Where’s my Monkey? Part 2: Do Japanese Steal?

Walter:  As you saw in Genevieve’s post, we recently had a perfectly delightful day at the beach right in Tokyo.  When we found the beach, I pushed Kenji’s stroller right to the edge of sand and unloaded him and the beach toys.  Thinking to myself “Japanese people don’t steal,” I took the cameras but left just about everything else including some shopping bags in the stroller.  After playing on the beach for a couple of hours, we set out along the boardwalk towards a scaled-down version of our very own Statue of Liberty.  We were having trouble with the camera, so we both fumbled with it while Kenji slowly wandered off among the tourists and locals.  I looked up to see him some 50 meters away on the boardwalk screaming with delight at his new found liberty.  Upon returning with Kenji under my arm, Genevieve asks “where’s the monkey?” We frantically search the whole stroller.  Nothing.  It can’t be.  It was Genevieve’s monkey from childhood and has sentimental value not to mention Kenji’s new strong attachment. 

We rush back towards the beach to the place where the stroller was parked.  I keep thinking “Japanese don’t steal,” Genevieve says in a panic: “it’s thirty years old” and, reading my mind “I know Japanese don’t steal, but there are tourists!”  It hits me like a oversized lump of wasabi: there are tourists.  We saw them get out of a bus in front of the raman shop where we ate before heading to the sand.  I ask her three times if the monkey left the restaurant.  She assures me that she saw it – it was in the stroller when we left the restaurant for sure.  I start to convince myself that I had put the monkey up on top of the stroller squeezing him in between the folds of the canopy just before parking it at the edge of the beach. Some tourist boy snatched it while we played near the water.  It happened on my watch and what this required now was extraordinary effort.  I begin to search the beach eying every stroller, child, and family looking for a somewhat plump tourist boy.

Do Japanese steal?  Sure, sometimes they steal and sometimes worse things, but for a country with so many people living in such a small area, the crime rate is amazingly low.  I saw a recent statistic that says the violent crime rate in Japan is 7 times less than in the US. 

Consider bicycles.  They’re everywhere in Tokyo, but I would say less than half are actually locked to something.  Sure, most of those unlocked are “mama-charris” (I think of “mama-chariot” to remember this name) – old style bikes with shopping baskets in front and a child seat on the back. But even some decent mountain bikes are not locked or locked with a flimsily thin cable (See the photo of bikes parked at a park near our home).

Is it because there are always people milling about in Tokyo everywhere as witnesses? Maybe.  More likely it is the Japanese sense of morality.  I’m not qualified to do this subject justice, but it goes something like this:  for most Japanese people, they feel a strong connection with their group.  Their group could be their family, their work, their school, their neighborhood, their apartment building community and even their country.  So, when if they steal or break the law, they are creating embarrassment and shame for their group.  Nothing could be worse.  They are inextricably connected to their group and feel pressure to live up to their standards and expectations.  Shame carries with it a very heavy weight.  In the old days, unacceptable behavior resulted in people being socially ostracized.  People would commit suicide over shame.  These are very strong feelings.

Now take cigarette and beer vending machines on the streets.  That’s right, it’s like a soda machine, but it dispenses cans of beer.  The beer machines seem to be less common than when I first visited Japan in the early 90s, but cigarette machines are all over the place just inviting every teenager to pop in her 200Yen and light up, right?  I doubt it.  This risk of shame – for her family, her school, herself – makes this purchase very unlikely. 

  What would you and your friends have done if there was a beer machine in your neighborhood where you could buy a 12oz can for less than $2.00?  It’s a simplification, but the need to belong to the group keeps people on their best behavior.  For a more in-depth and entertaining treatment of this topic, I recommend “Confucius Lives Next Door” by T.R. Reed.

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I walk the whole length of the beach and back. Nothing. Genevieve anxiously waits to retrace our steps.  There is a small cop with a flat blue cap and a serious red armband standing at the end of the driveway that leaves the beach.  His uniform is full of purpose; a purpose completely lost on us.  Genevieve talks to him in Japanese while I wait with Kenji who at this point is totally oblivious to our tragic loss.  I suspect she’s asking the cop if he’s seen the plump tourist boy with an ice cream cone in one hand and a Curious George monkey under his other armpit.  The picture of this little thief was becoming more and more clear to me. She returns even more frustrated and reports: “I don’t think he understands what I’m talking about.”

We retrace our steps along the sidewalk and things feel pretty desperate now.  If George dropped here, it kind of falls into the grey area between theft and finders-keepers.  What would someone do with him and how would he ever make it back to us?  I walk calmly and consider the probability that we will ever see the monkey again.  Genevieve:  “I don’t think you understand how important that monkey is to both Kenji and me!”  Me: “I understand.”  Genevieve, giving up:  “This has totally ruined this trip.” As I push the stroller along the side walk I wonder to myself…does she mean this day trip or the whole trip to Japan?

When we reach the restaurant, Genevieve goes inside to ask about the monkey while I stay outside.  I examine the windows near the booth that we sat and spot the little cloth primate squeezed between the glass and some Plexiglas partition near the booth.  The waiter has to ask a customer to move so they can rescue George.  He’s soon reunited with Kenji.

Out on the sidewalk, Genevieve asks: “so…what do you wanna to do now?”  We go to the mall, “Decks,” where there are no inventory control tags on the merchandise and you don’t pass through theft detectors as you exit the stores.  We don’t steal a thing.