Tom Cruise’s devastating critique of the moral bankruptcy of societies in which hats are worn sans horns is borne out in The Daily Yomiuri‘s crime stiuris. Today’s highlights include dramatic accounts of the deeds and denouement of
- 71-year-old pickpocket Onna Ginji. Named after Shitateya Ginji (Ginji the Tailor), leader of a large Meiji period gang, she was apparently disguised with a large mask and woolly hat when ‘she turned her eyes toward visitors’ bags. A police officer spotted her. “Here she comes,” he said.’
- Long-distance bicycle burglar, Masafumi Shimura (45), who posed as a landscape gardener in order to target wealthy farmers. If he was wearing the regulation helmet, then I think that we may be fairly certain that it was not the Valkyrie model.
My impression is that Western coverage of Japanese reaction to The Lost Pizza Pie has tended to focus on adulation of the hirsute dwarf instead of on the politics of it all. This disturbs me slightly, not so much because of continuing ultra-conservative terrorism, but because I think that The Last Ham to Die will come to be seen by the anti-globalisation mob in Japan and elsewhere as an allegory for events at the end of the war in the Pacific. I prefer stories like this or, for that matter, the story of veteran samurai soap star, Seizo Fukumoto, who plays Mr Cruise’s minder.
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