...when I went to Japan about three years ago, I was struck by how fraggin clean it was, considering the population density...granted the part of Japan I was in was somewhat rural and probably as close as you could get to a suburb, but I went to some relatively large cities and saw the same thing...

My question, does canon say if Japan's civil maintenance is relatively the same during the SR era, or whether those dirty metas have dirtied up Japan as well?

The JIS took a serious beating when the Ring of Fire went Boom, but they are reconstructing the country (maybe they are taking away money from civil maintenance to fund the efforts).

Just remember to portray the sterile, soul-sucking, zaibatsu-mindset (check this as an example).

You know...I can vouch for that...something very similar happened to me the first time when I was in Japan, but since I was 9 and my grandparents were pulling me along, I couldn't do anything...

Well, considering that until 2063, most of the metas in Japan had been shipped off to Yomi no Kuni ('the land of the Yomi', roughly 'Demon Island', located in the Phillipines - named for the mythical land of devil-beasties in the Kojiki) I doubt very much that they could do a lot of dirtying up. Only with the new emperor were the metas let back into the country.

I've always portrayed Japan as having a really low crime rate, as being really clean, and being one of those places where you're safe 99% of the time, but as soon as you find a shadow, it's deeper and blacker than most runners can even begin to fathom.

Of course, in "real life", the Yakuza and mafia have suffered a lot of setbacks, and are hardly all-powerful entities that are immune to the law (as they have been portrayed so often, it's a cliche). But I have a LOT of problems with how Japan is portrayed in SR, which borders on being racist, and don't really make an effort to keep up with the "canon" on it. Remember, the whole cyberpunk thing started in the 80's, when we thought the Japanese economy was going to take over the world. But Japan going back to a pre-WWII imperialistic state seems a bit far-fetched to me. I would portray them like any other cyberpunkish industrialized state, myself - lots of corporate drones, but lots of seething counterculture, too.

I hardly think making Japan an imperialistic state is inappropriate, considering all the other things that have gone down in the Sixth World. They forced half of the United States back into Native American Nations, for instance.

Actually, the Yakuza are semi-legitimate and the police here has a strong preference for an organized crime group that keeps things under control over the disorganized gang style that shows up in the States. Sure they get crime wars every blue moon like the current Yakuza-Chinese conflict, but it's still much more controled.

As for clean, you should go to a Burakumin part of Kyoto, not clean in the least bit, nor are some of the gaijin areas where foreigners congregate in some parts of the counrty. Those places are filthy and ran down. Japan has a style of brushing unclean under the rug or masking it. Move the undesirable uncleans into one area (i.e. Yomi, or the Burakumin ghettos) or make it pretty on the outside (like the love hotels they have here, really nice names to hide how dirty their deeds are).

No but I would call someone that would

I'd like to relate a couple of stories from my trips to Tokyo.... the idea seems to be "ignore what you wish didn't exist"...

I encountered a dead body on a JR train platform in Tokyo. The platform with the body was closed, but it was just across the tracks from the active platform, crowded with thousands of people going about their business. It's possible the crumpled form was just an unconscious drunken homeless person, but I think he was dead. Absolutely nobody so much as glanced in that direction.

Another time, while riding a crowded train, a young man was casually "reading" an extremely adult magazine -- lots of close-up zoom pictures of genitals engaged in the act and so forth. It was impossible not to notice, since several of us were within just a few feet of him and he was making no attempt to conceal the magazine, but everyone ignored him.

The weirdest though was while I was walking to work one morning in my suit, along with all the other suits. I walked about a half mile from Ebisu over to.... ah, I forget the train stop in that area. Anyway, along the way, there was a busy intersection I had to cross. While waiting for the light to change, this obviously homeless old man comes walking down the street, wanders out into traffic (cars just swerve around him and pretend he isn't there), stops in the middle of the intersection, bends 90 degrees at the waist, drops his pants to his ankles, and proceeds to take a great big crap while thousands of people go about their commute around him. Again, like all the other weird moments, you couldn't tell that anyone could even see him. It was like he was totally invisible except to me. That is a very unfortunate memory for me.

--K

That kind of maniacal--some would say pathological--self-absorption and cynicism are hallmarks of any major urban centre in the world. Similar events are reproduced daily in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Mexico City, Berlin, Münich, London, etc., etc., etc.

Could well be. Tokyo is the only multi-million person city where I've lived for weeks at a time. I've visited NYC, Atlanta, Boston, London, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, but only for a few days at a time.

--K

I feel obligated to mention how Japanese men in certain areas of Japan have to ride trains essentially with their hands on their hands if sitting anywhere near a female, especially schoolgirls, so they aren't liable for sexual harassment suits. Slight exaggeration, but only sometimes.

I've spent a lot of time working with Japanese people -- at work, and through the Japanese martial art I study and the Japanese order of Buddhism that I am a part of. They're only alien to us within the world of 1st world industrialized nations. I think we would find Afghani warlords or Aboriginal shamans a lot more alien in their thought patterns than the Japanese. However, we are rarely exposed to Afghani warlords and tribal shamans, so the Japanese are the most alien of the people who regularly participate in our lifestyle.

I don't think Japanese people are particularly disaffected -- I think the odds of a Japanese person calling the authories for a corpse or a disruptive homeless person are similar to the odds of any city dweller doing so. The vast majority of most people won't take the time and effort to deal with it.

The big difference with the Japanese is that they have a strictly ordered mind that keeps them focused on their proper role in any given situation. Whereas an American will point, stare, comment, and look around for other people with whom to point, state, and comment..... a Japanese person will cease to notice something as soon as they decide it doesn't concern them. If it doesn't apply to their role-of-the-moment, it's not there. Americans are always on the lookout for a spectacle.

The few Japanese, like the few Americans, who would actually get involved with the public situation -- out of civic duty or whatever -- will do so diligently and stick with it until the situation is completely resolved.

--K