Stalking? It's as Japanese as sushi ("Waking up to the menace of stalking" in the Sept. 11 edition). Ninja were professional stalkers and it's in the blood of most Japanese.
This is a nation of snoop hounds. Privacy is a myth in Japan. The reality is that nearly everyone these days lives in a fish bowl. The NSA over in the United States could learn much from this nation of wannabe ninja. You better believe that the local koban keystone kops are keeping an eye on things.
With surveillance cameras everywhere, government sanctioned stalking has become a cake walk all over our Orwellian globe. Can't believe that stalkers can't be stopped until they've acted aggressively, possibly even hurting their intended victim(s).
This Japan Times reader still recalls the 2013 murder of a young high school girl and aspiring actress in the fair city of Mitaka, Tokyo, just a few short years ago. She was stabbed to death after she and her parents told the police a nut job planned to kill her, which he finally did. The cops just shrugged.
Non-Japanese are quickly targeted as objects of curiosity or worse. But then again, that's the price of admission into the straitjacket society that is Japan. What a joke, "my number." It's obvious that this is the Liberal Democratic Party's method of tracking all the good people of Japan. I got Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's number. He's a big zero.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.