CNN: Narita Customs spike HK passenger’s bag with cannabis

mytest

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Hi Blog.  I think this is perhaps the most ridiculous story on Japan I’ve heard this decade.

According to CNN, Narita Customs put a bag of marijuana in some visiting NJ’s bag to test their sniffer dogs.  Then they lose track of it!

Now just imagine if that innocent NJ was later caught with it.  We’re talking Nick Baker (finally sent back to the UK after 6 years in Japanese jail) and other NJ judicial hostages (who can never leave custody or be granted bail until they go through years of slow Japanese jurisprudence, even when judged innocent).

Of course, we make sure we cause meiwaku to none of our tribe (or to ourselves–think serious chances of a lawsuit from a native)–we use the Gaijin as Guinea Pig.  Yokoso Japan!  

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Customs slip cannabis into passenger’s bag

CNN May 26, 2008 — Updated 1641 GMT (0041 HKT)

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/26/tokyo.cannabis/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Courtesy of Chad Edwards

(CNN) — A passenger who landed at Tokyo’s Narita airport over the weekend has ended up with a surprise souvenir courtesy of customs officials — a package of cannabis.

art.jpg Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita 

Sniffer dogs failed to find the cannabis after it had been slipped into a passenger’s bag.

A customs official hid the package in a suitcase belonging to a passenger arriving from Hong Kong as part of an exercise for sniffer dogs on Sunday, Reuters.com reported.

However, staff then lost track of the drugs and suitcase during the exercise, a spokeswoman for Tokyo customs said.

Customs regulations specify that a training suitcase be used for such exercises, but the official had used passengers’ suitcases for similar purposes in the past, domestic media reported.

Tokyo customs has asked anyone who finds the package to return it. 

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You dumb shits!  Arudou Debito in Sapporo

67 comments on “CNN: Narita Customs spike HK passenger’s bag with cannabis

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  • I always use TSA-approved locks on my luggage, but this story (combined with the Nick Baker saga), makes me want to use my own locks–and let them rip open the bag. At least there would be something to question.

    Now watch somebody *try* to return the package back to the police…

    Reply
  • Man, where can we go with this? [Astonished foreign traveler to immigration inspector] “No, really…someone put that in my luggage! Actually, it was you!”

    *Tokyo customs has asked anyone who finds the package to return it*
    “Yeah, sure…I’ll get right back to you on that. First, though, anyone seen the chips? I got the munchies in a big way.”

    Reply
  • FEEDBACK FROM CYBERSPACE:

    Yeah, I’m still quite shocked about it. Actually, an NJ being caught
    with it in Japan is actually in a favorable situation — the media
    buzz here would make it easier to clear your name. What if, however,
    the passenger who had this stuff slipped into his/her bag continued on
    to, say, Singapore? Or Hong Kong? Or somewhere else where drug
    smuggling laws are extremely severe? The Japanese customs officials
    could easily ruin someone’s entire life with this kind of stunt. I
    hope everyone involved is fired immediately; this is just absolutely
    unacceptable.

    Reply
  • FEEDBACK FROM CYBERSPACE

    I would like to imagine that on realising their mistake, Japanese
    authorities would have alerted authorities in other countries as to
    the specifics of the package that they lost, i.e. the exact weight,
    the type of container, the strain of leaf etc. as well as the exact
    time and flight it arrived on so that if it does turn up in somebody’s
    luggage they can identify it quickly and confirm that the passenger
    was indeed on that flight, and thus be free of the jail time and
    potential death sentence that would otherwise await them. That would
    assume a level of common sense though that is not consistent with the
    current circumstances.

    Reply
  • MORE FEEDBACK…

    Heh, I just saw this story on Japan Today and came in here to post about it.

    If I was a more cynical man, I would suggest that the customs agent
    picked a suitcase with a foreign name on it, so that there was less
    chance of the victim being a well-connected Japanese society type, or
    someone making a stink in the newspapers, etc.

    But that’s if I was a cynical man. Realistically, I figure that
    “incompetence” is probably as good an explanation as any. Which is
    really just as sad.

    Planning on going on vacation in the next couple weeks, and don’t want
    to trust my luggage to the buffoons at Narita,

    Reply
  • Unsuspecting passenger returns cannabis after sniffer dog test botched at Narita
    Japan Today Tuesday 27th May, 07:37 AM JST
    http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/sniffer-dog-fails-cannabis-test-at-narita-drug-goes-missing

    TOKYO –A visitor to Japan got a surprise when he checked into his hotel in Tokyo on Sunday night and discovered a small metal box containing cannabis worth 1 million yen tucked in a side compartment of his suitcase. The man called police who returned the cannabis to Narita airport where customs officials admitted Monday that a test involving a sniffer dog had gone wrong.

    According to customs authorities, an officer was supposed to pass through customs with the cannabis to see if the sniffer dog would detect it. Instead, the officer hid the metal box, containing 142 grams of the drug, in the black suitcase he had selected at random on the baggage carousel for passengers arriving on Cathay Pacific Flight 520 from Hong Kong at 3:30 Sunday afternoon. But he lost sight of who picked up the suitcase.

    “The dog couldn’t find it and the officer also forgot which bag he put it in,” a customs office spokeswoman said, adding they had put out an alert to the National Police Agency in case anyone handed it in.

    The 38-year-old customs officer was quoted by the spokeswoman as saying: “I knew that using passengers’ bags is prohibited, but I did it because I wanted to improve the sniffer dog’s ability.” He was reprimanded by the head of customs at Narita.
    ENDS

    Reply
  • Maybe they could put up a ‘Wanted’ poster of the suitcase at all the trains stations and Kobans in Japan.

    Reply
  • “Realistically, I figure that “incompetence” is probably as good an explanation as any.”

    Indeed. “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” It is questionable, despite Debito’s usual tinfoil hat commentary, if the official in question knew whether the bag belonged to a Japanese or a non-Japanese – as evidenced by the fact the officer forgot which bag he put the hash in. If he knew it was a foreigner’s bag, you’d think he’d remember which one it was… In the event, it was a non-Japanese, as they discovered when the hashish was found.

    Much better coverage of this story has been on yahoo.co.jp, mainichi, etc. Why quote the news using barely adequate translations from CNN and Japantoday?

    –If you know of better articles, send us them or the links.

    In any case, why did Customs choose a Cathay Pacific flight (as opposed to a Japanese carrier)? Give these stupid authorities the benefit of the doubt if you want, but an argument can be made either way, and I’m happy to make it one way if only to get somebody to make a convincing argument to the opposite. Your just dismissing it as tinfoil-hat-ism (or a memory lapse) is not terribly convincing.

    Especially given the risk of potential arrest and even harsh penalty towards an innocent person if something went wrong–which it did. Your inconsolable need to portray the messenger uncharitably gets in the way of putting the blame and the criticism squarely where it belongs–on Customs.

    Reply
  • This is so outrageous that if I didn’t live in-country I’d think it had to be a joke. The agent was ‘reprimanded’? “Baaad boy! Don’t do it again. Now go about your business as usual.” Could the ‘highly’ trained customs official not think far enough ahead to have even placed that package in an official suitcase and then have some unknown agent make the walk through with the bag? How did this get picked up to be reported? If I were the unsuspecting traveler, I’d be trying to figure out how and who to sue over this.

    Reply
  • FEEDBACK FROM CYBERSPACE:

    To be honest, I can’t imagine that a person doing that
    would even consider the possibility that the luggage
    might end up getting lost. Otherwise they wouldn’t do
    it. It could be, however, that based on the assumption
    that a drug smuggler would be foreign, he chose a
    foreign suitcase to “habituate” the dog to this!

    It’s really incredible, because it can’t be that much
    trouble to “plant” a whole suitcase that doesn’t
    belong to any passenger.

    Reply
  • MORE FEEDBACK:

    Really tough to divine motivations. Practically speaking though: they
    should probably put a GPS device in the target item, so they don’t
    lose it so easily.

    Reply
  • –If you know of better articles, send us them or the links.

    Ask and ye shall receive:
    http://mainichi.jp/select/jiken/news/20080526k0000e040065000c.html
    大麻樹脂:訓練で紛失、9時間後に発見 成田税関支署

     成田国際空港を管轄する東京税関成田税関支署(田中万平支署長)は26日、麻薬探知犬の訓練で一般旅客のスーツケースに隠した本物の大麻樹脂124グラムを紛失したと発表した。支署が旅客に問い合わせたところ、発表から約9時間後に東京都内のホテルに滞在していた男性のスーツケースであることが分かり、大麻樹脂もそのままの状態で発見された。

     支署によると、大麻樹脂は25日午後3時31分に香港から到着したキャセイパシフィック航空520便の旅客の黒色ソフトスーツケースのサイドポケットに、金属容器に入れて隠した。所有者は控えておらず、訓練があることも知らせていなかった。

     同支署の男性職員(38)ら4人が空港内の手荷物ターンテーブルで麻薬探知犬2頭に探させたが、発見できなかった。便の旅客は283人だった。

     税関の内部規定では、訓練用の手荷物などは通常、税関側が用意し、一般旅客の荷物を使うことは禁止している。職員は「探知犬の能力を向上させるため、過去にも複数回、同様の方法で訓練した」と話しているという。

     田中支署長は「このような事態を招いたことは遺憾。事実関係を調査して関係職員を指導し、厳正に対処したい」と話した。【黒川将光】
    (I wouldn’t bother with the Mainichi’s English version, it differs in several important ways from the Japanese original. Bad translation work).

    http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/crime/080526/crm0805261300019-n1.htm
    探知犬の訓練中に大麻紛失 成田空港で東京税関職員
    2008.5.26 12:58
    このニュースのトピックス:不祥事
    麻薬探知犬の訓練中に大麻樹脂を紛失し、謝罪する東京税関の田中万平成田税関支署長(右から2人目)ら=26日正午ごろ、成田空港
     成田空港で25日、東京税関職員が麻薬探知犬の訓練中、香港からの到着客のスーツケースに大麻樹脂約120グラム入りの金属製容器を勝手に忍び込ませ、スーツケースごと紛失していたことが26日、分かった。税関側でスーツケースを捜している。
     同税関成田税関支署によると、旅客手荷物の中に無断で麻薬類を入れることは内部規定で禁止されている。
     現場は、成田空港第2ターミナルの到着客の手荷物検査場。担当職員が25日午後3時半すぎ、香港からの到着客のソフトスーツケースのポケットに大麻樹脂を隠し、目を離したすきにスーツケースがなくなっていた。所有者が気付かず持って行った可能性が高いという。

    http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080526-00000056-jij-soci
    税関職員、大麻樹脂を紛失=探知犬訓練で到着客荷物に−規則は禁止・成田空港
    5月26日14時1分配信 時事通信

     東京税関成田支署は26日、同税関の男性職員(38)が麻薬探知犬の訓練で使用していた大麻樹脂124グラムを紛失したと発表した。職員は、成田に到着した利用客の荷物に大麻樹脂を勝手に入れ、訓練に利用していた。
     同支署によると、男性職員は25日午後3時45分ごろ、成田空港第2旅客ターミナルの機内預託手荷物荷さばき場で麻薬探知犬の訓練をしていた。
     到着した搭乗客の黒色ソフトスーツケースのサイドポケットに、訓練用の大麻樹脂を差し込んだところ、所在が分からなくなった。樹脂は金属製の容器に入れられ、新聞紙を巻いた状態という。
     内部の規則では、訓練用のスーツケースを使用することになっており、客の荷物を使用した訓練は禁止されている。 

    I trust you’ll be able to work your way through these. Take your time – wouldn’t want you going off half-cocked again like you did over the Tsukiji sign just because your reading comprehension skills aren’t up to snuff.

    In any case, why did Customs choose a Cathay Pacific flight (as opposed to a Japanese carrier)?
    I’m not at all convinced they “chose” ANY flight. They were conducting screening and training on a Monday afternoon. While we will probably never know why they chose that particular batch of luggage to do training on, knowing government employees they probably chose that time slot as the luggage load would not be so large that it would make training difficult.

    Your inconsolable need to portray the messenger uncharitably gets in the way of putting the blame and the criticism squarely where it belongs–on Customs.
    Wrong as usual. I place the blame squarely on the customs official who made the boneheaded decision to use a passenger’s luggage as a training aid, instead of the bags he had been given expressly for that purpose. This could have turned out much worse than it did. Thankfully the immediate situation (hash gone missing) has been resolved. And the individual responsible has been identified and is being dealt with by his superiors.

    What I see here is your inconsolable need to portray every incident as some sort of anti-foreigner plot, and twist, mangle and spin every story to support that seriously flawed hypothesis, no matter what leaps of (il)logic are required to do so. In most cases, Hanlon’s (or Heinlein’s) Law will suffice to explain everything.

    Reply
  • “Much better coverage of this story has been on yahoo.co.jp, mainichi, etc. Why quote the news using barely adequate translations from CNN and Japantoday?”

    I’m to blame for that. Debito posted the story within minutes after I contacted him (9:23 a.m.). I didn’t see the story anywhere else at the time. CNN may not be The Economist (jabbing at AD, here), but it works for me…

    Reply
  • Mark in Yayoi says:

    Put a GPS in the “target item”? They shouldn’t even be tampering with the luggage of private individuals to being with! That’s a crime if another person were to do it.

    Regarding incompetence vs, malice, not sniffing out the target may be attributable to incompetence, but the malice is that they’re putting ordinary innocent people into massive amounts of danger just so that they can have some free guinea pigs for training their dogs.

    Baggage usually has a label on it indicating the owner. It’s inconceivable that the customs official didn’t have some idea that their free training dummy was non-Japanese.

    Reply
  • It might not be an anti-foreigner plot. It might be worse than that.

    Beliefs can be so deep-rooted that the person who holds them often doesn’t even know they exist, even though they have a huge influence on perception. Maybe the guy chose a foreigners bag simply because to him it was inconceivable to choose a Japanese person’s bag…

    As for being dealt with by his superiors… This demands nothing less than dismissal, and would probably be the case in another country. And the owner of the suitcase would probably sue, and win.

    Reply
  • FEEDBACK FROM CYBERSPACE:

    I can certainly understand your need to try and puzzle out why in the
    world customs would do such a thing and to point out how it could have
    been done better.

    However, I’d like to point out that the issue of motivations is
    insignificant to the issue of the horrendous abuse of rights that took
    place. I’ve been thinking about specifically what rights might have
    been abused, but unfortunately I’m not legally minded enough to know,
    but this has to be a right infringement of some sort. The person-in-
    question’s private possessions are not playthings for customs
    officials to play with, especially when the game can have such serious
    consequences for the owner of the luggage. Regardless of issues of
    ineptness, the attitude here is despicable. I’m truly speechless.

    So regardless of whatever the motivations were, or how well the
    procedure was or wasn’t carried out, first and foremost it should be
    recognized that this is extraordinary abusive behavior.

    What’s interesting in a tragic sort of way is the catch 22 the person
    who got the drugs is in. Should he turn himself in? What if the
    marijuana he has is not the marijuana they are looking for? Boy would
    that be bad? What would you do?

    Reply
  • Philip Adamek says:

    Is there a missing story here?

    I would like to know exactly who grew that weed, and under what conditions? Is there a little greenhouse space set aside for such tests? And who is guarding that stash of reefer? How can we be sure that no security official or underling is not smoking a little on the side? And I would really like to know: Is Japanese government-grown grass good? Does it have a distinct flavor? Should it be called “wa-weed”? Will we ever get an answer to any of these questions?

    Reply
  • The article only states that the customs officials asked for it to be returned if found? If this happened in the US, the article would always state that officials are conducting an investigation into what happened or are taking measures to prevent it from happeneing or even that they will discontinue this type of exercise.

    Apparantly not in Japan. the only statement from customs is “please return it”.

    Reply
  • Debito,

    It turns out that it was indeed a foreigner’s bag used.

    The article below says that the bag belonged to a foreigner who was staying in a hotel in Tokyo. All 124 grams were recovered in their original packing. The foreigner was quoted as saying he did not notice the package at all. They apparently tracked him down through a declarations form.

    As LB quoted the Mainichi article in post #13, the trainer who did this said that he has done it several times before, even though he was aware that using private baggage for such training was forbidden by internal Customs policies. Although I doubt he will get more than a stern talking-to, I can’t imagine anything other than being fired as an appropriate punishment for this.

    We are all well aware of both the free hand that police have in Japan, with foreigners in particular, and of the steep penalties involved with the possession of drugs, by foreigners in particular. Had that foreigner been stopped by a police on the streets and his bag searched, or if the marijuana were found in some other way, he would have had to explain himself from the bad side of a holding cell and 18 hour interrogations. “It’s not mine” and “I’ve never seen that before” are famous last words for those accused of drug possesion/import.

    http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080527-00000002-yom-soci

    探知犬訓練で紛失の大麻樹脂発見
    5月27日1時5分配信 読売新聞

     東京税関は26日夜、成田空港での麻薬探知犬の訓練中に紛失した大麻樹脂が見つかったと発表した。

     同税関によると、同税関は25日午後に紛失した後、携行品の申告書から、大麻樹脂を入れたスーツケースの行方を探索。26日夜になって、都内のホテルに宿泊している外国人客が持ち主とわかった。大麻樹脂は容器に入ったまま、約124グラムすべて回収された。

     この外国人客は「容器には全く気付かなかった」と話していたという。

    Reply
  • That is so unprofessional, inconsiderate, ridiculously stupid and exactly what I’ve come to expect of Japanese authorities. Aside from illegally going into the luggage, if we’re to believe this was NOT done out of malice, then the ‘highly trained’ officer obviously grossly incompetent and didn’t consider the ramifications of his actions!
    What really makes me angry is that there’s nothing we can do to stop these kind of idiotic situations and all the stress and hassle that goes with them … it really begs the question – how many people have they caught with ‘drugs’ that was simply an exercise like this that got out of the hands of the ‘highly trained’ Customs officer who was too proud or ignorant to admit he’d set them up?!?

    Reply
  • Tornadoes28: The Mainichi article above says that customs is investigating what happened and is taking measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

    Customs also launched a search, contacting all 283 passengers (many if not most of them Japanese – whoops, another hole in the “they’re targeting foreigners” argument) trying to locate the bag. So they didn’t just do an all-call “please give it back” and hope for the best. They were actively trying to locate the bag.

    Try getting all the facts before going off on Japan.

    Reply
  • “Baggage usually has a label on it indicating the owner. It’s inconceivable that the customs official didn’t have some idea that their free training dummy was non-Japanese.”

    And most people I know use labels with a flap that covers the name so that thieves don’t get your name and address from just a casual glance at the bag. Even the free tags airlines have at ticket counters fold over to conceal that info.

    So what you and Debito seem to be saying is that a Customs official deliberately chose a foreign airline flight, then checked over the bags to be sure to get a foreigner’s, hid the hash in that bag and then lost it.

    After which he reported the incident, prompting Customs to contact every passenger on that flight, including all the Japanese and therefore inconveniencing everyone, blowing their cover for this racist, anti-foreigner scheme and making themselves look like complete morons. Oh wait, contacting everyone was part of the cover! They’re concealing their racist plot by hiding it behind one idiot Customs officer, publicly announcing what they’ve done, conducting an investigation etc. etc. etc.

    And if it had been a JAL flight and a foreigner ended up with the stuff in his bag, well that would be proof that they carefully selected the bag so as to not inconvenience Japanese and were anti-foreigner….

    Of course, if it had ended up being a Japanese off the Cathay Pacific flight with the hash in their bag you all would still find a way to twist it into an anti-foreigner incident as they were clearly targeting foreigners by going after a foreign airline, but screwed up and got a Japanese instead….

    Jeezus H. freakin’ Keerist on a stick – do you guys hear yourselves? How do you get through the day with this level of paranoia? Do you freeze on the street everytime a Japanese approaches you, for fear they are part of some insidious trap to “make an example” of “the foreign devil”?

    Reply
  • EXAMPLE OF OVERSEAS REPORTAGE AS THE STORY GETS OUT

    Airport bungle gives passenger $10,000 in drugs
    THE AGE (Australia) May 27, 2008
    http://www.theage.com.au/news/news/airport-slips-10000-drugs-in-bag/2008/05/27/1211653984557.html

    An unsuspecting passenger who flew to Tokyo is carrying one million yen’s worth of cannabis compliments of customs authorities after a bungled exercise involving sniffer dogs.

    An officer at Narita International Airport yesterday stuffed 142 grams of the drug into the side pocket of a randomly-selected black suitcase coming off an overseas flight so that the animal could detect it.

    “The dog couldn’t find it and the officer also forgot which bag he put it in,” a customs office spokeswoman said.

    “If by some chance passengers find it in their suitcase, we’re asking them to return it.”

    The 38-year-old officer was quoted by the spokeswoman as saying: “I knew that using passengers’ bags (for sniffer dog training) is prohibited, but I did it because I wanted to improve the sniffer dog’s ability.”

    He was reprimanded by the head of customs at Narita airport.

    “This case was extremely regrettable. I would like to deeply apologise,” said the airport’s customs chief Manpei Tanaka.

    The cannabis, which has a street value of one million yen ($A10,100), was in a metal box wrapped with newspapers.

    Japan strictly prohibits both hard and soft drugs, with people imprisoned for possession of even small amounts of cannabis.

    AFP

    Reply
  • the scariest thing is they say they have done this a number of times before-thats the scary thing..
    why isnt the guy sueing them ?

    Reply
  • Inspection Manual for the dog:

    i) check the luggage to see if has tags and stickers from the departed airport
    ii) Read the name on the tag to see that belong to a Non Japanese.
    iii) Sniff sniff sniff….

    That explains why they could not use dummy luggage

    Reply
  • LB, calm down

    I agree that some of the comments have more than a whiff of paranoia about them. But I don’t think most people are saying it’s an “anti-foreigner scheme”. Most people seem to understand that the customs officer seemingly worked alone in this case.

    But the lack of a “scheme” doesn’t mean that events like this have no effect on foreign residents. It’s a fact that there is a certain amount of xenophobia in Japan, and when people in positions of power do things like this it brings up serious questions of accountability and the protection of the rights of foreign residents.

    We now have foreign residents being fingerprinted at airports and the records to be held by the police, a move which sends a message that all foreign residents are potential criminals. That database of fingerprints will probably be checked whenever a crime takes place, which means that foreigners might well be under suspicion by default. Now we find that a customs officer, apparantely unfettered by lack of controls, slipped a packaqe of dope into a passengers suitcase. The fact that this was not an “anti-foreigner scheme” notwithstanding, it still doesn’t sound like a good mix.

    Being wary of this type of situation could be called paranoia. It could also be called being aware that when you take an unaccountable bureacracy holding foreign residents fingerprints, a lack of legal safeguards for police detainees, and customs officers who knowingly break regulations to do their own bit of drug planting, you could easily end up with something not too tasty.

    Reply
  • It reminds me a story about a Frenchman who went to Canada, and found explosives in his bag. Same case as this one. It’s the dog’s fault… Explosive story.

    Reply
  • “We now have foreign residents being fingerprinted at airports and the records to be held by the police, a move which sends a message that all foreign residents are potential criminals.”

    No. It sends the message that Japanese immigration is watching out for potential criminals, and using fingerprints in that process. More than a few other countries do the same thing. Some even fingerprint their own citizens – I was fingerprinted in the US military, and the US government doubtless still has those prints in the database, meaning when a crime is committed in the US, and fingerprints are checked against the national database, my prints are being “checked”, more than 20 years after I gave them.

    I was fingerprinted when I first arrived in Japan, and have no doubts that those prints are still in a database somewhere, and have probably been “checked” since I have been here when other prints have been run against the police database.

    Am I worried about this? No. Concerned? No. I have no reason to be. No more than any other non-criminal in the database who is also getting their fingerprints checked (I assume, but have not confirmed, that as in most countries police officers and military personnel are fingerprinted as part of the recruiting/training process). I also have little doubt that even after I naturalize my prints will still be in a database somewhere. So what?

    “But the lack of a “scheme” doesn’t mean that events like this have no effect on foreign residents.”
    Agreed. But it also has an effect on Japanese. This singularly stupid breach of procedure by one individual who apparently thought dogs could either read or else had very good memories and therefore he needed to use an unfamiliar bag to train them, affected everyone on that flight and on all previous flights where the same moron did the same thing. Which is how a responsible person would report it or discuss it – not starting off with “Of course, we make sure we cause meiwaku to none of our tribe–we use the Gaijin as Guinea Pig all over again. Yokoso Japan!” or saying “It’s inconceivable (I do not think this word means what you think it does….) that the customs official didn’t have some idea that their free training dummy was non-Japanese.” Such hyperbole adds nothing to the discussion. In fact, it drags it down several notches.

    Reply
  • “No. It sends the message that Japanese immigration is watching out for potential criminals, and using fingerprints in that process. More than a few other countries do the same thing. Some even fingerprint their own citizens.”

    But Japan doesn’t fingerprint its own citizens. It fingerprints only foreign residents, even those married to a Japanese. It could watch out for criminals at its borders without fingerprinting foreign residents at all. Foreign residents have been legally granted a visa to live here, and any criminal backgound checks can be carried out when the visa is issued. That should be enough.

    No,the arguement for fingerprinting foreign residents doesn’t stand up. It can only mean that the government thinks foreign residents are more likely to commit crime. If the government was really worried about crime, it could fingerprint everyone, give everyone an ID card and have done with it.

    “Am I worried about this? No. Concerned? No. I have no reason to be. No more than any other non-criminal in the database who is also getting their fingerprints checked.”

    That’s fine if you’re not worried. And if Japan had an open and accountable legal system neither would most people be worried. But the fact is that Japan doesn’t have an open and accountable legal system. It has a legal system which enables the police to use psychological (and sometimes physical) torture to extract false confessions which are then often all that is needed to secure a conviction, even for an offence which can be punishable by death.

    Some people may be happy to have their fingerprints on a database controlled by that kind of legal system. Everyone has their own comfort level. The fact remains that since all foreign residents will have their fingerprints in a police database there is a much higher chance of a foreign resident being suspected of a crime if the prints were found at the scene. The foreign resident could have been there innocently. A Japanese could have committed the crime, but the prints won’t be on the database. What will the police do? Search for more evidence to see whether anyone else was involved except the person whose prints who were found at the scene?

    That’s why the drug planting fiasco is so appalling. There can be no other reason for fingerprinting foreign residents except that the Japanese government thinks they are more likely to commit crime, and the government has stated so. Foreign residents are already suspects, and protesting your innocence when you are already a suspect is much harder to do.

    Some people like Japan so much they are happy to put up with those inconveniences and loss of privacy. I’m not so attached to the place, and will probably leave in the next year or two. I don’t see why I should pay tax to a government which I don’t feel gives me basic respect of privacy.

    Everyone has their own agenda. Views on fingerprinting foreign residents probably reflect how much a particular person feels at home in the country and how much they will defend it regardless. Those who want to stay will stay. Those who don’t will go. It’s probably best to leave it at that.

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  • Grant Mahood says:

    Some light commentary on the story:

    “High Times in Customs Office Reach New Low”
    High times in the Customs Office reached a new low today when the Customs Office spokeswoman BLAMED THE DOG when describing how 124 grams of cannabis, planted in a passenger’s bag by a customs officer, got out of the airport:”The dog couldn’t find it and the officer also forgot which bag he put it in.”

    Hold on just a minute. To hear her tell it, there was just one line with all the passengers filing past the dog, and the contraband was right under its nose! Woof-woof to that!

    No one knows exactly what happened. There is no way to prove that the dog was lying down on the job because Customs lost track of the bag and have no way of knowing how far away from the drug, one meter, 100 meters, or more the dog was.

    Shame on the spokeswoman and those who put her up to it. They all deserve to be in the doghouse over this, cheek by jowl with that bag-spiking boob.

    Reply
  • dumpmatsumotorevisited says:

    “How do you get through the day with this level of paranoia? Do you freeze on the street everytime a Japanese approaches you, for fear they are part of some insidious trap to “make an example” of “the foreign devil”?”
    Yes, this used to be pretty much the case; I used to freeze and automatically be on my guard, then things slowly started to get better. Unfortunately, going into reverse gear seems to be the way it is now. How long have you been here, LB? I think not nowhere near as long as I have. History is definitely starting to repeat itself. You may not be concerned, due to lack of experience, but I am. Uncle-Tomming will get you nowhere, LB.

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  • LB, I WAS a frequent visitor of Japan; in fact, every year, I traveled to Japan to purchase goods not available in my home country. With the implementation of fingerprinting on foreigners only, I stopped going to Japan. Why travel to Japan and let them humiliate me?

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  • i wonder why the idiot that put the dope in the suitcase wasnt fired, oops i forgot he was japanese thats why! its the we virsus the rest of the GAIJINS mentality, and i bet all the ojisans at the customs had a good laugh about it, then they gave the customs guy a slap on the wrist because he said the good old GOMENSAI trick, if it was me or you we would of already been fired or may have even faced criminal charges for such stupidity
    one final thought, why didnt he put it in a domestic bound suitcase? oops again

    Reply
  • “But Japan doesn’t fingerprint its own citizens.”

    Shodoman:

    This is another classic case of “insert your country here”

    ” But (insert your country here) doesn’t fingerprint its own citizens”

    “The foreign resident could have been there innocently. A Japanese could have committed the crime, but the prints won’t be on the database. What will the police do? Search for more evidence to see whether anyone else was involved except the person whose prints who were found at the scene?”

    Again, seriously.

    Did you happen to read up on the recent murder of a 23 yr old woman in Koto-ku condominium? What did the police do?

    Agree with LB.

    How do you get through the day with this level of paranoia?

    Reply
  • “But the fact is that Japan doesn’t have an open and accountable legal system. It has a legal system which enables the police to use psychological (and sometimes physical) torture to extract false confessions”
    Apparently you have missed the court cases where confessions extracted under duress have been thrown out for precisely that reason. Or the case down in Kyushu regarding alleged vote-rigging where the defendants were not only acquitted (most of them never confessed) but the police got a public slap-down in the decision for their heavy-handed attempts to extract confessions. Do the police get out of line? Yes. Is this “enabled” or “endorsed” legally? No. And if you think police coercion is a uniquely Japanese phenomenon than I suggest you haven’t been paying attention to the news from your own country, wherever that happens to be. I don’t even try to keep up, but have seen more than a few stories of abuse or alleged abuse by cops from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, etc. Does that make it right? Of course not. But you give people a badge and power and some will abuse that.

    “Uncle-Tomming will get you nowhere, LB.”
    Thank you for that insightful comment. It looks like I must have offended a Debitard. Not that it matters, but I have been here 14 years and counting, during which time Japan (officially and just in general level of people’s awareness) has steadily improved in its treatment of foreign residents. And you?

    STP: I was thinking the exact same thing when watching the news about the murder case this morning…

    –For what it’s worth, published articles (not written by me) regarding the problems (in specific) with the Japanese judicial system can be found from here:
    http://www.debito.org/whattodoif.html#arrested
    I guess the logic runs that if some of these things happen elsewhere too, or if occasionally these things are actually dealt with, we shouldn’t draw attention to or complain about things that happen in future… After all, things will get better and awareness will be raised by itself, as it has done over the past fourteen years…

    Reply
  • “I guess the logic runs that if some of these things happen elsewhere too, or if occasionally these things are actually dealt with, we shouldn’t draw attention to or complain about things that happen in future”

    Damn, and you complain about my lack of reading comprehension skills. Where in the hell did I say we shouldn’t talk about these things? Show me that, would you?

    When and if the police overstep their bounds that needs to be brought out. And incidents are being brought out. Not just by activists, there have been an increasing number of reports in the mainstream Japanese media about the issue, which clearly shows an increase in awareness of the problem. That is level 1. Level 2 is an increase in judicial opposition to coerced confessions, and we have been seeing that too. Without increased or at minimum continued public discourse there is not likely to be increased or continued legal opposition to heavy-handed methods.

    Shodoman’s (and others’) claim that Japan’s legal system is not accountable and enables torture is, demonstrably, wrong.

    Reply
  • “i wonder why the idiot that put the dope in the suitcase wasnt fired, oops i forgot he was japanese thats why! ”

    Japanese don’t fire their own kind???? Now that’s news to me.

    “one final thought, why didnt he put it in a domestic bound suitcase? oops again”

    Domestic bound meaning domestic flights? They do have Haneda for that.
    What’s the point of smuggling drugs from Sapporo to Tokyo when you have Kuroneko Yamato??

    Reply
  • Kakui Kujira says:

    There was 142 grams and the value is quoted at a million yen. By my calculations, that’s 7,042.25 yen per gram. Isn’t this nearly double the actual value? Err, from what I’ve heard from friends of friends of friends of course…

    –Of course…! But we’re talking a serious public works project for procuring pot here.

    Reply
  • Hello LB.

    “Shodoman’s (and others’) claim that Japan’s legal system is not accountable and enables torture is, demonstrably, wrong.”

    Could you demonstrate it for us please?

    –Quite. The UN Committee against Torture does not agree, either.
    UN body attacks Japan’s justice system
    By David Turner in Tokyo
    Financial Times, May 23 2007
    http://www.debito.org/?p=415

    Reply
  • What I found on posts and news is everyone is talking about officer who put this stuff to foreigner`s bag and a dog couldn`t find it. (let`s blame a dog). What I cannot see is question and answer:
    1. What would happen if dog did find drugs?
    2. What would happen to innocent foreigner?
    3. would he be excused and told about planned “training” or would be taken to custody and end up in jail as a drug smuggler giving press news?

    What do you think? Forget about officer who still keep his job, forget about this case, just think about consequences for that foreigner. It may be you next target.
    If you travel with Japanese spouse, be sure to put her name on name tag.

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  • “But Japan doesn’t fingerprint its own citizens. It fingerprints only foreign residents, even those married to a Japanese.”

    Much as it is regrettable that this discussion has conflated the weed incident with the foreign fingerprinting issue, LB was talking about his being fingerprinted by the military of his own nation. I’m not sure that the JSDF or the Japanese police force don’t fingerprint their recruits, and if they do, then “Japan” DOES fingerprint its own citizens, at least in the sense that LB was talking about.

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  • Andrew Smallacombe says:

    I talked to a JSDF officer a few years back and he confirmed that they are fingerprinted – the sole exception to the rule that only suspected criminals and foreign nationals are fingerprinted.

    I am a bit curious as to how customs were able to track down the victim of their stupidity by using a declaration form. Did they contact everyone on that flight? Did they just go through the list of foreign nationals? What the media haven’t told us is more important than what they have.

    I would have liked to seen a personal apology for the incident – the idiot who hit the stuff in the passenger’s bag doing dogeza to the poor passenger.
    As it stands, all I can say is “Off with his head!”

    Reply
  • LB are you being deliberately obtuse? The very reason this site exists and contains a large number of people with a similar mindset to how Japanese treats its foreign guests should be sufficient to assert the assumption that Japan rarely plays nice when it comes to non-Japanese. I notice you quoted one or two cases where wrongly accused came to justice, and you are using that as a basis for an argument. Do you not think it is ridiculous to do so? Consider for a moment how many cases go unmissed, how much corruption there is in Japan, how the Japanese mindset will instantly shift all blame and guilt and tuck it away where it will be found years later, if it is even found at all.
    Are you honestly under the impression that Japan is at all easy for foreigners to live without hassle and discrimination? Why do you bother even to post here?

    I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that its extremely likely our Japanese guy here wasn’t thinking straight because foreigners are not people. In all my years of living in Japan I have seen ‘stupid’ actions comitted by Japanese towards foreigners because they do not think we are the same as Japanese people. I imagine the person who planted it was unable to comprehend he was doing anything wrong because it was “only gaijin” – and not in a malicious way but simply in an oblivious one.

    “…Japan’s legal system is not accountable and enables torture is, demonstrably, wrong.”

    Yeah, I think you are just trolling for attention now…

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  • Knowing Japan all I can say:

    A low ranking custom officer/officers in a highly hierarchic society such as Japan can not conduct series of such actions without the knowledge and approval of the supervisors.

    It would be unimaginable for a custom officer to repeatedly sneak in the closed luggage area without the knowledge and the permission of the luggage security area chief who orders all the employees and supervisors of that area to give green light to custom officers entering and “inspecting” suitcases.

    This has been going on for long time, was not a the first case and decision making on carrying out such actions in such a highly hierarchic society can only come from bosses and only after having reached the obligatory consensus with all the others who were involved, in order to escape responsibility and the consequences with the help of the pyramid type structure of their hierarchic system.

    The box containing the cannabis was neither sealed nor labeled by officials with a “for test by Narita custom authorities” tag that clearly indicates that they were aware of the gravity of the situation that they are committing a criminal offense and wanted to leave no evidences of their action behind them, also in order to give themselves a chance to act freely when the passenger is caught by holding the matter of life and death in their hand.

    The fact that it happened in the past too, and the sweeping of the issue under the rug by a simple “reprimand” is a warning sign that it will go on in the future in a more careful and sophisticated way and it would be a wise thing for everyone checking in or arriving at Narita to seal their own suitcases with their own homemade security sticker, seal or anything else and call the airport security immediately if they find the seal damaged before passing through the custom gate.

    Reply
  • “Knowing Japan all I can say:

    A low ranking custom officer/officers in a highly hierarchic society such as Japan can not conduct series of such actions without the knowledge and approval of the supervisors.”

    I think you have just proven that you don’t ‘know Japan’.* Aside from the fact that bureaucracies everywhere are ‘highly hierarchic’, the notion that a human being is incapable of making a rather silly mistake because he or she holds a position within the customs service is somewhat ludicrous. So officials within Japanese ‘hierarchies’ do not permit deviation from standard procedure? How, I wonder, do the powers that be achieve these rather draconian standards? Are all officials supervised all the time? Or are Japanese people automatons with no personality that don’t make “mistakes” unless they are “authorized” to do so? It seems to me that if you can’t acknowledge the possibility of (albeit boneheaded and reprehensible) human error in this instance, you are projecting what you “know” about Japanese people (i.e. they are out to get foreigners and they don’t ‘do’ independent action) onto a particular individual. I don’t know what you call the categorization of individual behavior into types determined by preconceived notions of ethnicity, but where I’m from, we call it racism.

    The customs guy was an idiot, and if there was any problem with the system it was that his behavior was not controlled adequately. What perhaps he needed was more supervision (i.e. more hierarchy) not less.

    *And in any case there is no such thing as “knowing Japan” (or “knowing the United States”, or any other nation for that matter).

    Reply
  • Si, I would love to prove I am not “trolling”, but Dear Leader Debito seems to not want to allow me to post such proof. I suggest you all take it up with him as to why he gets to decide what the “truth” is.

    –That does it, Lance.

    I have always allowed your comments through–and that’s despite their nasty, ad hominem, and vituperative tone (calling people “Debitards”, calling me a “hatemongering racist” and the site “evil” etc.) because they were still trying to make a cogent argument, however much I disagreed with them.

    Now you’re trying to blame me for not allowing you to “post such proof”? That’s simply a lie. You really are a troll.

    You have been confronted with a UN Committee Against Torture report which criticized Japan’s judiciary regarding torture and accountability. As witnessed in this post two days ago:

    LB: “Shodoman’s (and others’) claim that Japan’s legal system is not accountable and enables torture is, demonstrably, wrong.”

    Stevie: Could you demonstrate it for us please?

    Debito: Quite. The UN Committee against Torture does not agree, either.
    “UN body attacks Japan’s justice system”
    By David Turner in Tokyo
    Financial Times, May 23 2007
    http://www.debito.org/?p=415

    You have chosen not to respond to this with a cogent argument back, demonstrating. Instead, you try to blame me? As I said, that does it.

    Trolls are not welcome here, and with this you have proven yourself to be one. Either give us a cogent counterargument or some form of capitulation/acknowledgment to this point raised, or I will never approve another one of your comments to this blog again, and your IPs will go into the spam bucket.

    Reply
  • Mark in Yayoi says:

    Big B, I think the customs official himself said that this “technique” has been used in the past and that the dogs were able to recover the planted drugs before the person exited customs.

    KA makes a good point about the lack of labeling. Whether they’re planting these drugs on innocent people or not, it’s outrageous that the box isn’t labeled “Property of Narita Airport Customs” with a warning to customs officials that it’s not actually possessed by any passenger in whose bags it might be found during a search. That’s the least they could do.

    (The only photos I’ve seen show the outside of the box, so there might indeed be such a label on the inside, but if there were, it would have been mentioned in the media, so I think we can safely conclude that this little box was totally anonymous. And it’s not like the set-up passenger can demand that it be checked for customs officials’ fingerprints!)

    I still can’t get over how egregious this incident is, and how cavalier customs officials are with people’s trust. A private individual planting illegal drugs among an innocent person’s baggage would be in jail or worse, yet the government can do the same thing with only mild repercussions (including self-reporting of their transgressions!).

    Here again, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    Reply

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