Take it anyway you want, either creep as a noun or creep as a verb. Perhaps using both senses simultaneously would most apt. In any case the spectre of security again raised its ugly head, inserting itself into the private lives of ordinary people everywhere. This week thanks to my special visa status I was perhaps the only foreigners on my flight into Japan who was not photographed and fingerprinted. The immigration waiting line for foreigners was longer than I’d ever seen. The contrast with the Japanese national side, a half acre of unoccupied carpet, had never been so stark. The television screen detailing the procedure featured a seemingly delighted blonde western woman. She had her photo taken in a manner reminiscent of a graduation ceremony. She had her fingerprints taken like she was expecting to have her fortune read. I trust the blonde lady was well paid for her part in that fiction.
Ostensibly the reason for fingerprinting was to prevent terrorism. This completely overlooked the fact that the only contemporary terrorist attacks on Japanese soil were committed by Japanese nationals. Interestingly foreigners arriving at some Japanese hotels have been asked to present their foreigner identity, or gaijin, cards. The fact that there is no legal basis for such a request does not stop it happening.
The stench of zenophobia wafting from the hallowed halls of officialdom contrasts starkly with the reception foreigners recieve from young Japanese people. I sometimes wonder how it is that a country whose citizens disavow war and aggression should have such a government. On the other hand when you consider that the same group of people have run Japan since the mid-50s it makes more sense. In Japan politicians don’t come to power they inherit it, it is passed down from mandarin to protege much like lands and titles in monarchies, and as in monarchies, the ordinary citizen, or should that be subject, has little say in the matter.
Interestingly the next day I read a column by Naomi Klein in which she wrote that investments in alternative energy solutions to growing environmental problems were playing second fiddle to investments in security systems. Apparently there is more money to be made from protecting people from the consequences of their consumption than in seeking solutions to those problems. In the contest between make a better world or ley it rot and buy a gun – the gun is winning. The walls are going up, in Japan, in the EU and in the US.
Interesting that the market should give signals of business as usual and preparing for doomsday at the same time isn’t it?
