Gaijin carded this evening

[Mukou-jin]

Hello everyone, this is my first post (heard that one before?) after being a voyeur for the past 6 months. I've experienced the ups and downs of being a gaijin for 7 years I had a first time experience tonight (not someone telling me that I suck at using chopsticks!). I was stopped by the police as I was riding my "granny bike" home and asked to present my gaijin card. I've read many posts about this and have checked out Dabito Aru.......baito's???? , sorry can't remember his name, site about this kind of situation. I must say that I was shocked that the police stopped me for simply riding my bike home and asked me to present "a passport or gaijin card". I've carried this bloody thing around with me for 7 years and have only used it to get a video rental card or cell phone, a gripe among many foreigners which I won't get into now, and have never once been asked to present it to authorities to determine......what? If I'm going to be thrown in detention if I had forgotten it tonight?

What if I HAD forgot it tonight? Would I be sitting in my cozy little apartment with a bottle of Captain Morgans Spiced Rum trying to figure out if this is an over reaction on my part to a harmless attempt to secure my neighbourhood from thieves and scoundrels, but apparently not BOSOZOKU, or a racist profiling? Perhaps a better description of the situation will help.

I was riding home along a main street in a small town in Shizuoka and made a turn down a very narrow side street/alley as a short cut home. Upon exiting the street/alley my way was blocked by 2 police officers who politely asked for my gaijin card or passport. I asked them why and whether or not I was a FUSHINSHA. They said no but I was in a dark place and just wanted to know who I was. I refused to show them my card unless they gave me a reason for stoping me. They looked back at a patrol car idling nearby and 2 senior police officers came out. I told them that I felt it was unreasonable for them to ask me to produce ID as there were many other people around me who weren't being asked for ID and asked why I was being singled out.The older officers took over and assured me that I'd done nothing wrong but there were gaijin in this area who came out at night without their passports and were over staying their visas. I said that they were racially profiling me (or something like that in Japanese) and they responded that they were stopping everyone who went by. Fine, I relented and showed them my card. The eldest officer glanced at it for about a second and said OK but I think I really frazzled him by asking so many questions and speaking Japanese to a reasonably understandable level. I hung around after to watch them stop others and they just drove off .

My question is am I being hyper-sensitive? This really rattled my cage, enough that I stopped being a voyeur and put myself in the line of fire for grammatical freaks and trolls. There are many people here with great experiences to share and I'd like to know how other people have dealt with this situation, if indeed they have.

Thanks

[Mukou-jin]

sorry, i put this in the wrong forum. Is there anyway I can change this to the general? I thought that this was where it was going....

[Gaijin de Moscu]

Interesting experience. I think you were right to ask all those questions, as you felt singled out (this obviously shows that you come from a country with developed public services). I would never behave so - I would just show my card and move on. But then again, I come from Russia where we do not joke around with police.

For perspective of what might happen, the only time I forgot my passport in Russia (my home country) in Moscow (the city where I own property) the police stopped me and put me to jail for 1 day. Till they 'confirmed my persona'. I look a bit Asian, mind you. Which should not be a rarety in Russia which is mostly Asian anyway.

So no, I would not behave like you. But it must have been good fun.

My interactions with Japanese police were luckily always friendly and good-natured. A few times I asked directions, and once my g/f and I asked to show us a restraurant opened in odd hours. The policeman took us to a fantastic Sashimi place (it was in Sapporo) where we got pissed and made many friends.

[Hal Sidewinder]

The whims of the police that I have dealt with in very different countries have never been pleasant, however well-intentioned. Here' s hoping that you never have another problem. Russian police were scary, well the guns and the no-nonsense approach to everything. A bit too much like the assholes I grew up with in Canada, except the Russians had better weapons.

end of transmission.

[Nanbanjin]

Interesting experience. I think you were right to ask all those questions, as you felt singled out (this obviously shows that you come from a country with developed public services). I would never behave so - I would just show my card and move on. But then again, I come from Russia where we do not joke around with police.

What's the point in having gaijin cards if you're not going to get carded once and a while?
When I was sixteen in Japan a Japanese guy and I were pulled over by a police officer when we were riding home late at night. I didn't get carded but the copper checked our bicycle regos. My friend did not seem to be surprised to be pulled over but he did seem a little terrified.

In defence of the coppers, they were probably told to card any gaijin they saw that night as part of their rostered duties and were probably asked to report how many they had checked as part of their performance for the night. Giving them a hard time just means that next time they have to card someone they will be more likely to be antagonistic about it.

I have played kendo for fifteen years and in the process have been hit over the head by police hundreds of times. Other than that my only interaction with them has been over large amounts of alcohol. For the most part I have found them to be great. One time I got so pissed that I threw up all over myself and they were kind enough to help me get cleaned up and put to bed (no, I wasn't abused). When I regained consciousness I was lying on a futon and all my clothes had been washed and neatly folded for me. One of the young officers came in and actually apologised for having forced me to drink to much. They didn't even mind that I threw up in the riot squad bus and forced them to travel for an hour and a half with the smell of my chunder and gave me a discount voucher for a soapland as a sign of good-will.

[Nanbanjin]

OMG!!

That says so much and in so many ways!!!

ROTFL!!

It was some place in Yoshiwara. 7000yen off the entry fee if I remember correctly. Must have been a classy establishment, but sadly I never got to find out. It was years ago now, but I still have the voucher somewhere.

[pirogue]

Goat, that is hilarious. Mukou-jin, thanks for inspiring goat to post his story.

Mukou-jin, I can understand your gut feeling on being carded for the first time, but I'd like to add my agreement to the replies you have so far. In short, no big deal, dude. Anywhere else, your chances of something much more unpleasant happening are greater. Police are police, and Japanese police are extensions of a hideous beaurocracy. You may have noticed a comparitive lack of crime in Japan... police need something to do, it's just an item on the list provided by beaurocrats. It is also a pretext to interact with you. Seriously, they are shy. I was once huddled around some senko hanabi with my little family unit in a park at night, looking more suspicious than not, and two policemen rode by on their bikes and would have continued had I not called out a friendly "kon ban wa." Then they turned around to make sure everything was okay and to remind us to clean up after ourselves (Man, what a boring story compared to goat's!). I have been bicycle-checked a couple of times, but it did not appear to be racial profiling. I have never been carded though, and very often do not have my card with me. I wonder what would happen and hope somebody who has been caught cardless will post. Going to jail would be a pain in the ___ if I happened to be busy, but at least I would have an excuse... and then I would get to have an interesting experience, too. I think I would be mad if they made me pay money, though.

Heck, next time you bump into them, you may as well say, in the Japanese tradition of apologizing with no prompting, "senjitsu sumimasen deshita." Do that and it will more than likely be "officer friendly" to you from that point on.

[Nanbanjin]

To answer your questions if you had not had your card with you you could have been fined up to 200,000 yen.

第 十八条の二　次の各号の一に該当する者は、二十万円以 下の罰金に処する。
..................................　
　 四 　第十三条第一項の規定に違反して登録証明書を携帯し なかつた者（特別永住者を除�*。）

Item 18-2: People as described in the following will be fined up to JPY200,000
....................
4. People who do not carry their alien registration card with them and who thus contravene rule 13-1.
************************************************


However, by refusing to produce your card you could have gotten yourself into much worse trouble.

第 十八条　次の各号の一に該当する者は、一年以下の懲役 若し�*は禁錮又は二十万円以下の罰金に処する。
...........................
七 　第十三条第二項の規定に違反して登録証明書の提示を 拒んだ者

Item 18: People as described in the following will be penalised with up to one year of imprisonment with hard labour, one year of imprisonment without labour, or up to JPY200,000 in fines.
.............................
7. Persons who refuse to produce their Alien Registration Card and thus contravene rule 13-2.

************************************************** *********

Please feel free to correct my poor translations.
I got the info from the ministry of justice website
http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/gaitouho.html

Looking at the laws though, my advice would be to just smile and hand your card over.
I mean, do you refuse to have your bags checked when you want to catch a plane? Do you say the word "bomb" or mention drugs in an airport?
It really pisses me off that I am not allowed to carry my Leatherman on the plane, and what the hell is anybody really likely to do with a nail-file? Still, I don't bother arguing with the security guards because like it or not there's not much I, or they, can do about it.

If you aren't happy with the Gaikokujin-tourokuhou then hassling the police is not a good way to do something about it. Remember that the police are part of the executive arm of government, and as such have no power to change laws. Giving them grief is not likely to achieve anything constructive.

If you want to make a change you need to partition the legislature because that's where the laws get made.

[Nanbanjin]

Seems the answer is yes.
The following is rule 13-2, which was referenced in by previous post.

２ 　外国人は、入国審査官、入国警備官（入管法に定める 入国警備官をいう。）、警察官、海上保安官その他法務 省令で定める国又は地方公共団体の職員がその職務の執 行に当たり登録証明書の提示を求めた場合には、これを 提示しなければならない。

"2. Aliens must present their registration card to immigration inspectors, immigration officers (called "immigration officers" under immigration law), police officers, marine security officers, and other officials as defined under other ordinances by the Ministry of Justice if those officers request that the card be presented in the execution of their duties."

A clumsy translation, but I think the law is fairly clear.

[Hal Sidewinder]

It was some place in Yoshiwara. 7000yen off the entry fee if I remember correctly. Must have been a classy establishment, but sadly I never got to find out. It was years ago now, but I still have the voucher somewhere.

Club Med. That's where we live. Now I know why people get into Kendo.

[scotty7]

Japan is not the only place in the world where ID is obligatory and it's coming to a place near you soon : ) if it isn't already so, even in Blighty. Everyone is supposed to carry photo ID with them in France, and if you are a foreigner, that means a passport for visitors or your "carte de séjour" if you work/study here... I was fined by the police for having my passport on me once as opposed to my residents card. Very petty. The police will often stop people with darker skins here and ask for their papers, and I have also been stopped on a couple of occasions, besides the fine incident, tho my skin is typically rosbif as the French would say. Here they have the right to stop you and ask you anytime. You are also supposed to have some cash on you to prove you are not a vagrant. I think you'll find that carrying some form of ID is obligatory in many countries, you're probably just not used to looking obviously foreign. : )

[KG3000]

Since I've been here I've had 2 encounters with the police.

The first was during the world cup. I was on my way to work, standing in line at a bus stop and reading a Harry Potter book when a cop comes up and asks me for my card and my passport. I didn't have my passport but the card I gave to him. He checked up on me, then gave me back my card, no problems. When I asked him why he checked, he said it was because they were on the lookout for soccer hooligans, I guess there was a game being played close by. This kinda ticked me off, I don't even like soccer.

The second I was in Tokyo visiting a friend and we were getting ready for a night out on the town. Before we could head out though, he had a job interview. Ok, no big deal, I just waited outside for a bit. While I was waiting I heard a cat howling nearby. I figured I'd go check just to make sure it was hurt. I was looking around a bit saw the cat, sure enough it had a limp, but seemed okay, so I go and sit backdown.

Five minutes later the cops come walking down the street, waving their flashlights around. They see me, and start questioning me and asking for my card and passport. Again I give them the card, but these guys start asking me what I was doing in Tokyo. I tell them about my friend, and they ask me if I was walking around looking for something, so I tell them about the cat. It turns out someone in one of the apartments or houses called the cops cause they figured someone was scoping out the area to steal something. This one I found more amusing, but I wish the cops would have went to whoever phoned them, and slapped him/her around for wasting their time.

KG

[Outlaw]

As far as I can remember, I've never been stopped by the police in Japan fortunately. However in case you are stopped, there are a few things you can do legally to help protect yourself.

1. Never refuse to show your foreigners card to a policeman. You can however delay showing it to them until they have proven their identity by showing you their ID. You don't know that they are real police until they do, do you?

2. Just in case, make a note of their name, ID number and any other important information so you can get in contact with them or refer to them if needed.

For more information, look at Arubito Debito's article on his home page:
<http://www.debito.org/activistspage.html#checkpoints>

It has everything you need there.

[Nanbanjin]

1. Never refuse to show your foreigners card to a policeman. You can however delay showing it to them until they have proven their identity by showing you their ID. You don't know that they are real police until they do, do you?

I was surprised to find that you can get a year hard labour for refusing to produce your gaijin card. That means making kendo gear and stuff. I don't want want shoddy foriegn labour making my cheap kendo uniforms so please, just smile and hand the card over.

[Code Rot]

Mukou-jin --

I think your response to this situation was entirely correct and valid, and I salute you in your courage in standing up for your rights in Japan. Until recently, I used to think that when a cop asked you for your Gaijin Card, you had to show it, no question about it. Then I started reading the Arudou Debito site (http://www.debito.org/), and I learnt about Japanese law, and I realised that these arbitrary Gaijin Card stops by the police are actually ILLEGAL UNDER JAPANESE LAW. So, Mukuo-jin, you were the one acting in line with the Japanese law in this particular case. It is ironic that you, as a gaijin, knew more about Japanese law than these police seemed to know. And if your case ever went to court, it would have ended up with the police being in trouble for harassing you, for no good reason.You would have been exonerated. So, I salute your courage -- and I hope that the next time this kind of **** happens to me, I will be courageous enough to challenge the police, and make sure they do not step on my legitimate rights. And there must be no better feeling in the world, than to challenge the police, and win -- just because you understood the law better than them! To be honest, from my past experience, the worst thing about being stopped by the police was that other people could see -- old ladies stopping to point and scowl at me as I was being frisked on the street corner, that sort of thing. I had done nothing wrong, but I was being ritually humiliated in front of my neighbourhood -- and that is a human rights violation, minor though it may seem. It gives everyone the idea that gaijin are criminals at heart, when in truth, the average Japanese person is more likely to commit a crime than the average gaijin in Japan.

I started carrying around a copy of the law when it comes to gaijin card inspections (written in Japanese and English) around with me at all times, in case I get carded. My strategy, if I ever get carded, will be this:

1 -- Ask why they want to see my card. They have to have a good reason -- for example they are investigating a crime and I happen to look like one of the suspects. If they don't have a good reason I will resist showing my card for as long as possible -- in other words, as long as my nerve lasts! If they are going to break the law by racially stereotyping me, then I am going to waste their time and test their tempers! It is a zero-sum game.

2 -- I will then ask them to show me their identification before I show them their's. As Arudou Debito has pointed out, this is permissible under Japanese law. You are entitled to ask JPolice to show you their badges -- you never know, they might not be real police. It might seem like a small point, but it completely reverses the power dynamics of the situation. Instead of being the small gaijin being ordered around by police, you can actually order them around! You move on to an equal footing with them. And if they refuse, then they are breaking the law -- and you can call them on that fact if it ever goes to court. So step two is very important. Always ask police to show you their ID, if they stop you.

3 -- At the end of this hopefully drawn out process, I will show my Gaijin Card which I always carry with me. My point to the police is this -- I am legal and law-abiding, but if you are going to embarrass me and stop me in the street, I am going to waste a significant amount of your time in legalistic and philosophical arguments. And if enough gaijin do this, police will give up harrassing them, and might actually start chasing the real criminals -- invariably Japanese people.

[Nanbanjin]

Mukou-jin --


1 -- Ask why they want to see my card. They have to have a good reason -- for example they are investigating a crime and I happen to look like one of the suspects. If they don't have a good reason I will resist showing my card for as long as possible -- in other words, as long as my nerve lasts! If they are going to break the law by racially stereotyping me, then I am going to waste their time and test their tempers! It is a zero-sum game.

www.debito.org states that if the officer says "You are a foreigner and you are bound by the Gaikokujin Touroku Hou to show me your Gaijin Card." then that is enough reason for you to have to show your card.

2 -- I will then ask them to show me their identification before I show them their's. As Arudou Debito has pointed out, this is permissible under Japanese law.

This is common sense. Try asking politely. The police officer will be likely to understand that you do not want to be the victim of fraud.

3 -- At the end of this hopefully drawn out process, I will show my Gaijin Card which I always carry with me. My point to the police is this -- I am legal and law-abiding, but if you are going to embarrass me and stop me in the street, I am going to waste a significant amount of your time in legalistic and philosophical arguments. And if enough gaijin do this, police will give up harrassing them, and might actually start chasing the real criminals -- invariably Japanese people.

Sure, if you want to waste your time and the officers time to prove nothing and give the officer an excuse for being a prick the next time he has to gaijin card me then go right ahead. Giving police officers a hard time will not stop them from gaijin carding people. If they started the proceding by giving you a card with their name, id number and a quote from the Gaijin Tohroku Hoh you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
You are advocating antagonism and reverse harassement, not the execution of your legal rights, which is what debito.org claims to stand for.

[Mukou-jin]

Thanks to all of you who took the time to share your opinions on this matter. Double thanks to Nanbanjin for the quotes. I re-read the information on Debito's website and realize that while the law is quite contradictory, can't stop someone for doing nothing but gaijin must show their gaijin cards when asked by the specific authorities, in the end it's cough it up or spend some time in jail. Personally I don't want to see the inside of a Japanese jail, nor do I want to antagonize the cops. I realize I'm a guest here and I'll play by the rules but I'd at least like to know why I'm being stopped and asked to present my ID. The cops telling me that it's not because I'm a gaijin just wasn't true in my particular situation. The senior cop said that there were many gaijin around without proper visas but then said that it had nothing to do with my race. I should add that I was never confrontational, from a Canadian perspective at least, yet I was definitely being inquisitive. Apparently it's the law so I'll follow it and always show my card, but I'll also let them know that I don't think it's a good law and ask them to go bug the bosozoku who are riding around my neighbourhood when they're done with me.

[Nanbanjin]

Thanks to all of you who took the time to share your opinions on this matter. Double thanks to Nanbanjin for the quotes.

Your post provided some interesting material for cogtation. Unfortunately in the current political environment of being terrified about everyting I doubt gaijin cards will be done away with in the foreseeable future. As scotty7 noted we are more likely to see worldwide proliferation of id cards for non-citizens.