JOURNEYS

The Mystery of the Black Van

During the first three months of living in Japan, our neighbourhood was haunted every morning by a large black van with the Japanese flag painted boldly on its side that roamed the streets broadcasting loud intrusive messages over a macabre loop of buddhist chants. For one who had never known a Japan without this ominous presence, I assumed this was simply one of those quirky "cultural differences" that I had been warned about. But the reaction of shock and discomfort I saw registering on the faces of the locals assured me that this was not the case and that the threatening tone was ever more apparent to those who understood the message.

My girlfriend and I began to come up with our own theories on who was driving this vehicle of propaganda. Surely it was the Communists behind the wheel or the Fascists, or at the very least, the Environmentalists. Given the fact that is was election time, there were a number of other vehicles on the streets rigged with external speakers, each with a silver-haired hopeful in the back seat along with five or six model-type females waving out the windows to encourage the constituents. Perhaps this black monster was simply some young parliamentary candidate that had misread the chapter in the campaign handbook that dealt with public image.

Whatever the case, I learned to accept its intrusive role in my morning routine and even found myself listening for its familiar wake up call as the minute hand neared half past nine.

Then one day it simply stopped making its rounds. The morning's silence was only broken by the sounds of screaming children at the school bus stop below our window and the occasional gut-churning screech of an un-oiled bicycle careening down the side street. And while these sounds may not be pleasant ways to wake up, they were without evil undertones and soon the mystery van faded from our minds like the previous night's dreams. That is, until we caught word of the shooting.

Jojinji temple was about a five-minute walk from our apartment. Its entrance is just across from the neighborhood 7-11 and down a long path with a dense tree lined canopy and old moss covered stone carvings. In the spring, with the sun warming the morning air, we would often take walks around its grounds on Saturday, with the cherry trees in full bloom and their blossoms falling silently to rest on Buddha and mortal alike; tadpoles shimmering through the waters of sculpted ponds and children chasing Frisbees across the rays of the early morning sun. It was very peaceful, very serene, and exactly what I had hoped to find at the end of my journey to Japan.

What I'm getting to is that around the same time that the black van ceased making its rounds of our neighborhood, a night security guard outside the temple gates was shot two times in the buttocks and died. It was reported in the paper that three members of the Japan Constitutional Party had been arrested on charges of the murder. It turns out that this "petty right-wing group" was serving as a front for the yakuza and that what was slowly coming to light was a sinister web-like connection between the temple, national extremists and organized crime.
The yakuza is Japan's answer to the Italian Mafia and the Asian Triads. As late as the first half of the twentieth century, the yakuza was involved solely in the gambling racket and retained a certain degree of respect, even romance within the community for its maintenance of certain standards.

Nowadays, however, it seems the yakuza have got their hands in anything and everything that stands to make a profit in Japan, from prostitution and drugs, to white collar and political crimes. Even the street vendors, who sell 'stringless' puppets to naive tourists up in Asakusa can't put in an honest day's work unless a yen or two is going into the pockets of some local hoodlum. Many communities in Japan will no longer tolerate this bullying and have taken action to shut down their local gangster's operations.

In regards to the situation at our local temple, it seems that one of the cemetery workers was fired a few months before and went to the local gangsters to help plead his case. The yakuza thus enlisted the JCP to drive the message home around the neighborhood, and terrorized the temple with arson attacks. The final blow came on that fateful night with the death of the guard on the steps of the priests' quarters, only meters away from safety.

I went back to the temple a little while after the shooting. It was mid-summer at that point and even midway through its climb, the sun was relentless. But the more remarkable rise in temperature existed in the security conditions on the temple grounds. An armed guard stood at the foot of the stairs to the main temple while a number of others roamed the parking lot and grounds. Whether the fascists had succeeded in their goal or not, it seemed that the outcome had resulted in the transformation of my former weekend sanctuary into an iron clad police state.

 

 
 
 
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