The sense of self-importance contained in the Nov. 20 Zeit Gist article "Watching them watching us" -- in which writer Michael Hassett complains about the capacity of the Japanese government to subject him to "physical abuse" by virtue of its ability to theoretically track him via security cameras from his home to his office -- is mind-blowing. There is something that people like Hassett need to understand: You do not matter; there is no team of Japanese special force operatives watching your every move; the Japanese government has better things to do with its time; no one cares about you; you are irrelevant.
Interestingly, the one and only thing that Hassett didn't complain about is the one genuine act of discrimination to which he is being subjected. Early last year, many Japanese railway companies introduced women-only carriages on the stated rationale of protecting women from gropers. All men are barred: the young, the old, Japanese, non-Japanese.
Hassett (and innumerable others) have claimed during the past couple of months that the policy of fingerprinting and photographing foreigners at airports equates to considering all foreigners to be suspected terrorists. Under this logic, however, it similarly follows that the Japanese government considers all foreign men to be suspected sexual predators. Yet, no one seems particularly upset about that. Anyone care to explain why?
The consistency in Japanese behavior in respect to both the groping and the terrorist threat clearly shows that the Japanese government is not hypocritical in its application of "group accountability." The duplicity in the reaction by non-Japanese males to each of these issues suggests something else again.