Tag: Japan

Little Rebellion: Japan’s love of Mamachari

2011-12-02 at 08-20-08
ママチャリ(mama-chari)
1. A utility bike for getting around, about as disposable as an umbrella.
2. A traffic hazard in the hands of the unskilled or reckless.
3. A vehicle for little rebellion.

My experience with mamachari goes back to 1999 during my first visit to Japan. I was living in Osaka, a city famous for its bad drivers and traffic accidents. On the morning after I arrived I was walking down a sidewalk when suddenly an old lady burst into the road from an alley without warning, slowing or even looking back. Putting her life in her hands she had pulled into the road on her bicycle and swerved into traffic without so much as a glance to see if there were cars or pedestrians, trusting that her luck would last and she would get to the store another day. At first I thought this was unusual coming from a relatively orderly bike-friendly city in Canada but alas, I saw he same type of situation repeated daily. Walking down the sidewalk hearing the constant ding-ding of a bike bell demanding I get out of the way. I could not accept that I should always have to wait for bikes to pass, it just didn’t seem right!

After asking around, it turned out that from what I could find out it wasn’t right. Riding on the sidewalk in disregard of pedestrians is as illegal here as it is in my hometown in Canada. Feeling rebellious, I took to wearing overhead headphones when walking so I could politely ignore the bells that I couldn’t hear but the paranoia that something was coming up behind me wouldn’t go away. Being a relatively fast walker I am entirely unaccustomed to people coming up behind me on a regular basis and rarely have had to watch my back. After being hit by from behind by several bikes riding on the sidewalk and even one scooter head on coming off the road my feeling of injustice solidified.

Living here in Tokyo has not made me feel any better about bikes, and if anything people’s bike manners here are worse. They ride on the sidewalk, dodge from the road to the sidewalk to the road randomly, wobble, ring bells and park wherever they like. Places there are bike lanes specifically to allow both cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist are so crowded with illegally parked bikes that people ride on the pedestrian side, ringing their bells and expecting pedestrians to jump out of the way. For me, being a cyclist who rides on the road and generally follows traffic laws, it can be fairly hard to take. A woman riding a bike with 3 kids on it in traffic while texting on her phone, only the youngest baby wearing an oversized helmet loose on the back of its head. And again the next day. It is a wonder more people don’t die.

But wait, they do! Recently in Japan there has been a push to actually enforce the traffic code in regards to bikes which, as it turns out, does not allow any but small children and the very elderly to ride on the sidewalk. It seems that Japan has a much higher number of bicycle related deaths than other countries that have clearly enforced traffic laws and bikes are commonly ridden. In fact, the number of bike related deaths has been increasing at a good pace. So what has been the result of the push by the police? Now there are a bunch of wobbly people on the road and no one dares use a bell when they ride on the sidewalk. It seems more like a band-aid than a cure. I don’t think there will be a significant reduction in deaths until helmets laws and rider education/punishment are enacted.

As for the little rebellion: People will park bikes anywhere they like, even beside or on “No Bike Parking” signs. You can see several hundred bikes in a row along a fence that says “No Bikes” or in a bicycle riding lane. I am kind of torn between seeing it as petty rebellion or simply bad manners. When I have seen conflicts over it it has always been quit amusing, with people coming up with excuses like “but it would take over 10 minutes to walk to the station”, “I am only going to leave it here for a few minutes” or my personal favorite “but I have parked here for years and never had a problem!” when you can clearly see the no bike parking sign has been there for several years as well.

To put things in a bit of perspective there are some really bad cyclists in my home town in Canada too. My favorite example from Canada is a “conversation” I witnessed between a cyclist on the sidewalk late on a Saturday night and a police officer:

Police officer: “Please get off the bike”
Cyclist (a bit drunk): “But why, I am just trying to get home”
Police officer: “Are you aware that it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk?”
Cyclist (thinking as fast as possible): “But officer, I thought it would be worse to ride on the road without lights, and someone stole my helmet. Besides, I’ve had a few drinks and thought it would be safer to ride home on the sidewalk since drinking and driving on the road is illegal.”
Police officer: “So your excuse for riding on the sidewalk is that you have no lights, no helmet and are drunk so it would be the lesser of evils?”

….and on it went. It was good Saturday night entertainment.

My point is that there are reckless, inconsiderate people on bikes everywhere, but nowhere in a developed country have I seen it as common as here in Japan. The strange thing is that bike laws are generally for the sake of reducing deaths and serious injury. Why fight them, even as a little rebellion?

I would argue that most people here in Japan use their bikes in entirely illegal ways: they will ride a bike illegally on the sidewalk where they illegally park it, rinse and repeat. Obviously people’s love of mamachari overrides their love of lawfulness: rebellion!

Japan’s “Progress” in the Fight Against Smoking

2011-07-30 at 10-14-33With the 50% government stake in Japan Tobacco it is not really surprising that the fight against cigarettes is not being handled very efficiently at a national level, but allowing products to clearly condition children towards cigarettes these days is a bit much. I took this photo two days ago so these are still around. In many city wards in Tokyo as well as other parts of Japan smoking has been banned in public places, so I was a little bit surprised to see this about one block from an amusement park, a major movie theatre and a Toys-R-Us in a ward that has banned smoking. I know that similar products have been sold in North America but I have not seen them for a very long time, and the caption which roughly reads “Really?! If you blow it smokes like a real cigarette!” written in a manner that any elementary school kid can read is a bit much these days.

Japan: No Longer a Haven for Wrongful Child Abduction?

Well, it has finally happened. Japan has decided to move towards signing onto the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and follow the 80 or so other countries that have decided to try to stop wrongful child abduction. The motion still has to pass through parliament, but that could come by the end of this year. This has been an issue for a long time and hundreds of children have been wrongfully abducted to Japan primarily by Japanese mothers. As Japan has a history of staying out of custody matters internally this situation has not been surprising but has caused serious emotional pain for many parents left behind without their children or any access to them for the rest of their lives.

Part of the official reason for Japan’s reluctance to sign onto the convention has been that such an agreement would prevent Japanese women who are married to foreigners from escaping abusive relationships but the convention does require the child’s safety and interests to be considered when and if custody is arranged:

The Convention seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of their wrongful removal or retention across international borders, which can be a tragedy for all concerned. The Convention further establishes procedures to ensure the prompt return of children to the State of their habitual residence when wrongfully removed or retained, and secures protection for rights of access of both parents to their children. Under the Convention, a State is not bound to order the return of a child if it is established that there is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.

-Quoted from http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20101022-71.html

To date there have been several hundred abductions of children by Japanese nationals that appear to fall under the convention. Custody cases get difficult enough when both parents are from the same nation and have equal de facto and de jure rights to child custody. If one has the ability to simply cross a border and is able to ignore the other parents custody rights and the laws of the countries of the child’s primary citizenship how tempted is that parent going to be to do so? Shouldn’t some legal attempt be possible by the parent who loses their child to show wrongful abduction and have some custody or visitation rights? If there has been no abuse then why should a Japanese parent have the special privilege of arbitrarily deciding that the child in question should never see its other natural parent? In cases where the Japanese spouse is abusive to the children, should there be no way for the foreign parent to protect their child/children? These are all hard questions, and are made harder still by children’s involvement in the equation. Even as Japan signs onto this pact it will still be a long road for those who have already wrongfully lost children, and an even longer road for those who have had children in Japan with Japanese spouses and been cut off unjustly. For those unlucky parents, as their children were born in Japan and lived there at the time of separation, there may never be a solution or peace.

Related articles by the press:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12358440

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13465814

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110520/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_child_custody_9

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/world/asia/21japan.html

1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction:

http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=conventions.text&cid=24

This Year’s Hanami Season

Every year I have been in Japan I have gone out to take some photos of the cherry blossoms in the spring and do a bit of hanami (flower watching). This year the blossoms weren’t quite as nice as usual. Whether it is due to the weather or to the somber mood I am not sure, but they were just not as appealing as usual. That being said, I still got out and shot some nice photos this season. Enjoy!

Shooting Winter Photos in Shinjuku Gyoen

Over the weekend, I went to one of my favorite spots in Tokyo to wander and shoot photos. Shinjuku Gyoen (新宿御苑) is one of the nicer parks in Tokyo and is a good place to see the seasons as well as grab interesting snaps. Famous for its cherry blossoms in the spring and turning leaves in the fall it can get very busy at those times making it virtually impossible to take any wide shots without including at least a few other photographers. Luckily, the park is relatively barren and cold during the winter and is generally underappreciated.

This time I went out with my friend Nori near closing time at the park and we got to wander and shoot a bit. It was quite interesting in the park with the sun dropping creating long shadows and the dry grass to take on a very deep yellow. I would recommend it to anyone who is in Tokyo this winter and wants to get away from the crowds and just shoot.