[AmericanInTokyo]

If there is a concerted attack by some foreigners in Japan--even if just three or four of them--then I guarantee you Japan will no longer be a fun or interesting place to work, study or reside for ALL foreigners.

The whole archipelago will turn irretreivably xenophobic in a New York minute, the drawbridges of the Japanese mass psyche will go up immediately.

If it is North Koreans who do the shooting and bombing and gassing, you can expect a huge, violent backlash against ALL Northeast Asian foreigners in Japan: Chinese, Korean (both South and North), Taiwan, Mongolia.

The sleeping giant of paranoid xenophobia will have been fastidiously awakened. I wish the Japanese law enforcement and domestic intelligence authorities could anticipate this...but alas, I wish for a lot of things that don't come true.......

[sushiman]

I hear what you're sayin' man . I remember well when the AIDS scare first reared its ugly head in Tokyo back in the late 80's . I was on a train with my pal Barry heading out of Shinjuku for points north , when a middle age salaryman sitting down in front of us out of the blue pointed at my buddy and shouted out " AIDS ! " , as if to say all " gajins " had it . Not to long after this I was alone on the same Saikyo line heading home , when a woman whose kid was standing very close to me told her son in Japanese ( she assumed I couldn't understand Japanese ...she was wrong ) , " Don't stand too close to the foreigner , he might have AIDS . " Wild , huh ?

[AmericanInTokyo]

I experienced that same phenomenon on various train lines in Tokyo for much of the 1983 and 1984 time period...i.e., some Japanese stealthily moving away, for fear of "AIDS from the gaijin-san/foreigner". It was odd. I don't know if was not excusable. It was not fun, though....

....I think that if America were a similar physical and cultural island, and if there was a deadly epidemic among non-Americans and then we had some of them as visitors/residents in our crowded US trains, we might have shyed away from them, too--as so little was known about that disease at that time. Clearly, many Japanese went overboard in the xenophobia department, no doubt.