Shinagawa street fight
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Twice in Tokyo, I've seen fights happen on the street. Today I thought I'd run into my third. But it was worse.
Curiously, both times that I've seen real fights, the combatants were a set of two chefs emerging from a kitchen to pound on each other. I guess being a chef in this city brings out the inner kansaijin in the locals?
But today's incident was very different. As I passed the taxi rank in front of Shinagawa stration, a medium-to-largish fellow wearing only a bathrobe and a cowboy hat jumped a smaller passer-by who was heading for the intersection. I'd just met with my business partner to stamp some official documents and was returning to get some things wrapped up as the week came to a close.
Instead, I found myself heading toward a seeming lunatic to prevent him from doing .. what, exactly. Stripping the other man's leather jacket off of his back?
The crowd began to part around the scene and I saw that the bathrobe cowboy had accomplices and that they were carrying cameras. Two jerks with video cameras were filming the whole thing! It was some sort of bizarre prank.
As I got closer, I noticed that the guy with the cowboy hat had some oily substance smeared all over his face and was yelling some phrases for the cameras while the jerks laughed and yelled something in return. The smaller fellow had broken free and was hollering about his eye (he then began to look about on the ground for a contact lens while still angrily shouting at his accoster).
The whole thing pissed me off immensely, but since they didn't seem to be actually mugging the smaller/younger guy (in broad daylight outside of a station that sees nearly a million visits a day) I'm glad I didn't wade in with my fists to help out the fellow who'd been jumped.
This country sure is different from Canada. If I went to some busy place dressed like and started tackling people on the sidewalkâphrew!