(Not So) Silent Alarm

One day, about a week after I had returned from my post-Christmas vacation, a large box was delivered to our office. Everyone in the board of education crowded around as the superintendent opened the box, pulling out what looked like a small, mechanical egg inside of a plastic blister pack. Each person in the office then inspected the device carefully, nodded or grunted in approval and then passed it on to the next person. Much like the crocodile awaits his prey, I decided to allow this mystery to unravel itself to me gradually, as such mysteries are wont to do.

Fast-forward a week or two and I’m sitting at my desk in Momoishi Elementary School, reading a book. Suddenly, I hear a high pitched, loud and really annoying alarm going off somewhere outside the teacher’s office. The noise slowly makes its way down the hall and towards the office until it becomes clear that it’s coming from one of the teachers. She then walks into the office and sets down a screeching egg in front of the principle. “It’s stuck-we can’t turn it off,” she explains. After a very painful minute, the principle’s fiddling around pays off and the alarm is subdued. This type of episode has since become a weekly occurrence.

Well, it was around this time that I figured out two things. First, the plastic eggs were clearly some sort of personal security alarm. Second, every single child in the school district, from 1st grade up through 9th grade had been outfitted with one. It was also around this time that I noticed a certain poster being displayed in every one of the classrooms that I visit. The poster displays the front of a sushiya and uses the letters on the sign to spell out phrases like “Don’t get in a stranger’s car!” and “If a stranger tells you to go with them, scream!”

So what was I to make of all this? All signs seemed to suggest that Momoishi’s youngest denizens were in some sort of imminent danger but who or what was posing the threat? I decided to take up the issue with an expert on such matters, Okubo-San, our office lady and mother of two young children. I brought up the matter during a car ride to one of my schools and what follows is a rough translation of the conversation that ensued:

Me: “Okubo-San, what are those small, white things that the children carry around?”
Okubo-San: “Oh, those alarms you mean?”
M: “Yes. Do all of the children carry one?”
O: “Yes, all of the elementary and middle school children have them.”
M: “Why?”
O: “Well, there are many dangerous people around these days.”
M: “Even in Momoishi? Really?”
O: “Yes. Momoishi, Misawa, Towada, there are dangerous people everywhere nowadays.”
M: “Oh, I see.”
O: “Mehan-San, do you want an alarm for yourself?”

Since I don’t have access to any crime statistics for Momoishi, I can’t necessarily discount Okubo-San’s claims. In fact, a search for kidnapping statistics for Japan as a whole yielded no results (although this may have something to do with how the crime is classified in the Japanese legal system). However, if we look at the breakdown of crimes reported in each prefecture between 1985 and 2003 (page 2 of this document published by the Japanese National Police Agency), it becomes clear that Aomori prefecture-which displays one of the lowest incidences of crime in a nation that is already known as one of the safest in the developed world-is probably not a hotbed of kidnapping activity.

So who’s to blame for Okubo-San’s paranoia concern? Crazy liberals such as myself will be quick to invoke the “culture of fear” theory popularized by the likes of linguist Noam Chomsky and filmmaker Michael Moore; a sociological thesis that asserts that fear and paranoia are manufactured and purposefully cultivated by the mass media in order to achieve specific political aims. A variety of scholars and dissidents have directly linked this culture of fear to everything from gun violence to so-called “nature-deficit disorder” (NPR interview). While these sorts of theories have historically been directed at the American media, I certainly wouldn’t be the first to suggest that the same may be true in Japan.

Consider this: last November and December, there were three high-profile cases in the Japanese media involving the murder of elementary school students, all of them girls. While the proximity of these events alone was highly unusual and shocking, one case in particular seems to have captured the media’s interest. That was the killing of a 7-year-old girl in Hiroshima, who was abducted on her way home from school. Media coverage of the case literally exploded the day that the suspect was arrested; a 30-year-old Peruvian citizen. Anyone who was living in Japan at the time can tell you that coverage of the crime was literally inescapable for weeks, creating a claustrophobic media space similar to that seen during similar high-profile cases in the US (JonBenet Ramsey anyone?). If media coverage of child killers is everywhere, it seems to follow that the killers themselves might also be everywhere.

Additionally, as the Guardian reports, the Japanese media was quick to spin the incident into a “foreign crime wave,” simultaneously affirming the “otherness” of the criminal (despite the fact that he was actually of Japanese decent) and inciting a xenophobic panic. While you may not be inclined to believe that this type of coverage is necessarily tied to specific political aims, it seems hard to deny that such coverage is, at the very least, sensationalist. What’s more dangerous is that it allows the nation to wash its hands of any sense of responsibility, leaving important questions like “what might motivate someone to kill a 7-year old girl in Japan?” unanswered.

Well, it’s about time we got back to Momoishi, isn’t it? Now I’m not saying that the use of these alarms is necessarily a bad thing; with the exception of annoying a certain assistant language teacher they seem to be doing little harm. However, I do find it curious that they appeared less than a month after the extensive media coverage described above. It’s really anyone’s guess as to how effective such an alarm would be, in the event that it was actually needed, so I took it upon myself to do a little research. Upon stopping a number of children walking home from Momoishi Elementary School a few weeks ago, I discovered that relatively few were actually carrying the alarms with them (below we see one of these few who had decorated his with Pokemon stickers and who even offered to turn on the alarm to show me-I hastily declined). So perhaps the true purpose of the alarms is not to keep the children safe but rather, to assuage concerned parents like Okubo-San? I guess that as long as the alarms make the parents feel safer, they’re serving some sort of purpose, questionable though it may be.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish sealing off my windows with duct tape in order to protect myself from the terrorists.