Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

She lived with her daughter. People said they weren’t getting along. Something about the daughter’s boyfriend.”

“Was he a yakuza or just some kind of badass?”

“Nope. Worse. He was a foreigner.

A few years ago, the term manual ningen (“manual humans”) was in vogue to describe a generation of younger Japanese who seemed incapable of independent thought. The term is now part of the vernacular, used for someone who can only follow instructions and can’t think outside the box. A synonym for manual ningen is shijimachi ningen (“the waiting-for-instructions people”), which, as you can imagine, refers to passive employees with no initiative.

“Do you like this American beer? This was on sale, so I thought I’d try it. It tastes terrible!”

“Yes, it tastes terrible,” I laughed. “Piss and ashes. That’s how we described it in Missouri.”

“Piss and ashes! Nice. I like that. It’s exactly what this tastes like.”

It says a great deal about the safety of the country that a murder, any murder, is national news. There are exceptions, however, and that’s when the victim is Chinese, a yakuza, a homeless person, or a nonwhite foreigner. Then the news value drops 50 percent.

It’s not about learning. It’s about unlearning. It’s about cutting off ties, cutting out things, getting rid of preconceptions, losing everything you thought you knew. That’s the first thing you’ll learn.

Never put your personal opinions into a story; let someone else do it for you. That’s why experts and commentators exist. Objectivity is a subjective thing.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

“Mofuku are black. Nobody wears a black suit to a job interview.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, maybe a yakuza.”
“Well, could I pretend I just got back from a funeral? Maybe I’d get sympathy points.”
“That’s true. People sympathize with the mentally challenged.”

No story is worth dying for, no story is worth your family dying for. Heroes are just people who have run out of choices.