The question of how to respond to the Japanese police’s quasi-random on-the-street questioning is a complex one, but this isn’t the answer.

Many residents would say that Japan is, by a lot of objective metrics and subjective judgments, a pretty great place to live. One unpleasant annoyance of life in Japan, though, is the practice of shokumu shitsumon, or “employment questioning.”

This doesn’t refer to companies or employment counselors asking job-seekers about their qualifications and professional ambitions. Instead, shokumu shitsumon is a law-enforcement tactic in which police officers on patrol will stop people on the street and ask them for their name, job, and some form of identification.

Ostensibly, shokumu shitsumon is a way by which police officers can approach and engage with people who they believe look or are acting suspicious, and therefore prevent crimes from occurring. In fairness, this is sometimes how things work out, such as in the incident when a man in Tokyo was discovered to be carrying a firebomb he planned to throw at the U.S. embassy.

However, the threshold for what constitutes suspicious appearance/behavior is, in practice, almost completely arbitrary, and in the case of visibly non-Japanese people, can include suspicion that they might be traveling or residing in Japan without proper permits or visas, which is why travel guidebooks regularly recommend that foreign tourists keep their passports on them while out and about in Japan. Though there are places in the world in which “I just think you look suspicious, so show my your ID,” would not be an allowable tactic for police officers to utilize, shokumu shitsumon is completely legal in Japan, so should you ever find yourself on the receiving end of such questions, it’s advisable to stay even-keeled in your responses. That, however, is not how things went down in an incident last weekend involving a U.K. national in Kobe.

On the night of January 18, a 25-year-old Hyogo Prefectural Police officer who was on patrol in the city’s Ikuta neighborhood noticed that the 56-year-old British man had looked at his patrol car and then began walking away. Finding this sufficiently suspicious to be grounds for shokumu shitsumon, the officer exited the vehicle and began questioning the British man, who then withdrew from the sidewalk into a nearby convenience store, and then into the shop’s bathroom. The officer then waited for the British man to reemerge, and when he resumed his questioning, and at some point the exchange became heated and the British man bit the police officer on his right thumb.

It’s unclear whether the exchange between the two had become physical prior to that, but in any case the biting was enough to get the British man arrested for obstruction of police duties, and with his teeth inflicting minor injuries, it’s possible that assault charges could be tacked on as well. During subsequent questioning, the British man, who is a part-time worker with no set address, admitted to biting the officer, saying “The policeman wouldn’t leave me alone. He was bad.”

All of this raises the question of how one should respond when stopped by the police for shokumu shitsumon. Assuming you have nothing to hide, there’s a school of thought that calmly and directly answering the questions and showing your ID is the smoothest option. The average individual isn’t likely to be questioned very frequently. In over 20 years of living in Japan I’ve been stopped for shokumu shitsumon exactly once. It should also be mentioned that racial profiling isn’t always a factor in deterring who gets stopped for shokumu shitsumon. Even Japanese people get questioned, with our own Mr. Sato having acquired enough experience to become sort of an amateur expert on the subject. Above all else, it isn’t illegal for the police in Japan to perform shokumu shitsumon, and so those tempted to take a non-compliant stance really don’t have a leg to stand on, legally speaking.

On the other hand, the argument could be made that not doing anything to voice or otherwise communicate one’s opinion that the practice is improper serves to further normalize it. However, it’s important to consider what is and isn’t an appropriate level of dissatisfaction to express, and while the exact dividing line is a hazy one, biting a Japanese cop is probably going to end very badly for you. It’s especially critical to keep any negative reaction appropriately sized since new police procedures mean that foreigners who are arrested in Japan are now less likely to receive adequate translation services than they used to regarding the charges levied against them and their legal options.

In addition, as we’ve discussed before, people who are arrested can be held in custody for 23 days before even going before a judge, and if they are then immediately re-arrested for a different crime, can then go right back into custody for another 23 days. Applying this to the case of the British man, who will likely face assault charges but has so far only been arrested for obstruction of police duties, he’s facing the possibility of sitting in prison for more than six weeks before even being arraigned.

In other words, should you ever find yourself on the receiving end of shokumu shitsumon, remember to both keep your cool and to keep your teeth off other people.

Source: Kobe Shimbun Next via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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