The Darker Side of Nagaoka

~The city of Nagaoka, and Japan in general, are for the most part safe places. Of course, all towns, even the safest, have their bad sides--the streets that you just *shouldn't* hang around after dark. Nagaoka has places like this, but they're easy to avoid.

^ Hananomachi Avenue, the "bad street" of Nagaoka. It's locally known by the charming English title of "Sin Street".

^ Hananomachi Avenue is almost completely dead by day; in fact, I usually commute through here on my bicycle. But by night...

^ ...it becomes a wretched hive of scum and villainy, to be avoided if possible. Pimps patrol outside of seedy establishments, "discount" jewelry stands spring up along the sidewalks, and double parking is the norm. The horror, the horror!

^ With bar names like this, who in their right mind would want to hang out around Hananomachi Ave.?

The criminal elements of Nagaoka usually keep to themselves. The trouble happens on those rare occasions when the darker elements of society decide to make themselves a bit more visible. Such as what happened tonight.

Around 8 pm, I was waiting in the lobby of my school waiting for some students to arrive for my last class of the day. I noticed that quite a large crowd was gathered just outside, all looking at something nearby. It was a man standing on top of something, yelling to the crowd. Of course, I didn't understand a word of it, but I found out quickly enough: the man was a yakuza, a Japanese gangster. Yes, they are here in Nagaoka, but mostly keep a low profile. Not tonight.

The man was spewing out ultra-nationalistic venom. When he saw one of my English co-workers, he started railing on about racial purity for the Japanese bloodline (the yakuza have a long-standing alliance with Japanese ultra-right wing political groups). He was probably drunk, but had some friends with him...it didn't look good.

His audience was mostly confused-looking students waiting outside for their cram school lesson to start. I think everyone was disgusted by this, but it was a bit unnerving to see such a public display of blatant hatred. The manager of my school called the police, and apparently the yakuza ran away before they arrived (I was teaching a class by this point).

I'm just glad this kind of thing is kept out of sight most of the time. It's really sad, but I'm sure it's no different that what goes down at a KKK rally in the United States. Pathetic, really.

~Oyasumi.