The Dumb and the Inconsiderate: Tochigi Drift.

“I want to go to Japan because it’s the land of _____” is a common, and understandable, motivation for foreign tourists to decide to visit the country. There are all sorts of appealing, colorful, and just plain cool parts of Japan’s modern and traditional culture, and whether you think of Japan as the land of Hello Kitty, the land of ramen, or the land of ninja, it’s definitely worth your time to pursue those interests in some way while visiting the country.

The key, though, as is so often the case in life, is not to be a jackass about it. Apparently that was too high a standard for a Dutch tourist in Tochigi Prefecture, though, as he’s now been arrested for drifting/vandalism.

The Tochigi Prefectural Police have announced the arrest of 32-year-old Roy Witte, a Dutch national traveling in Japan. Security camera footage from June 15 shows Witte sliding a rented R34-chasis Nissan Skyline sedan around the parking lot of the Oya History Museum in the town of Utsunomiya, with smoke rising from the tires and tread marks left behind on the asphalt. The director of the museum says that cleaning the tire marks from the parking lot will cost a considerable amount of money.

Now, it is true that Japan is the country where drifting first became a cultural phenomenon among car enthusiasts. However, that doesn’t mean that the practice, on non-sanctioned streets, is encouraged or even widely accepted by Japanese society as a whole. In particular, part of the Japanese auto enthusiast ethos is not causing problems for other people, so even when drifting was a more prevalent activity back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was usually done as part of spirited drives along isolated stretches of road late at night. Simply spinning around a parking lot like this has pretty much always been frowned upon in Japan, and isn’t really even what those in the Japanese enthusiast community would commonly call drifting, since the wheelspin isn’t being used to navigate a curve in the road and doesn’t require any actual skill.

As such, Japanese online reactions to Witte’s arrest aren’t especially sympathetic, even from drifting fans.

“Do that in your own country.”
“You have to have problems in the head to think it’s OK to do that.”
“I can understand wanting to drift, but do it with permission on private property like a race track.”
“Dude that doesn’t even count as real drifting.”
“All he’s doing is causing wheelspin, What a loser.”
“I feel bad for the rental car too.”
“Who rents a car to do that kind of thing?”
“Make him compensate the museum.”
“Please don’t drop the charges against him.”

The last few comments highlight two other points worth noting. First, while it may be expected in some countries that rental cars are going to suffer plenty of abuse from the people renting them, that’s not generally the norm in Japan. Renting something still means you don’t own it, and Japanese etiquette dictates that people should treat things owned by other people with respect, so it’s possible that whatever company Witte rented the car from is also going to take issue with his driving.

The comments also highlight a growing exasperation among people in Japan with foreign tourists committing crimes in the country but then being deported without standing trial or otherwise receiving punishment. For many years, a swift but quiet “Please leave” and the charges being dropped was the norm for non-violent infractions by foreign tourists, but with the number of such arrests increasing, there have been increased calls for the authorities to see things through in the same manner they would had a Japanese resident committed the crime, and the lenience that allowed arrested tourists to fly home with just a slap on the wrist is likely going to be harder to come by.

Source: FNN Prime Online via Yahoo! Japan News, YouTube/FNNプライムオンライン
Top image: Wikipedia/TKOIII
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