Something stinks in Nakano
There’s big trouble and bad smells a-brewing in a quiet residential district around the Kawashima Shotengai (shop district) in Nakano. Shops are going out of business. Residents are virtually sealed inside their homes. Police and city officials say their hands are tied. All because of an angry old man in his fifties who has a strange habit of cooking his own excrement and organic kitchen waste in his garden (Japanese link).
Since his name has not been made public by the Japanese media, let’s just call him Crapman.
The trouble started about two and a half years ago when Crapman started boiling his own excrement and leftover food in his garden, and dumping the vile brew into a one meter square hole he dug in the ground there. Soon a foul smell started to permeate the neighborhood.
Residents tried various countermeasures to cope with the situation. They spread deodorizing agents near the man’s house, the kept their windows closed no matter what the weather, and housewives quit hanging their laundry outside. Some even had double doors installed on their own homes in an attempt to keep the stench out. But nothing could help the small general store located across the street from Crapman’s house, which was forced to close its doors in March of last year. According to the proprietor, kids said the rank odor made them feel sick, so they quit coming.
Authorities powerless
Finally area residents decided to get the authorities involved. Last month they collected 1,000 signatures and petitioned the police, the government of Tokyo, and Nakano Ward officials to do something. But everywhere they went, they got the same answer — there is no law or ordinance that keeps a person from collecting feces in his backyard!
According to officials, everyone perceives smells differently, and so they are powerless to take any action unless the situation is causing bodily harm to another person. Government representatives also told residents that it is difficult to prove that a shop went out of business due to the smells emanating from Crapman’s garden.
Of course, Tokyo environmental protection laws regulate foul odors, but regulations are mainly aimed as businesses and factories. A Nakano Ward official told the residents that they never imagined a scenario where an individual would collect excrement in their garden when formulating the laws.
Last summer and on August 25th of this year, Nakano Ward officials got permission from the Crapman’s relatives to clean out the pit, but each time the old man simply started another feculent pile as soon as the cleanup was done.
A chronic troublemaker
Crapman has been causing problems for his neighbors for years, and some of them think that his latest antics are intended to get back at the neighborhood. When asked by a TV newsperson about his actions, Crapman said, “I don’t think I’m bothering anyone. I don’t have to explain my actions.”
For now, score it Crapman one, residents, police, and city officials zero.
Photos via news.3yen.com
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Longtime JAPUNDIT readers will recall that this is not the first report we have had about a crazed resident terrorizing the neighborhood as police and city officials sat on their hands. Miyoko Kawahara maintained a virtually constant assault on a neighbor for years before reluctant authorities finally arrested her.
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that in ancient china if you were REALLY fat that meant you were...
omg i feel so bad for a that monkey help it some one plzzzz
Hole-y shi…oh, I can’t go through with it.
September 5th, 2005 at 11:49 amWhat a total shit that guy is. What’s he so pissed off about? And why are Japanese people willing to take such crap, anyway? Somebody should just toilet paper that old fart’s house. The whole country is just going down the john, and the more I watch news about half-assed cops and so on, the more bummed out I get. Ah, I’m pooped after typing all of that.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:22 pmIs there not something general they can get him on, like “causing a public nuisance”.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:26 pmOtherwise, why not have a quick look for a mental health act…
This really reinforces another story (sorry, expose) I saw about kids who were drinking, barbecuing, playing loud music, and playing with fireworks on public beaches. The police couldn’t do anything, even after the neighborhood came out in force for a “take back the night” patrol. Japanese laws seem to have far greater tolerance for public nuisances than citizens do.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:50 pmAlso, I hope that stinker was flooded out. Nakano-ku was among the wards hardest hit by the Typhoon 14 flooding.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:51 pmA bit OT, but i just looked at the site meter and was blowned away. Almost 300 thousand hits! I’ve been coming to this blog since the days where the site meter was in it’s low hundreds, and i can understand how it got so big. It’s simply one of the best, most interesting blogs out there!
September 6th, 2005 at 12:09 amCongratulations, and keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words.
September 6th, 2005 at 12:28 amAnd glad you enjoy it!
“…angry old man in his fifties ”
September 6th, 2005 at 3:26 amCome on, a man in his fifties is not an “old man”.
LOL – AngloAmerican
At least he didn’t say “elderly”
September 6th, 2005 at 5:44 amAngloAmerican: Hehehe, hit a nerve huh? Seriously though, in this day and age, you’re right. Fifties isn’t old.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:52 am“angry old man,” to be fair to JP, I think he was refering to the guy’s type. I began calling myself a dirty old man in my early 40’s – mostly pre-emptively.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:53 amghoti got it right… “old” was in reference to the guy’s attitude, not his age.
September 6th, 2005 at 11:15 am“Japanese laws seem to have far greater tolerance for public nuisances than citizens do.”
I think you make an excellent point, Joel. My first job out of university was as a housing inspector in an East Coast city. 70% of the people lived in rental units, and in those days landlords just considered the apartments as investments that didn’t require any expenditure.
The city aggressively moved to abate many different potential threats to health and life.
I came to Japan some years later and saw some guy on a busy street operating what was essentially a junkyard on a small lot that he never cleaned. In addition to his “merchandise”, there were mounds of trash. Anyone throwing a lit cigarette butt in there might have wound up torching the whole neighborhood.
Not long after that, I wound up teaching an English class to new firefighter trainees (as a response to the increase in foreign residents).
I asked the head of the firefighting school about that specific site and why the fire department didn’t do anything about it.
He said they would like to make the guy clean it up, but that he couldn’t. Get this–he said that legally, it would be considered an infringement of privacy.
I said that in the US, if the authorities deemed the menace serious enough, a court could issue an order allowing the city to clean it up themselves and send the bill to the owner.
There are no such legal provisions in Japan.
September 6th, 2005 at 11:16 amCrapman
September 9th, 2005 at 4:31 pmhttp://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=shukan&id=300
Final conclusion of story here:
”Nasty way to release stress”
When the police opened the door of the car, a foul stench hit them. Inside
the car were PET bottles filled with feces and urine. This was all police
needed to close a particularly nasty case in Osaka.
Since July there had been 15 cases of a motorist throwing feces and urine at
young female pedestrians.
On Sept 16, police at Higashi-Sumiyoshi station in Osaka arrested Kazumasa
Kurimoto, 39, an assistant manager in the electronic components section for
Sharp, on charges of assault and destruction of property.
“Kurimoto had been making and storing the PET bottles and their contents in
his garage,” said a police spokesman. “In his car, we found 2-liter bottles
cut in half. He wrapped the open top so that nothing would spill out. When
he was ready to go out, he poured feces and urine into a half-liter or 350ml
bottles with the top cut off.”
According to the police, Kurimoto has confessed to five cases out of the 15.
“I was really stressed out, and I just did it for fun. It was fun to watch
the young woman being disgusted,” police quoted him as saying.
A spokesperson for Sharp expressed disbelief at the news of Kurimoto’s
arrest. “He has never been late to work or skipped a day. His work ethic was
very good.”
A colleague said: “He was learning English for his job and really worked
hard.”
How could a man who seemed to be earnest at work in his managerial position
commit such abnormal acts? Shukan Post dug into his life deeper and found
that Kurimoto changed after getting divorced and then remarrying.
“Kurimoto got divorced in February last year. His eldest son stayed with him
and the younger son left with the mother,” said a neighbor. “In March of
this year, he married a Chinese woman in her 20s. It was around then that he
started to agonize over something.
“He had made a down payment on a house, which his ex-wife purchased. I also
heard that he had been sending money for child support each month aside from
the down payment,” said the neighbor.
“At the same time, he had to pay off a loan on his own house and send money
to his parents-in-law in China each month. His parents, who lived with him
under the same roof, were grumbling that Kurimoto was using their pensions
to meet his financial obligations.”
Meanwhile, there was a feud between his parents and his Chinese wife.
“From what I understand, they’d quarrel about everything from dinner to
their customs,” said an acquaintance of Kurimoto. “And poor Kurimoto was
caught in between the two sides and the fights never ended.”
Possibly due to the continuous trouble, Kurimoto no longer played with his
son. Neighbors said the two used to play catch quite often in the past, but
recently they saw the boy playing outside by himself a lot.
“His work also got very hectic and he used to go home late at night,” said a
colleague at Sharp. “He wasn’t a guy who liked drinking either, so maybe
there wasn’t an outlet for him to release his stress. I guess he just
flipped.” (Translated by Toshiya Fujii)
September 30, 2005
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=shukan&id=300
October 4th, 2005 at 9:12 pm[...] Say. . . Come to think of it, I wonder what ever happened to the feces cooker? [...]
May 18th, 2007 at 8:05 pm