Threat from Ordinary Man

Hokkaido Prefectural Police arrested a man of sixty-four years old with suspect of coercive disturbance of ordinary operation in a college in Hokkaido. He threatened Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo city to fire a tutor who was a former journalist of Asahi Shimbun. He admitted the suspicion. The case revealed how ordinary Japanese were easy to be lured by nationalistic propaganda. In other words, this infectious nation will abruptly turn into aggressive with a cheap cause of protecting the nation.

The suspect, Tsutomu Kamimura, was living in Tsubame, Niigata, hundreds of miles away from the college. He called the college from his house in mid-September, expressing his frustration of hiring former Asahi journalist and indicated to blast the college. The college suffered from the telephone call in spending time for searching the bomb in campus, although resulted in finding nothing. To the college, there arrived some other threatening letters or faxes. Two of them were indicating setting explosives to hurt the students, if the college would not fire the tutor.

The tutor delivered a comment that he was comfortable with the arrest. “I will wait and see until investigation finds the person who sent the letters and faxes. This kind of disrespectful activities would never be tolerated, anyway,” told the tutor.

According to the neighbors, Kamimura was a smart and generous man. He was living with his wife, loving vegetable plantation in a small cooperative garden. His job was supervising nursery for elder people, introduced by a public job center for retired people. Some neighbors knew that Kamimura liked stock investing, vesting him an image of a clever businessman. In short, the suspect was a typical ordinary retiree in Japanese society.

It is still unclear why he was so furious about former Asahi journalist. Asahi apologized about its decades-old report on comfort woman, which drew intensive criticism from wide range of people, from the right to left. Taking this as a good opportunity to target that leftist newspaper, they ran a campaign that Asahi was an enemy of Japan. The campaign falsely depicted comfort woman issue as if no such thing had happened at all, which was a significant embarrassment on history. Even if Asahi had spread some inappropriate stories, the fact that the Japanese had involved in comfort woman issue cannot be denied.

While it is easy for ordinary people to know that unshakable truth, the Japanese are not trained for coordinating their own idea with evidence. Bureaucrats have been fooling the people by occupying information. It is possible that Kamimura, who were easily affected by ultra right movement, is a victim of undemocratic lack of important information.