) Still, I thought they would let me go the next day.
Of course they didn't let me go, and I had to stay there a total of 16 days before letting me go. According to the law, the police in Japan can detain someone up to 23 days without laying charges, so I guess I am lucky they let me go after 16 days. And if they charged me, I would have had to spend another 6 weeks in there waiting for a court appearance. (They said I could pay bail to get out of prison, but bail would be set at $15,000.) I was thinking: if I do get charged I will spend the 6 weeks in prison, and then go back to Australia to live when I got out. I think I probably would have lost my job at Telephone English if I was charged and had a criminal record, and this job was the only reason I wanted to continue living in Japan.
MONDAY, MAY 14, 2007 ---- A Perfect Storm.
Anyway, this is how the story started: On Sunday, March 13 I went over to see my friend Cristal Meth and Garnet, who was in Japan for the weekend. Meth lives over in west Tokyo at KICHIJOJI, and we had already spent most of the weekend running amok and drinking and dare I say it, even smoking the odd canful of hash smoke. I had already had a big weekend and was very tired, so I wasn't really in the mood for another late night. But you know, the guys insisited I go out! Actually the real reason I decided to go out on that soon to be fateful and almost fatal Sunday night, was that I wanted to see Garnet's old girlfriend Miho, who was also in attendance. I was starting to think I might have a chance with her. We went to a restaurant near Cristal Meth's house, and while we were there, Meth called another one of our friends, a Kiwi called Maniac High, who happens to be a porn actor in Japan! Maniac High said: "Why didn't you come over to Shimokitazawa, we could go play pool and have a few drinks." So we decided to go to Shimokitzawa, about 25 minutes away by train. I wasn't really that keen and I didn't have any money, but Garnet and Meth insisted: "You have to come -- we will pay for you..." Thus, the fatal storm was set in motion.
For the full story of my inglorius arrest in Tokyo, click here.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2007 ---- The
Tedium of Time.
People working busy lives in big busy cities often complain about HOW FAST times seems to fly these days.
My cousin Kellie says this shit all the time. For the person sitting in a prison cell or detention center, however, time is a tedium. The blank boredom of four
bare walls. The blank immensity of time, every moment gutted and stretched out, into a blank future without shape or definite conclusion. Of all the subtle tortures
perfected by the Prison Establishment, boredom is the most brutal. But, I have got to look on the positive side:
At least I am not getting beaten by the guards. I am not sharing the toilet with cockroaches. And I will probably be getting out of here in a couple of weeks, maybe
even in a few days:
And since I can't drink any alcohol inside, and I am in fact drinking nothing but water, I am definitely giving my liver a rest. I am also definitely losing weight,
thanks to the PRISON FOOD.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007 ---- Live the Keyword.
THE FIVE YEAR CYCLE -- Sitting on the floor of my cell at Kitazawa Police Station and reading The Da Vinci Code, it reminds me of sitting on the floor at WinBe in Kisarazu in mid 2002, reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. (It also reminds me of Steven King's prison break novella Hope Springs Eternal, which I was reading at much the same time.) Back then I felt like I was a prisoner, under suspicion from those I worked for. Now I literally AM a prisoner, and guards watch me all the time. This is another example of a FIVE YEAR CYCLE at work in my life. How will this particular cycle end? Only time will tell.
One problem every prisoner must learn to cope with is that of loneliness. If you are a western prisoner in an ASIAN JAIL, compound the loneliness factor by a factor of about 10. But let's assume you know the local language or some of the locals can speak English, in the end there will be only two kinds of people that you will be able to talk to: prisoners, or the prison wardens. Both are essentially the same, two sides of the same coin, two expressions of CRIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS. I have the theory that you gradually become like the people you live with. Therefore, no matter how pure or innocent you were at the start, spend enough time behind bars and you will become criminal yourself. Staying for a few weeks in here might be okay to see a different strata of Japanese life; however, I don't want to spend my whole life here!
Even spending this week in prison has been a distraction to my life; one way to recoup my losses is to publish this blog, PRISON JAPAN. I might be able to make a small amount of money from the Google AdSense ads on the top and side of the page. In contrast to some of my other blogs, this blog is original, THIS ONE IS FOR REAL, because I lived it myself. I LIVED THE KEYWORD... I can relate to the facts on the ground. And some of the well-paying keywords related to this blog might include: immigration lawyer in Japan... Tokyo attorney (attorney firms pay so much for AdWords, or so I have heard)... criminal law... criminal lawyer in Japan...
LIVE THE KEYWORD: that is the way to achieve Keyword Mastery, and it is my motto for today even though I am so far from a computer and the Internet, and locked inside a Tokyo ryuchijo lockup. If you are in trouble and need a lawyer, I have enough experience in the field to qualify as an Information Source. And regardless of my current imprisonment in Tokyo, I know that Information is the KEY to my future, and my ticket to subsistence and eventually wealth, and even riches.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007 ---- Destruction
of the Comfort Zones.
In my previous blog Moving
House I wrote that one of the reasons moving is so
painful and destabilizing, is that it involves the
INSTANT AND IRREVERSIBLE DESTRUCTION of vast layers of
comfort zones. By comfort zones, I am talking about the
habits and luxuries and fields of memory which shield us
from the essential pain and aloneness of being alive.
The experience I had back in late 2007, after moving to
east Tokyo, was this: stripped of the Internet and cable
TV, and all the pleasant (and unpleasant) associations
of my downtown home of six years, I fell into a deep
despair. I couldn't believe what had happened,
especially since moving had been my idea. It seemed like
a deep rupturing of fate, an earthquake (although it was
nothing compared to the coming tsunami of my
May arrest!) Once the initial shock of the 'quake wore
off, however, an interesting phenomenom emerged: I
realized that beneath the Comfort Zones eradicated by
the move, older Comfort Zones existed: latent but ready
to step forward and evolve to meet the current
challenge. For example, I couldn't work on my homepage
online, and that fretted me... but because I had a
computer and diskettes I could at least work on my
homepage OFFLINE, and upload new blogs at a later date
(at a friend's house, Internet cafe, etc.) In time, I
started getting used to the new arrangement, and started
enjoying it. My hope for the future returned... and my
east Tokyo home developed its first Comfort Zone.
If I thought Moving
House was tough, going to prison has been a personal
disaster of truly Biblical proportions. Nonetheless, I
have been here 6 days already, and I am still alive...
in fact, I am kind of settling in. I don't even have a
computer now, let alone a TV... but I have a very very
old Comfort Zone to fall back upon, one which dates from
my childhood but has fallen into disuse in the last
decade and a half: this is the Comfort Zone of writing
with a pen and a pad of paper. When I get out of here, I
will be able to type it up onto a text file on my east
Tokyo offline computer, save it to a disk, and then
upload it to the Net from a friend's house or Internet
cafe or whatever.
NOTE TO SELF: this new blog, this deadwood PRISON
JAPAN blog, is my homepage reborn on paper. I should
guard this document with my life. Even if my website
falls, this paper pad remains... waiting to be reborn
online. This is the lesson of May 2007.
Hope
Springs Eternal.
SUNDAY, MAY 20, 2007 ---- The
Underbelly of Japan.
One of the ONLY delights of
being a guest at the Kitazawa Police Station this past
week, was my discovery of the prison bathroom yesterday.
Spotlessly clean, the bathroom was like a classic
Japanese sento (bathhouse): all tubs and taps
and running water and in the center of it all, a large
communal bath filled right to the top. This being a
prison though, the characters in the bathroom were a
heck more colorful than those you would find in your
typical suburban sento. At one stage yesterday, the tub
was playing host to two young yakuza guys, at least one
of their backs covered with lurid tattoos. (As anyone
acquainted with Japan will know, tattoos are banned in
most Japanese communal baths.) It was like a scene from
an anime film, but the catch was: this was
real. And the fact it was real makes all the difference.
IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS
Do you need advice with immigration issues or
legal representation in Japan? My 6.1 days of
imprisonment at the Kitazawa Police Station in western
Tokyo, and the contacts I have made inside in the time,
have given me some insight on the topic which I can pass
on to you. From my experience in the past week, it would
seem at least 20 to 30 per cent of the inmates are here
for immigration reasons. In other words, they don't have
proper visas (and some of them don't even have
passports.) And what countries are these illegal aliens
from: you guessed it China, Sri Lanka, The Phillipines,
and Thailand. Among others. Maybe there are some from
South America, but I haven't met any of them. The people
I have met, though, have been pretty interesting:
MONDAY, MAY 21, 2007 ---- Prison Planet.
It has now been a week since I was arrested after bursting out of a Tokyo karaoke club without paying the bill, and entered into captivity at the Kitazawa Police Station. It's funny how you get used to things. If some soothsayer had told me the weekend before last, that I would soon be spending an entire week behind bars, I would have laughed. Indeed, the first few days were hell. But interestingly, in the past 24 hours I have felt the beginning of a sense of ease, an acceptance of my fate here in lockup. The afternoons are tough, and I long to be outside, but on top of that, it is not actually that bad here. I just finished reading THE DA VINCI CODE last night, and acting upon my accomplice Dennis's advice, I started reading HARD RAIN this morning. It is appropriate the prison stocks a copy of this exploration of the seamy underside of Tokyo, when here there are probably yakuza to every cell. While the food is pretty basic here, it seems to be nutritionally balanced... and the complete prohibition on alcohol is no doubt doing wonders for my body. I have probably not gone a whole week without alcohol for more than 10 years!
Prison in Japan can be like staying at a health farm. I don't know how much weight I have lost since coming here, but I am sure it is substantial.
That said, I don't want to be here forever -- I won't be here forever. Being behind bars gives you plenty of time to think about the future. The irony is, the longer I stay inside, the more determined I will be to definitively change my life once I get out. Like leaving Japan and going back to Australia. But since I am in Japan for now, I might as well savor this rare opportunity to witness Japanese life, underworld style:
HARD RAIN
By Barry Eisler
This is the perfect read if, like me, you find yourself staying in a Tokyo lockup. At this police station there are three English books which can be borrowed by detainees: THE DA VINCI CODE, some dragon and dungeon epic, and HARD RAIN by American author Barry Eisler. When I first picked up the book I thought it was somehow related to BLACK RAIN, that infamous 1980s film about the Osakan underworld. Of course I was wrong. HARD RAIN is in fact a recent novel, published in 2003, and centered on Tokyo rather than Osaka. But it is just as noir, and judging by the first few pages, just as ruthless. The protagonist, John Rain, is as relentless a killer as you could imagine (and he is certainly a lot more believable than the albino monk in THE DA VINCI CODE.) His speciality seems to be assassinations designed to resemble death by natural causes. In the first few pages of the book, he eliminates a yakuza gym junkie by goading him into lifting beyond his limit. Rain then jumps on the bar to ensure it suffocates the poor yakuza. On the way home after the job, Rain encounters a group of chimpira, young lowlevel yakuza, at Nogizaka north of Roppongi-dori:
THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2007 ---- Solitude
and Seperatism.
It is a good thing I have at least
one buddy here in lockup -- I don't know if I could have
coped here by myself. Even though we aren't allowed to
talk all that much -- in fact we are forbidden from
making contact, but we still manage to see each other
now and then. I used to wonder why they keep us
seperated so completely, but now I understand -- it is a
form of rehabilitation. Some time after my release I
found a document on the Internet, Effects
of Imprisonment, which went a long way to explaining
some of the feelings I had felt during my weeks inside,
the observations I had observed, and the systems and
methods I had seen deployed by prison guards. For
example, why did the wardens and screws conduct roll
call sessions (called tenko in Japanese) three
to four times a day? I thought it was to make sure that
none of us had escaped or died in our cells, but they
could see us at all times anyway -- I would say the real
reason was that they were trying to instill a sense of
civic responsibility in us, by forcing upon us strict
though meaningless rituals and timetables. They were
trying to wean us off our slacker ways, and force us to
be respectable. In my case they failed dismally -- I am
back to starting the day at 1pm. But I know a lot of
guys, who would consider having to wake up at 1pm, an
infringement on their human rights. 1pm is far too early
for them!
Effects of Imprisonment states: "The entire
prison structure is based on solitude and separatism.
Firstly, the convict is isolated from the external world
and everything that motivated his/her offences.
Secondly, they are to a large degree isolated from one
another. During the 18th century this concept was taken
to extremes, whereby prisoners were even forced to wear
facemasks that did not allow vision or communication
during exercise periods. This concept is based on the
promotion for total submission, and in older prisons
dually acted as a form of buffering with which to
control the outbreak of diseases. Early attempts at
submission and rehabilitation were far from perfect. The
use of solitary confinement was originally designed to
allow prisoners to rediscover their own conscience and
better voice through spiritual conversion.
Unfortunately, it was later discovered that no form of
torture could have been worse than solitary confinement
because it ended up causing within many prisoners
adverse psychological effects such as: delusions,
dissatisfaction with life, claustrophobia, depression,
feelings of panic, and on many instances madness." (Eds.
note: But that is only if they let them break your
mind!)
"All of which are symptoms of chronophobia -- a
state often referred to as prison neurosis. It wasn't
until 1850 that these disturbing effects of confinement
to small quarters was finally abandoned, and only
utilised as an instrument of potential terror to keep
inmates in line.
"Furthermore, it brought attention to the need to
redesign rooms that housed each prisoner. But even to
this day, confinement within prison, though vastly
improved by comparison, continues to have similar
adverse psychological effects.
"Timetables also play a large factor in
rehabilitation by establishing rhythms, and cycles of
repetition. This combined with convict's personal needs
for reward and acquisition through penal labour, turns
the criminal into a somewhat docile worker. It imposes
on the convict the moral form of wages as the condition
of his existence. A principle of order and regularity.
"Prisons issued uniforms also play a large part
in destroying personal identity, and crashing individual
spirits. These somewhat bland, yet repetitive outfits
are a way whereby unification maybe achieved within
inmates, through the portrayal that they are no longer
individuals, but are part of a whole. That whole is
symbolic of - society.
Overall, the entire prison experience with its
symbolic mechanisms of justice that encompass every
lock, piece of barbed wire, the thick walls, the never
ending supervision and segregation, the harsh solitude,
and minimalistic lifestyles, are deliberately designed
to not only incapacitate, but psychologically curb any
prisoner's personality traits that have been deemed by
society as undesirable or dangerous."
FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2007 ---- Blogging from Jail.
Today is my 12th day inside, and while I thought for an hour or two, during an epic interrogation session at the Public Prosecutor's
office at Kasumigaseki, that they might be on the verge of letting Dennis and me go, my hopes crumbled and I was returned to hell.
It was a rainy miserable day outside, low clouds obscuring the peaks of Roppongi Hills and all the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, as our prisoner bus
sped atop the elevated Tokyo highways. Back in lockup, the mood was similarly bleak. If they had a computer and a connection to the Internet and a
couple of girls, the place would be a lot more bearable.
Ever since my arrest near Bears Karaoke Box in Shimokitazawa, I have been planning my latest online venture, which I want to call Blogging from Jail.
Of course, there is no Internet connection here so I can't go online to see if there are indeed prison blogs out there. I would imagine that many
prisons would refuse to let inmates online, for various reasons -- after all, you can't make life too cushy for the criminals. But imagine if there were
prisoners out there blogging about daily life in jail -- now that would be kind of interesting. So, one of the first things I did after my release on
May 29 2007, was to search out these prison blogs. And I found them. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), a lot of them seem to be based in the Arabian
Middle East. And strangely, a lot of them seem to be written by political prisoners (although giving a political prisoner a forum on the Internet seems like an
exercise in futility from my point of view.)
Over in Egypt, you should definitely check out Alaa Blogging From His Prison at www.manalaa.net. Alaa has become a hero in many parts of the world for his stand against the
Egyptian Government. Writing just a few days before my own arrival in
prison, Alaa perfectly describes the typical bewilderment of every jail newbie: "Today it hit me, I am really in prison. I'm not sure how I feel. I thought I was OK but I took forever to wake up. The way fellow prisoners look at me tells me I do not feel well but I can't really feel it.
"I'd say prison is not like I expected, but I had no expectations. No images, not even fears, nothing. Guess it will take time. I expect to spend no less than a month here. I'm sure that's enough time to see all the ugly sides of prison, to be genuinely depressed.
"I'm in a good cell I suppose. Only one of us with me, Karim Reda, a young Ghad member with no experience. I would have preferred to be surrounded by friends, or to be with someone with experience like Kamal Khalil who would inspire confidence in me and make sense of everything, but I should not complain.
"The cell has 3asaker Geish ("Army Soldiers") written on it. They tell me it is for gara2em nafseya ("Psycho Crimes"). Seems everyone here are facing darb afda ila qatl (execution by beating). Their first time. 3 are only few years older than me, 2 in their early 30s, and two older guys. 2 been here since 2003, the rest less than a year. Their first kill (Only one claims to be innocent. Says he is a petty thief). All are sa3ayda (Upper Egyptians) living in Cairo, two are neighbors, living omrania, etc.
"I could go like this, give a list of observations about my cellmates and the prison itself, like the fact that there are hundreds of cats here, but that's all it is. A list of observations, nothing sinking in, no feelings or emotions, no real impressions. Anyways it's a good cell..."
Also in the Middle East, Iran is a rising blogging superpower with nearly a million bloggers, around 10% of whom are active, according to Mehdi Boutorabi, manager of the Persianblog free blog hosting service.
The blog search engine Technorati now lists Farsi, Iran's native language, among the top 10 languages used online. Scared of the rising influence of Iranian blogs, the Government has cracked down, leading to the
possibility that bloggers might one day find themselves in jail for their writing. According to the Guardian newspaper from Britain: "Want to start a blog in Iran? Then you'll have to register it with the government - which has recently begun to require that all bloggers register at samandehi.ir, a site established by the ministry of culture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.
All you need do is give your personal information, including your blog's username and password - otherwise it will be filtered and blocked so that nobody in Iran, and perhaps outside too, will be able to access it. This has led to an outcry among many Iranian bloggers who consider the net an independent and free forum for expression."
The Guardian concludes: "Blogging's influence in Iran is undeniable. Recently, when Seyed Reza Shokrollahi found that his friend Yaghoub Yadali, an Iranian writer, had been held illegally in jail for 40 days, he blogged it (at khabgard.com); he got 5,000 hits. The next day the link had been spread through the Iranian blogosphere and into newspapers' headlines. Finally, the government was forced to release him."
An Englishman in the heart of America: In Tuscon, Arizonia, there is a former British rave organizer now holed up with murderers, shemales and homies. He runs a blog called Jon's Jail Journal. The journal is subtitled "The Prison Blog of an Orwellian Unperson". Jon recently posted: "For the past five years my mind has been conditioned to try to make the most of each day and to deal with challenges as they arise. I became more forward focussed when this year began, and now I'm increasingly pondering what my life will be like when I'm free. Fixating on my hopes, I get manic joy sometimes. Regarding my worries, I tell myself that prison has given me a skill set with which I can overcome whatever obstacles present themselves.
"I'm chiefly concerned about not being a burden to my parents. Living in their 'garage', I expect I'll be a financial burden. I tell myself that I'm a natural money-maker ? but there's always nagging doubts that arise between my delusions of grandeur.
"Then there's the effects of my behaviour on my parents' mental health. My sister recently sent me some printouts of my Mum・ｽE・ｽE・ｽE・ｽfs blog, reading them made me feel ill ? and deservedly so ? as I was reminded how the negative effects of my misbehaviour continue to reverberate in Mum's life. Since my arrest, she has been on and off psych meds and is now in therapy. Recently she sent me a letter in which she disclosed she'd had some nightmares about me with drugged-up eyes. That really socked me in the gut. I wrote back saying that incarceration has knocked some common sense into me. It has matured me, and focussed my mind on a new life path that I won't throw away by behaving idiotically. I'm driven to do well for their sakes and my own..."
Jon says he wants to be a writer when he gets out and while inside, he has devoted all of his copious time to reading. That makes me feel envious because when I was in lockup in Japan, there were only three English books to read -- and I didn't even get around to reading one of them because my accomplice Dennis was busy with it! Jon concludes his most recent post with: "To those of you who want to know how it feels to be this close to the gate: I feel like a tiny tea-leaf that has been floating in a sink of water undisturbed for an inordinate length of time, and is now suddenly being sucked toward a drain leading to a brand-new existence ? an existence full of the kind of joy only available to those people who have lost and recovered their lives."
I was only in lockup for two weeks but I will never forget that overpowering rush of ecstasy which was triggered by my release. It was almost worth going to jail just to feel that rush. Almost!
SATURDAY, MAY 26, 2007 ---- Marijuana Laws in Japan.
One of the first things the police asked me, on my maiden day of questioning at Kitazawa Police Station on May 14, was "have you ever taken any
illegal drugs?" I replied no automatically, and the police didn't pursue the matter any further -- but had they bothered to do a simple blood test,
I would have been cactus. The truth of the matter is, Maniac High and I had been smoking hash fairly brazenly on the long night before our hard arrest, and I was
in fact stoned when they raced me by squad car, sirens blazing, to the imposing five-storey edifice of the police station. I was stoned and drunk and giddy as the
police led me, cuffed, through the long and bustling corridors, past a room where some kind of crowd control simulation was taking place -- I could hear women
screaming, cops shouting: "Stay back! stay back!" Bizarre stuff, especially when you are off your head, and I said to the policeman who was escorting me: "Omoshiroi!"
("It's interesting!") Taking me for a smartass, the policeman replied: "Omoshirokunai yo!" ("It's not interesting at all!") He misread me -- I wasn't being a smartass,
I was genuinely interested, and felt like a tourist observing my own arrest (or an undercover reporter.) I was, however, stoned, and if the cops had known that, my fate would
have been grim indeed. If Maniac High had still been carrying his lump of hash when we were nabbed, we both would have been in trouble. We had been smoking all night, in the toilets at a
Shimokitazawa billiards hall, out on the streets with a bunch of Nepali parasites. Miraculously, Maniac High had run out of hash by the time we were caught. Or maybe it simply wasn't our
destiny to get stung with drug possession charges in Japan.
If you are sprung, however, the penalties are quite severe, even for a little grass (as Paul McCartney famously discovered.) According to Taima:
"Few Japanese are
aware that the Cannabis
Control Act (taima
torishimari hou in Japanese), the first Japanese law ever to restrict
cultivation and possession of cannabis, was passed in 1948 when Japan was
not a sovereign country but still under American occupation, under the
supreme command of General Douglas MacArthur.
"At the time there wasn't any talk about a "marijuana problem" in Japan.
The law seems to have been passed only because a few years earlier a
similar law had been passed in the USA. Far more harmful and then already
widely abused amphetamines
remained legal because at the time they were legal in the USA too.
"The cannabis law as originally drafted by the occupation government
would have prohibited all hemp cultivation. Fortunately, the Japanese side
was able to convince the military government to adopt a permit system
instead, where license holders were able to grow and possess cannabis, so
that hemp cultivation which then employed thousands of farmers could
continue legally to this day.
|
"The occupation authorities issued several orders relating to
narcotics. [...] In 1947, the Cannabis Control Regulations were also
applied, according to the orders on cannabis issued by the
occupation authorities, and the Cannabis Control Law was put into
effect in 1948."
|
See also:
The
Cannabis Control Law (English version)
"After Japan regained its sovereignity the new hemp law was widely
ignored for about two decades as no one understood why it had been passed
at all.
"Then, in the late 1960s, when the USA was fighting a deeply unpopular
war in Vietnam, there was growing opposition to this war in Japan, which
was and still is a major base for American involvement in Asia. Students
and other members of the "counter culture" were found to be growing hemp
and the until then forgotten law was suddenly applied to prosecute them.
They couldn't be arrested for their political views, as they would have
been during the military dictatorship of the 1940s, but their use of a
forbidden plant made it possible to target them anyway.
See also:
An interview with Pon
[Yamada Kaya] 1995
International Drug
Conventions
"Thirty
years later Japan still pursues an intolerant policy on marijuana.
Remember Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney
and Nagano olympic gold medal winner Ross Rebagliati?
Anyone caught with marijuana in Japan is in big trouble. Marijuana use is
viewed almost as bad as heroin use is in many western countries. Anyone
caught with any amount of marijuana will be arrested. Suspects can be
detained for several weeks before they need to be charged with a crime.
Evidence obtained through illegal means (such as illegal searches) is
routinely admitted in court. Some 98% of all people charged with a crime
are convicted by Japanese courts.
"People go to jail for possessing less than one gram of hemp and they
face many social penalties too (loss of job, expulsion from schools,
etc.). Theoretically you can go to prison for five years for a single
joint. Larger quantities, cultivation or smuggling will lead to prison
sentences of up to seven years. Smugglers caught with a few hundred grams
to a few kg of cannabis are routinely sent to prison for 3-4 years. Discipline in Japanese prisons is extremely strict and
conditions are harsh.
See also:
Hemp prohibition in
Japan
"All foreigners caught with marijuana will be deported after having
served their sentence, with a life-time ban on returning into the country
(even someone as famous as Paul McCartney wasn't re-admitted until 11
years later). Japan has a general policy of refusing entry to all
foreigners with a criminal record on controlled substance violations.
MONDAY, MAY 28, 2007 ---- Garnet in Cannes.
WELL, TOMORROW IS THE DAY THEY DECIDE TO CHARGE, OR NOT TO CHARGE --
and I am feeling understandably agitated tonight. At least tomorrow I will know the score, for the next stage of this adventure at least. According to my lawyer,
if Maniac High and I are charged, we will have to wait at least six weeks before we can have our day in court. It is possible to pay bail, but the going rate for bail
seems to be about 1,500,000 Yen (nearly $15,000)! And all this for a couple of guys who ran out of a karaoke parlor without paying the bill! Talk about overkill. But that is the
state of police and the law, in Japan.
So, the mood is grim, but out of nowhere a strange sense of hope has arrived, a lightness -- and I am starting to think that they will actually release us tomorrow. They are not going to charge us. I know it, I can feel it. And when I do finally go home, it is going to feel oh so good!
Garnet and Quentin Taratino
at the Cannes Film Festival 2007 |
You might be wondering whatever happened to our partner in crime Garnet Mae, ever since Maniac High and I were thrown in the slammer? (Might I add that busting out of that karaoke parlor without paying the bill was
all his dumb idea, and he was the principal mover and shaker and agitator in this whole sordid affair!) Anyway, while Maniac High and I languish, down with the Jailhouse Blues, Garnet has been swanning
with the stars at the Cannes Film Festival, in the south of France, living the good life. You have to got to hand it to the guy -- after deftly sidestepping the Japanese police in Shimokitazawa, and escaping in a chase which apparently went through
people's backyards and over walls and shit all over the western suburbs of Tokyo, Garnet grabbed his gear from his brother's pad in Kichijoji, and dashed to Narita Airport. Must have made his plane in seconds flat, because he was on an early morning flight. While I cowered in handcuffs in the interrogation room at
Kitazawa Police Station, getting grilled, Garnet was no doubt sipping soft drinks on his jetliner somewhere high above the Mongolian steppes. On his way to London, where he was a fugitive for nearly two years, wanted by Interpol for the theft of
a pair of 35mm movie cameras from a Sydney film supplies firm. He seemed a bit anxious to be going back there because he was still technically a wanted man in the United Kingdom. I guess they must have dropped his name from the lists, because he got into London okay, and from there made his way to the festival in Cannes, which he attends every year. Naturally, he never has an invitation.
As Garnet himself wrote: "Late December back in 63. Was a very special time for me, when I remember what a night." One night on, one night off. Picture this Paul and I rock up to the Oceans' 13 premiere 10 min late. All the stars have already walked the red carpet. The police and security have their guards down. We side step three posts of security to walk the red carpet Oceans 2 style. At the top of the stairs the doors have closed. "But Sir" I say, "This guy is in the film!" Paul starts talking in Chinese. The guy looks surprised and opens the door. Another checkpoint same story and we end up in the official party about to take their seats. Let me just say that Ocean's 13 is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen in the whole world with the possible exception of The Da Vinci Code. I would have left mid film, but I wanted to see the stars up close and personal after the film and Harvey Weinstein was sitting right behind us and I was slowly working up enough courage to approach him. Exit premiere and enter after party, security is tight, but I jump a twelve foot fence, grab some passes and get the rest of the crew, which had grown to 7 in. No one gets left behind. The party is mediocre, when a film is shit nothing can save the party. But there are some hoochy mama's there and Paul and Adam are cutting the place up like a rusty saw (badly but with conviction) They end up talking to the most beautiful 6ft 1" girl I have ever seen (see pic "Garnet and chicks") and she makes some calls and gets us onto the Fashion TV boat party. Ye gods have smiled upon us. Suddenly we are surrounded by an entire boat of 6ft 1" beauties. The ride out there was magical, the actual party was so amazing I could only assume it was a front for aquiring illegal body parts and I would wake up minus a kidney or something. No stars, but plenty of starlets. Its dawn and we crash the remnants of a Timberland party at this huge club called the VIP room. Paul uses the worst pick up line, "I think you have something in your eye," with a girl he has just met and low and behold he's kissing this 18 y.o French beauty, who surfaces to say "That was spontaneous" and dashes off. Oooh la la. The sun rises and its been a night to remember."
WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2007 ---- Getting Out.
THE EMOTIONAL HIGH --
It has been said that Moving House is one of the most stressful things that can ever happen, but let us be honest -- it ain't nothing compared to going to prison. Even if prison is only a "holding cell", it is still pretty damn stressful. Strangely, the stress and emotional intensity of the experience seems to actually INCREASE after you are released. After 16 days in prison, going outside was as even a strange experience as being in prison was. Even now 24 hours later I feel high as a kite, as if I was on powerful drugs. Fortunately, I didn't lose my job and most people are really supportive of me. Man, what a strange experience. But I feel reborn, like a completely different person. Nonetheless, I would be glad if I never spent time in a jail again.
From my experience, the psychological effects of release from prison include:
A feeling that the Outside world is trivial and meaningless compared to the harsh reality of prison. That first afternoon on the outside, when I went home and began the transition to my normal life, I couldn't comprehend how trivial that normal life felt. I remember thinking: Prison is the real life, the real world, because in Prison the Law of the Jungle still prevails. Modern consumerist society on the other hand, is meaningless, because it is a world with no sense of danger and no real experience. The so called Real World is in fact an illusion filled with commodities. In the Real World you buy "experiences" (dinner at a Brazilian restaurant, a night at the Opera, a trip to Disneyland, etc) to cover over the fact that there are no true experiences in your life. Going to prison, living in a war zone, surviving a natural disaster, and so on, are so REAL that you don't even think of them as "experiences". You are too busy just trying to survive.
Ever since I got out yesterday I have been looking back on my life, and it feels
like everything that happened before I went to the
prison was fake. Being in prison, on the other hand, was
REAL. We might be living in a world of fakes, but I saw
and lived something real just then. And that is
something most other people will never
understand.
UPDATE: December 21, 2007: Who would have thought that Maniac High would collapse so suddenly， after only a couple of months of prime？ He was crushed by the weight of Nga... and the philosophy of the O.C.
As I have said the office of my new job (Telephone English) is packed
with queens, so the story of what follows, might fall in the category
of "attempted gay pickup". But nonetheless, whether it was an
attempted pick up or not, the experience has filled me with a strange
sense of destiny and spiritual power. Ever since then everything feels
a little unreal (and no, I am not stoned -- I haven't smoked for
weeks!) So this is what happened:
I went into Telephone English tonight, and then realized that I wasn't
rostered to work tonight, so I basically gone to work on the wrong day
(I am still a newbie so these kind of mistakes are inevitable.) I hung
around until start time talking to some of the guys there, and stocked
up on all the cheap drinks there (they have a vending machine selling
canned coffee and bottles of green tea for only 50 Yen -- they must be
the cheapest drinks in Tokyo!) I was on my way out when one of the
managers -- I can't tell if he is British or Australian, accent
indeterminate) came over to me and said: "Are you an Avatar?" (I had
never met him before although I think he is pretty high level in the
company.)
"What's an Avatar?" I asked.
"Are you God?" he said. With a completely straight face, and wearing a
business suit and all.
He continued: "I had a dream about you tonight. In the dream you were
an Avatar -- you were God. Then you left Telephone English, and
everyone was crying because of the love you brought to the place. I
don't normally have dreams like that. Anyway, I thought I had to tell
you about it. Do you think you are an Avatar?"
"I don't really know," I confessed.
"Well, when you know, talk to me," he said. "I'll be waiting for you."
And then he walked away.
Soon after I realised that this was the second stage of a cycle which
begun when I was stoned with my NZ buddy Maniac High last month. I had
the feeling then that I was being initiated into an Inner Circle of
Seekers who had crossed the threshold of Higher Consciousness, and
extracted Excaliber from the Stubborn Stone. There is going to be 8
stages of the Cycle -- I am just at the start of Stage 2!
Then again, maybe it was just a corny pick up attempt -- and that
place is certainly swarming with queens!
I went down to my buddy Dennis's house (the one I call Maniac High),
and he sold me a block of hash or something -- it is the first time I
have bought dope like that in so long, at least six years! Now I have
got a block of hash, but almost no money -- like $50 for the next
month! (And we are only at the start of the month now.) How can I do
it? But once getting stoned I realized I didn't need money, and I
started thinking that real affluence is not wasting money on fluff,
but experiencing the present moment. You know what they say: the
simple things in life are the most elegant.
So I got stoned at Den's house -- we had a game of darts and I was
leading all the way until the end, I was leading 10-6 at one point,
but then I fudged it on the bullseye section. I couldn't believe it
because I am always bad at those kinds of games -- suddenly I was good
today. I went pretty well in a few rounds of STREETFIGHTER too, and
then later on this old Japanese lady called me because she was wants
me to pay the backcosts of this religious newspaper my boss signed me
up for, and I answered the call and spoke the whole thing in Japanese,
it was no problem -- I have never done that before, that was bizarre.
Like I suddenly changed into a Japanese speaker for the afternoon (but
to be honest, I think I am starting to get decent skills in Japanese.
It just took time to adjust to the strange grammar, but I think I
understand it more intuitively now...)
So, it was a great day -- and I love marijuana stretches out time,
makes you appreciate all the idle moments in a day. Some things never
change, though: I lost all of my sense of direction after getting
stoned, got lost coming home, ended up in the middle of nowhere. And
now I have this block of hash, which looks like it could last a month
at least. I can already see now it is going to a month which changes
my view of life and especially my life in Japan!
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Read the complete Prison Japan chronicles:
:: 
PRISON JAPAN... PRISON PLANET.
Contact the author Rob Sullivan at coderot@gmail.com. All comments will be published at the bottom of this page.
Anticopyright August 2010.
For a Japanese language guide to Japanese lockup, click here.
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